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1991-10-22
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SysInfo V2.40 30th Aug 1991
---------------------------
written in Assembler with Devpac Amiga
--------------------------------------
Written by Nic Wilson
Nic Wilson Software
138d South Street
Toowoomba Queensland 4350
Phone (076) 358539 A/H Voice only
(076) 358384 W/H Fax or voice
(076) 358522 W/H Voice only
EMAIL {cbmvax|cbmehq}!cbmaus!wilson!nic@uunet.uu.net
This program was written due to the lack of such a program
on the Amiga. It was written using HiSoft Devpac Assembler.
I have placed this program on Shareware so that it can be
used by everyone. All code, graphics and documents remain
copyright Nic Wilson Software.
If you like this program, then help me to help you more by
sending a small donation. Any amount will be gratefully
appreciated.
*********************************
IMPORTANT FOR KICKSTART 1.2 - 1.3
*********************************
Amigas that have a maths co-processor using kickstart 1.3 or
earlier, MUST use SetPatch 1.34 or later otherwise this
program will crash. This program uses 68881 & 68882
instructions and a bug in the kernal causes a guru. SetPatch
patches this bug. This is not required for V2.0 users but
remember that you have a Setpatch also now, so use it.
DISTRIBUTION CONDITIONS
-----------------------
Output results from the program may be reprinted without any
form of permission. But please state the SysInfo Version
number used to obtain the results & give credit to the
author.
This doc file and the icons must accompany the program
unmodified.
Additional doc files of your own may accompany the program.
Results from different Amiga configurations may be
distributed along with the SysInfo files.
The executable is not modified in any way, except for
crunching, or lharc'ing etc.
Further updated versions are distributed as available and as
soon as possible. You can always obtain an update by modem if
you wish.
COMMERCIAL COMPANIES
--------------------
You only need verbal permission from myself and may phone or
fax me on the above numbers to obtain permission. Or may
alternatively write to the above address. If you have already
received permission to distribute an earlier version of
SysInfo, then you may distribute this version without
obtaining further permission.
If a commercial company would like all their products listed
by name and manufacturer in the 'BOARDS' function, then send
me your manufacturer number and your product numbers for each
board along with a description of what each board is, and I
will add them in to the program. We will then return you a
copy of the program with these changes, that you can
distribute with your products.
INTRODUCTION
------------
Sysinfo is an Amiga Sytem Information program. It
interrogates the Amiga and determines types of hardware,
software, modes, speed etc. Users have found it very useful
for determining correct operation of an Amiga before purchase
and that the unit actually contains hardware that they are
paying for, without having to open it up. It is under
constant revision, and these revisions are available from
myself at any time. My goal is to make SysInfo the most
informative and accurate information program on the Amiga.
To do this I need your input and suggestions.
This program is tested with the program 'Enforcer'.
Please be patient if you are running SysInfo on a standard
Amiga as it will take a while to perform its tests. SysInfo
really interrogates your system and has to perform many
timing loops to test ram speed, type etc. At times it also
disbles multitasking and may blank the mouse pointer, but it
will return to multitasking when finished and the mouse
pointer will return as soon as you move it.
HISTORY (MOST RECENT FIRST)
---------------------------
V2.40 New revolutional function added. Within the 'Drives'
function window is a new gadget called 'SCSI'. This displays
info as supplied from the drive itself. It displays the
actual drive size in Megabytes. This allows comparison of the
real size and the size it is formatted too, or the size you
believe it was. This may not work at all for some brands as
they do not support the required comands, see 'SCSI' under
the 'DRIVES' function. Fixed a bug that would leave
multitasking off if no hardware clock was found.
On processors 68010 and higher, the program would hang if the
VBR register was non zero. This is now fixed
On 68010 processors the printing function would guru after a
few lines, I beleive this is fixed but not tested. Please
let me know if there is further probs.
V2.39 Changed the MMU testing routine to attempt to overcome
problems on some boards.
Changed the memory size in the memory function to reflect Meg
size instead of 'K'.
Fixed the GVP Hard Disk being seen as Memory Board.
Fixed a bug that crept in the last version. An Amiga with no
true fast ram would lock up on the speed test. This is now
fixed.
V2.38 Fixed the check for Phoenix manufacturer in boards function.
The A2500 and B2000 strings were reversed in the printing
function, now fixed.
V2.37 I think I finally fixed the bug that caused the program to sometimes hang while printing if launched from the CLI.
The change to the program made in 2.35 caused the speed
results to be skipped if printing from inside the program,
this is now fixed. Some tidying up of the main image was also
done.
V2.36 Since going to the new VBLANK timing routine, I neglected
to allow for NTSC 60hz timing, so the results were
inaccurate. Both PAL and NTSC timing are once again
catered for. Addition of SupraRAM and WordSync card
recognition in the boards function (Thanx to Matt)
V2.35 Sysinfo no longer performs the speed tests immediately. Now
that there are multiple gadgets, you had to wait for the
speed loops to finish before they could be accessed. The
'AGAIN' gadget is now called 'SPEED', select this gadget to
perform the speed loops. It still acts as before and will
do the speed tests as many times as you wish. See 'SPEED'
under 'FROM WORKBENCH' for more info.
V2.34 Added new 'MEMORY' function gadget. This new function gives
much more info about RAM in the system.
V2.33 Added ability for new 'BOARDS' function to recognise certain
autoconfig boards by manufacturer name and model. This info
must be known by the program. If unknown it will give the
numbers, call me and tell me the numbers and what the card
is and I will add it in to the program. The more I get the
more intelligent the program will become for all users.
The HARD PARTITIONS count in the main window will now only
count known hard drives. Any unknown ones will show in the
OTHERS area. If your hard drive shows as an other, call me
and tell me the name of your device driver and I will add
it in to the program.
Changed the speed comparison calculation for 68000 processors
to allow for no FAST RAM. Results should be more accurate.
V2.32 Addition of new 'Boards' function that gives info on
AutoConfig boards found in the system.
Moved stuff around in main window to make way for more
gadgets to do more beaut stuff.
Owners of Amiga's with 020 or 030's may notice that their
FAST RAM vs CHIP percentage has increased over previous
versions. This is because I quad aligned the memory test
area, allowing a 32 bit processor to access 32 bit ram
faster.
Changed the Timer routine again to use a VBLANK interuppt
server, this should improve stability even further. It has
improved accuracy of the 500/2000 hardware clock test.
Added an optional heading string to the PRINT routine.
The A3000/040 and A3000/030 strings were backwards in the
print routine. This has now been corrected.
By popular demand I added a form feed at the end of printing
V2.31 Addition of new CIA timer speed accuracy test. SEE CIA TIMER
TEST.
V2.30 Addition of a new 'Drives' function. See 'DRIVES GADGET'
below. Addition of new output window for the print routine,
to allow saving of output to a filename or printer etc. See
'PRINT' below
V2.22/3 Changed the timer routine to use direct hardware instead of
calling DOS this should give much more stability.
Using direct hardware is frowned upon, but I doubt if the
the CIA's will ever move from their current location, and I
couldn't seem to find a better way to do it.
V2.21 Added the ability to recognise a 68881 added via
MathIEEE.resource The only one I know of is the Phoenix A1000
replacement motherboard, it allows the addition of a 68881.
Added kickstart size to the 'KICKSTART VERSION' string.
V2.20 Fixed a hanging Forbid if run on an A3000.
Fixed a intermittent bug that caused some programs to 'hang'
if SysInfo was launched from the CLI.
Fixed small amount (26k) of 16 bit memory showing when no 16
bit memory was installed.
V2.15 Code optimisations & improvements since updates below.
Greatly improved execution speed on non-32 bit processors.
Added the ability to differentiate between 1MB and 2MB Agnus.
V2.14 A2620 boards with 32 bit wide ram, still intermittently being
seen as 16 bit cards. Fine tuned routine still further.
V2.13 The program no longer reflects the Exec.library CPU and FPU
type, it tests for 68030, 68040, 68882 itself and changes the
Exec AttnFlags accordingly if incorrect. Agnus "mode" had
been removed, and the DISPLAY field now reflects whether
Agnus is PAL or NTSC, rather than Intuition's mode. The MHZ
display now does an educated calculation of the actual clock
speed based on test results to try and make the display more
accurate.
V2.12 GVP 32 bit ram boards in the $200000+ range were still being
seen as 16 bit boards, fine tuning of the testing routine
seems to have cured this slight problem. GVP timings were
made more accurate. Maximum memory could also return invalid
results if you had ram boards in the $200000 area.
V2.11 Fast memory free was slightly inaccurate in V2.10, now fixed.
Added Memory Address location of Kickstart.
V2.10 By popular demand printing ability during screen display or
instead of (-p). Better 32 bit ram testing with support for
recognising and displaying 32 bit ram boards within the 8 meg
area ($200000-$A00000).
V2.01 Added ability to recognise 32 bit ram and is displayed in
all areas if found.
V2.00 Fixed 2 'enforcer' hits. Although enforcer hits will still
occur at memory location $2c. This vector is temporarily
modified in order to trap the exception when testing for a
MMU.
V1.99 Included the clock check for the A3000.
V1.98 RAMSPEED VS CHIP was incorrect and could give wrong results.
CHIPRAM VS A3000 was totally wrong and and results were
garbage. Both these new routines should be much better.
USAGE
-----
FROM CLI
--------
run SysInfo <switch>
<switch> -p Print info to standard redirection output
instead of custom screen.
EG. SysInfo >prt: -p (for printer)
SysInfo -p (for CLI window)
-t Mainly for internal, time testing use.
See 'NOTE ON SPEED COMPARISONS' below.
The custom screen will still open to keep
the timing accurate, but no information will
be printed to it. On completion the screen
will close and the information printed on the
CLI window or redirected output.
NOTE 'run' should always be used from a CLI launch as the program
is much more stable and accurate. I have no idea why, it
just is. Anyone explain this?
FROM WORKBENCH
--------------
Double click the SysInfo icon. After the speed comparisons
are complete, you will be able to access one of four gadgets
in the bottom right of the window. These are QUIT, DRIVES
AGAIN or PRINT.
QUIT Does just that, exits the program completely.
MEMORY Is explained below
BOARDS Is explained below.
DRIVES Is explained below.
SPEED Runs the speed comparisons and displays the result
accordingly. This can be selected as may times as you wish so
the results can be averaged. This now works differently than
older versions of SysInfo. Users of standard speed Amiga's
had to wait quit a long time before the other gadgets could
be accessed. This was a nuisance if you only required certain
info. This change has not affected the -p function in anyway.
PRINT Will open a window and prompt for a filename and an optional
heading string, This heading string will be printed at the
top of the page and can have a maximum of 100 characters.
Enter a path and filename to save to, or to choose the
default 'PRT:' for output to a printer just click the 'OK'
gadget. Printing will commence after the 'OK' gadget is
clicked.
DRIVES GADGET
-------------
When this gadget is clicked another window will open and
display a gadget for each floppy, hard or rad drive you have
connected to your Amiga. In the middle of the window you will
see Information on the paticular drive that has its gadget
highlighted. To select a particular drive, just click on its
gadget. To re-read the same drive, click in its gadget again
(useful for rereading a floppy when the disk has been
changed).
SCSI GADGET
-----------
NOTE This function may not work on some brands device
---- drivers as they may not support the required
commands. If this happens you may just see an
error message in the window for each device it
found that failed to respond to the direct scsi
command. Each device's unit number will still be
displayed at the start of each error string
under the 'ID'heading. In this case contact the
manufacturer of your hard disk controller and
enquire if they have an update that supports CBM's 'HD_SCSICMD' command and RigidDiskBlock
structure.
This gadget will be ghosted for drives that are obviously not
SCSI drives. The SCSI function will display info on all
drives that are operated through a single device driver,
there is no need to click the SCSI gadget for all drives,
unless some use a different device driver name as shown in
the 'drives window'. Select one of the drives and click the
SCSI gadget. A new window will open an attempt to read all
SCSI drives on LUN (Logical Unit Number) zero. If valid drive
is found, various information will be displayed. This
information consists of the drive 'ID', its 'TYPE',
the 'MANUFACTURER', 'MODEL', and 'VERSION'. Also displayed
is the number of blocks the drive has. The drive's ACTUAL
size is displayed and if the drive supports CBM's
RigidDiskBlock, the formatted size is also displayed beside
the actual size. This allows you to see if a larger drive
than you thought you had is in the computer. I have seen some
A2500's with a formatted size of 40MB that actually had
QUANTUM 52 Meg hard drive. If your drive's supplier has not
followed CBM's RigidDiskBlock then the formatted size will
not be displayed, but most user already know the size they
beleive is in the system. If these sizes are different then
your hard drive will require reformatting correctly. If the
'ACTUAL' size is smaller than your formatted size then you
will eventually have problems so your drive will still need
formatting correctly.
BOARDS GADGET
-------------
When this gadget is clicked another window will open and
display various information on any AutoConfig boards found in
the system. This information consists of the memory address
of where the board was configured, its size, and the type of
board. The types to date, can be ZORRO II or ZORRO III, any
others are not yet defined by Commodore and will be displayed
as UNDEFINED. The boards Product number, manufactures ID and
the serial number will also be displayed. If SysInfo
recognises the manufacturer of the card and or the product
itself it will display the names instead of the numbers.
Note that a standard A3000 has no AutoConfigure boards as
such, its extra hardware is known by the special Kickstart
files and its memory and hard drive are not AutoConfig.
A2000 users using zkick to load V2.0 will also notice that
their memory boards will not show in the AutoConfig list, as
they were actually configured by 1.3 and zkick patches them
in.
MEMORY GADGET
-------------
When this gadget is clicked another window will open and
display various information on any memory in the system. The
first section displayed will be the first memory section that
was configured by the system. At the bottom left of the
display are two gadgets, 'NEXT' and 'EXIT'. The next gadget
changes the display to show the next memory section, until no
more sections are found. At that time the window will close
and return to the next section. The exit gadget exits
immediately to the main screen.
SPEED COMPARISONS
-----------------
The A500 STANDARD comparison is against a PAL A500 totally
unexpanded (ie. no Fast Ram).
The B2000 EXTRA RAM comparison is against a PAL B2000 Rev 4.4
with a Microbotics 8-UP Fast Ram board.
The GVP A3001 comparison is against a B2000 Rev 4.4 with a
GVP A3001 acellerator card, using a clock speed of 28MHZ.
All caches and bursts on. The board also contained 4 megs of
32 bit wide, 80ns nibble mode ram.
The A2620 comparison is against a standard A2500 with a A2620
card running at 14.3MHZ. All caches and bursts on.
The A3000 25MHZ comparison is against a standard A3000/25MHZ
with 4 Megs of 1MX4 SCRAMS 32 bit wide, and 2 Megs of CHIP.
Caches and bursts on except Data Burst (default under V2.0
V37+). Ramsey mode was set at default, BURST ON and STATIC
COLUMN OFF.
The A3000 with the 68040 25MHZ board from Progressive
Peripherals & Software. Comparisons were calculated from the
'-t' information given to me over the phone by them. I hope
to have one of these boards soon to do some more testing on,
and I will give further info in later versions.
CIA TIMER TEST
--------------
This is a test of the speed accuracy of the CIA (A) timer
in the Amiga. I have recently had enquiries by users that
their Amigas were showing very slow or very fast speeds on
SysInfo. Investigation showed that their CIA's were very
inaccurate for various reasons. On normal use you may not
even notice that there is anything wrong. Symptoms can show
system clock running fast or slow, SysInfo type programs show
wrong results. A correctly working system will show 'PASSED'
beside the CIA ACCURACY string and '0' beside the TICKS PER
SECOND string else if there is a problem it will show the
number of ticks per second the inaccuracy is. Normally an
Amiga will supply 50 ticks per second
The most common cause I have seen for inaccuracy on a B2000
is a noisy power supply. This can be corrected by changing
J300 jumper (toward the rear right of the mother board (under
the power supply)) to connect to the right set of the three
pins. This will change the system tick to the VBLANK
connection and correct the inaccuracy.
FREE MEMORY
-----------
This shows the amount of free memory as if the program is not
running so may not be accurate to the byte, but is a very
close indication of the free pool.
The TOTAL MEMORY is the total amount of memory that the Exec
memory list reports. Tests have showed that this figure is
around 800 odd bytes short of actual. This is because the
amount of memory that exec takes itself never gets added to
this list.
RAM SPEED vs CHIP is a calculated performance test of your
CHIP RAM vs your PUBLIC RAM. The result is shown as a
percentage increase in the speed of the PUBLIC RAM. If no
FAST or SLOW ram is available then the result will be around
0%, and this figure can change depending on CHIP ram usage at
the time. This figure cannot be used as a speed comparison
between machines. For example the A3000 Chip ram is around
4.5 times the speed of an A2000's CHIP with a 68030 board
installed. Therefore the A3000's Fast ram will not show a
comparable increase to the A2000. It was mainly designed
to test the difference between fast ram cards or chips on
the same unit.
HARDWARE CLOCK only looks for the standard 2000, 500 or 3000
Hardware clock. It does not look for the multitude of
different clocks that were available for the 1000.
INTERNAL HARDWARE
-----------------
This shows internal harware as the program has found it.
ECS stands for ENHANCED CHIP SET. If Agnus or Denise show
this then they are the lastest custom chips. The number that
is shown in brackets is the actual chip number, this helps in
physical identification of the chips. The program is also
able to tell the difference between the 1MB & 2MB versions
of Super Agnus.
CPU's 68000, 68010, 68020, 68030 and 68040 are supported
and will be displayed if found. If Exec is incorrect then
it is modified to reflect the correct hardware
FPU's or Floating Point Units 68881 and 68882 and internal
68040 are supported and will be displayed if found. These
chips are also often referred to as maths co-processors.
Wether or not you have one is tested by the program, and Exec
changed if incorrect.
MMU's or Memory Management Units 68851 or the internal 68030
and 68040 are supported. These are actually tested for as
Exec does not carry this info. The 68451 never became very
popular so is not supported.
SPEED IN MHZ is a rough indication of the clock speed. This
is not totally accurate but is a good indication. It at least
allows you to know wether your system is 7MHZ, 16MHZ or 25MHZ
etc. All caches, bursts and copyback modes are temporarily
disabled during the test for greater stability, but this
should be transparent to the user. Clock Speed is normally
difficult to find out unless you take the unit apart and even
then is difficult. Fast ram must be available for this to be
anywhere near accurate, as the timing loops were all based on
machines with some Fast ram available. It is interesting
though to disable fast ram and see the performace drop in
this figure. This is not true for a 68000 based Amiga, the
program will take into account if no fast ram is available
and calculate accordingly.
WR.ALLOC or Write Allocation is only applicable to 68030 and
68040 processors. This shows if it is currently enabled or
disabled. When enabled (always in an A3000) the processor
updates the data cache on cachable writes.
COPYBACK is only applicable to the 68040. This shows if it is
currently enabled or disabled.
INS. CACHE or Instruction Cache is applicable to 68020, 68030
and 68040 processors. This shows if it is currently enabled
or disabled. This bit can be manipulated with SetCpu.
INS. BURST or Instruction Burst is applicable to 68020, 68030
and 68040 processors. This shows if it is currently enabled
or disabled. This bit can be manipulated with SetCpu.
DAT. CACHE or Data Cache is only applicable to 68030 and
68040 processors. This shows if it is currently enabled or
disabled. This bit can be manipulated with SetCpu.
DAT. BURST or Data Burst is only applicable to 68030 and
68040 processors. This shows if it is currently enabled or
disabled. This bit can be manipulated with SetCpu.
THINGS I WOULD LIKE TO ADD
--------------------------
1. Ability to check Amiga model (A1000, A500, A2000) is it
possible? It is on the A3000 because of its specific
hardware.
2. Ability to split the XT and AT bridgeboard. Anyone know
how?
3. Your ideas!
Any suggestions preferably in assembler but I can translate
C if I have to.
NOTE ON SPEED COMPARISONS
-------------------------
If you have any of the machines listed above, or even a totally
different configuration, run the program with -t option (eg. sysinfo
-t ) then phone me with the resulting numbers that will be printed to
the screen.
My phone number or fax is at the top of this file.
Happy Computing
Nic Wilson
Amiga, AutoConfig and AutoCongure are TradeMarks of Commodore Business Machines.