NetNews Offline 2/NetNews Offline Volume 2.iso/news/comp/unix/amiga/320

Internet Message Format | 1996-08-06 | 8.5 KB

Path: rznews.rrze.uni-erlangen.de!news
From: [e-mail] (Roman Hodek)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.m68k,comp.unix.amiga
Subject: Announcement of Linux/68k Version 1.2.13pl6
Followup-To: comp.os.linux.m68k
Date: 02 Feb 1996 10:41:36 +0100
Organization: CSD, Univ. of Erlangen, Germany
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This announces the availability of version 1.2.13pl6 of Linux/68k. The
source and a precompiled kernel are in /pub/Linux/LOCAL/680x0 on
ftp.uni-erlangen.de and its mirrors.

Changes against the last version:

 - Fixed the catastrophic performance of reads from MS-DOS filesystems.
   The cause was an unfortunate combination of two parameters. For the
   Falcon, there was also a second problem with the changed block size
   (now default 512 bytes instead of 1024) and the DMA limit of
   Falcon-SCSI; see also "Atari SCSI" below. (myself)

 - In several places, NOP's were necessary after bus-error-protected
   write tests. Without the NOP, the CPU may already have executed the
   instruction following the write at the time the bus error
   "arrives"... even on the '030! This was also the cause for the
   probing failure of the Atari Lance driver ("data write fault at
   0xffe00000") (myself)

 - Cleaned up and corrected comments in serial.[ch]. (myself)

 - The handling of the "inverse" parameter was IMHO quite messed: It
   was (formerly) stored in the 'vc_decscnm' flag of the VC, that is
   also used for inverting the screen via VT100 codes. Ok, besides
   that that a terminal reset destroyed the inverting information from
   the framebuffer, this also has caused lots of trouble in the
   past... (not working at all, working the other way 'round). I think
   the correct place to handle inverting is in fbcon.c, which should
   be able to deal with whichever type of framebuffer it is built on.
   So I've shifted the "inverse" handling into the attr_* macros of
   fbcon.c. This also required using this macros everytime when
   applicable (which wasn't the case yet). Also a new macro
   attr_bgcol_ec for the background color of the erase char was
   necessary. Hope that fixes the inverse problem for all future :-)
   (myself)

 - Several new Zorro product codes ([e-mail])

 - Added support for kerneld from 1.3.x. With this, the kernel is now
   able to request modules it needs from a user process (kerneld).
   ([e-mail])

 - ELF: more aux infos on startup
   ([e-mail])

 - Fixed typos in <linux/ioctl.h>
   ([e-mail])

 - MM fix: don't (try to :-) free an invalid page (from 1.3.x)
   ([e-mail])

 - Fixes in the ATAFB_* defines of atafb.c
   ([e-mail] &
   [e-mail])

 - Minor Falcon framebuffer fix
   ([e-mail])

 - General SCSI: retry commands aborted by a reset, but not those that
   fail due to any other UNIT ATTENTION condition. Not retrying
   resetted commands could result in damaged disk data (!) in case of
   writes, and retrying all caused endless reset loops on not-present
   removable media. ([e-mail])

 - Atari SCSI driver changes:

    o Cleaned up and unified debug output format.
      ([e-mail])

    o Default CAN_QUEUE on the Falcon is now 8. CMD_PER_LUN is still
      1, since greater values cause still unsolved problems.

    o Revised the handling of the DMA-limit problem of Falcon-SCSI.
      The problem is that certain commands read an unknown number of
      bytes, and the transfer length is an allocation length in this
      case. Using DMA on those commands would cause bytes to be lost
      in the ST-DMA-FIFO. The decision whether to use DMA or not is
      now based on the command and device type, not only the transfer
      length anymore. Thus, 512 byte READ/WRITEs can use DMA now.
      (myself, with help by Michael Schmitz)

    o The Atari SCSI driver is able to use SCSI-2 tagged queuing now.
      Unfortunately, both my two disk don't support tagged queuing :-(
      so I couldn't test this. But it should work... I'm looking
      forward to hear about results! Since the feature is untested, it
      must be turned on manually for now (but may become default in
      future), see below.

    o Certain important options of the Atari SCSI driver can now be
      set without recompiling the kernel by a command line option:

        atascsi=<can_queue>,<cmd_per_lun>,<scat-gat>,<host-id>,<tagged>

      All values are numbers. Negative values mean "use default".
      Brief explanation (more in kernel-options.txt):

        can_queue: This many commands are queued in the low level
          driver. 1 turns off the internal SCSI multitasking. Higher
          values do not cost memory!
        cmd_per_lun: Maximum number of commands queued for one logical
          unit. In case of untagged operation, 2 is sufficient. SCSI
          memory requirements are mainly influenced by this parameter.
          The exact formula is complicated, but some hits:
            no scatter-gather  : cmp_per_lun * 232 bytes
            full scatter-gather: cmp_per_lun * 17 kbytes
        scat-gat: Maximum number of requests merged into one SCSI
          command (max. 255). 0 turns off scatter-gather. 0 is forced
          on a Falcon, since the ST-DMA is unable to handler SG :-(
        host-id: SCSI ID of the Atari host
        tagged: != 0 means use tagged queuing (on targets that support
          it...)

 - There's now a ramdisk device for slow Zorro II 16-bit RAM, e.g. for
   fast swapping or a /tmp filesystem. To use it, the memory must not
   be mapped as normal Linux system RAM (by using the -m switch for
   bootstrap). Unused Zorro II RAM is detected automatically and can
   then be accessed by the block device /dev/z2ram (major 60, minor
   0). In the final version of the driver, the major and minor numbers
   will probably change. 60/0 is just preliminary until the device is
   officially registered. I haven't received an answer from Peter
   Anvin (the Linux device registrar) for my registration request
   before this release.

   The original idea and driver is by [e-mail]-
   oldenburg.de, [e-mail] added the
   autodetection of unused Zorro II RAM (zorro_unused_z2ram), and I
   the access translation via the z2ram_map array.

 - Made the Amiga floppy driver more "system friendly" by replacing
   udelay()s with timers (CIA timer B). There is also a new ioctl to
   access the raw trackbuffer from user space.
   ([e-mail])

 - Updated Documentation/devices.txt to 1.3.57 level

 - Remove a bug with SCSI CD-ROMs reading TOC entries in LBA mode
   ([e-mail])

 - The GVP detection code checked only the Product ID and not the
   Manufacturer ID. This may give problems when the GVP code tries to
   get the GVP Extended Product Code for non-GVP boards with Product
   ID 0x0b (e.g. FastLane Z3 SCSI, Picasso II gfx, SD64 gfx). The IDs
   for the FastLane Z3 were incorrect. ([e-mail] and
   [e-mail])

 - arch/m68k/fpsp040/Makefile still lacked a `modules:' line
   ([e-mail])

 - The kernel should not try to core dump an inaccessable memory
   region (ELF format only) ([e-mail])

 - The Atari floppy driver did a cache push instead of a cache clear
   at one point. Shouldn't have done any harm, except on a '060 :-)
   ([e-mail])

 - Changed the Medusa/Afterburner distinction: Now the address
   0x00ff82fe is used, that gives a bus error on the Falcon, but is
   in the range where the Medusa always asserts DTACK. Hope that works
   now... This also caused a change in the Atari bootstrap, which
   version thus has been incremented to 1.6. But this is the only
   change... If you have neither a Medusa or an Afterburner, 1.5 will
   do the same. (myself)

Current Amiga bootstrap version: 2.2
Current Atari bootstrap version: 1.6 (changed)

The precompiled kernel contains both, Amiga and Atari support, so it
is very big. You propably want to compile your own kernel tailored to
your personal needs. Note also that there have been some problems
reported that such big kernels cannot be booted with Amiga Lilo.

Roman