Aminet 1 (Walnut Creek)

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ Aminet 1 (Walnut Creek) / Aminet - June 1993 [Walnut Creek].iso / aminet / util / moni / sysinfo3_15.lha / SysInfo.Doc < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1993-02-20 | 32KB | 623 lines

SysInfo ------- written in Assembler with Macro68 V3.170 ---------------------------------------- Written by Nic Wilson Nic Wilson Software P.O. Box 1164 <---***PLEASE NOTE NEW ADDRESS*** Toowoomba Queensland 4350 Phone +61 76 358539 A/H Voice only Within Australia (076) 358539 EMAIL cbmaus!cbmozq!wilson!nicw@cbmvax.commodore.com CBMNET nicw@wilson.adsp.sub.org PAYMENT ------- Even though you may have paid for the disk this program came on, you have not paid for SysInfo. Please read the donation and distribution headings below. * * * DONATIONS * * * --------------------- A dontation of $20.00 American or $25.00 Australian is suggested, but if you cannot afford that, any amount will be gratefully accepted. Overseas users, please DO NOT send personal or EuroChecks. They are very difficult and expensive to cash. Please send an overseas bank draft in Australian Dollars drawn on any Australian bank. Your local bank should be able to help you with this. Any cash currency is acceptable as it is very easy to convert to Australian. The following credit cards are accepted. OVERSEAS -> MASTERCARD, VISA. AUSTRALIA -> BANKCARD, MASTERCARD, VISA. These cards can be accepted by mail, email or phone. Confidentiality is guaranteed. If using credit card, please include the card number, the expiry date and the name as it appears on the card. Donations in the form of software or hardware is also acceptable. I write many reviews here in Australia and quite often give free plugs to companies that have been generous enough to donate to my work. * * THANK-YOU * * Three companies deserve a special thank-you for their generosity. A big thank-you to Progressive Peripherals and Software and NewTek Corp. A thank-you to "Amiga Format" Magasine for being the only magasine so far to send me a donation for using the program on their cover disk. DISTRIBUTION CONDITIONS ----------------------- This program may be distributed freely on the condition that no profit is gained from its distribution. An amount of the average retail price of a single 3.5 inch DSDD disk is permitted for a copying fee. THIS PROGRAM MAY NOT BE CRUNCHED IN AN EXECUTABLE FORM, DOING SO IS CONSIDERED A VIOLATION OF THIS AGREEMENT. LHARC'ING IN AN ARCHIVAL FORM IS PERMITTED FOR DISTRIBUTION. 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. This doc file and the icons must accompany the program unmodified. Additional document files of your own may accompany the program. Results from different Amiga configurations may be distributed along with the SysInfo files. The executable must not be modified in any way, except as specified. 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 -------------------- I would appreciate being informed that you are distributing it although this is not a requirement, but a donation is requested. 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. See 'sysinfo.developer.doc' for more information. INTRODUCTION ------------ This program was originally written due to the lack of such a program on the Amiga. Since that time the response has been terrific. SysInfo is now even more powerful and has become a standard on the Amiga. 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 donation. ********************************* 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 Kickstart V2.04 or greater, but remember that you have a Setpatch also, so use it! 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 feedback 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. Some other programs sacrifice accuracy by speeding the tests up, SysInfo takes time but does an intensive test. At times it also disables multitasking and may blank the mouse pointer. It will return to multitasking when finished and the mouse pointer will return. TIMINGS FROM ONE VERSION OF SYSINFO TO THE NEXT ----------------------------------------------- If you are wondering how come SysInfo may give different results from one version to the next, this is because it is under constant revision and accuracy is improved with each version as YOU THE USER gives me feedback on varying models and configurations. This feedback is very important, as it allows SysInfo to grow into the most powerful and accurate System information program and an invaluable tool for the Amiga. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank-you to Warren Weber for the Scroll routine in the library display area. 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) SysInfo >filename -p (for a file) -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. FROM WORKBENCH -------------- Double click the SysInfo icon. After launch and various information has been printed to the window you will be able to access one of the eight gadgets on the main window. These are QUIT, MEMORY, BOARDS, DRIVES, SPEED, PRINT, LIBRARIES, and EXPAND. At the top of the window in the SOFTWARE section, there is a proportional gadget for scrolling the software display. The 'DHRY' gadget is not used at this time and is planned for different tests in future versions. GADGETS ------- LIBRARY This gadget toggles the SOFTWARE display between libraries, device drivers, resources, ports and Tasks. The proportional gadget to the right of the display allows you to scroll through the list if there is more that will fit on the screen at one time. EXPAND This gadget toggles between expand and 'SHRINK'. This allows the graph area to be expanded, using a smaller scale. This permits users of slower Amigas to more easily see the differences. The scales are 0 - 40 thousand dhrystones and 0 - 10 thousand dhrystones respectively. If one of the graphic bars is too large for display on the expanded scale, it will be shown as full size with a plus (+) sign on the very right of the display bar. DHRY At this point in time, this gadget does not function. I am planning different types of tests that will be available from this gadget. QUIT Does just that, exits the program completely. SPEED Runs the speed comparisons and displays the result accordingly. This can be selected as many times as you wish so the results can be averaged. 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 by clicking the 'OK' gadget. MEMORY Is explained below BOARDS Is explained below. 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 particular 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 re-reading a floppy after a disk change). SCSI GADGET ----------- NOTE This function may not work on some brands device ---- drivers and may possibly crash on others. This is due to the fact it 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 users 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. It is often the case that the ACTUAL will be 1MB larger than FORMATTED. This is normal and due to the fact that the chosen number of cylinder, heads etc, will hardly ever exactly match the total block available on the disk, and this remainder can somtimes show up on the ACTUAL display, if it is large enough. SPEED ----- This gadget will perform a 'read' speed test on the selected drive. It is very safe as it does not write at all. The result of the test is displayed on the last line. Timing for this test is done via timer.device for best accuracy. The test can be done on any drive in the gadget list. To test a particular drive, select its gadget and then click the 'SPEED' gadget. If a floppy is selected, and it does not have a disk in the drive, or the particular drive cannot be 'locked' for some reason, the SPEED gadget will be ghosted, and not selectable. The size and length of the test, depends on the partition or disk. The entire drive will be read, unless the partition is 15megs or greater, in those cases, 7 megs will will be read. I have found that reading more that this is not necessary as the results do not change significantly. This function has been tested all forms of drives on various Amigas, including the CDROM drive in the CDTV, and the IDE drive in the A600. 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 added to the system by this kickstart. 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 to the memory list. 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 main window. The exit gadget exits immediately to the main window. SPEED COMPARISONS ----------------- If SysInfo does not have a test that you would like to see, let me know and I will do my best to add it in for you. THE SPEED COMPARISON CODE HAS BEEN WRITTEN TO GIVE A FAIR INDICATION OF THE SPEED OF A PARTICULAR AMIGA. IT USES A COMBINATION OF ALL MOTOROLA INSTRUCTIONS TO BOTH REGISTERS AND MEMORY IN A PERCENTAGE THAT POPULAR AMIGA PROGRAMS AND COMPILERS HAVE USED. The A500 - A600 STD comparison is against a PAL A500 or A600 totally unexpanded or expanded to 1 Meg chip only (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 fitted with 80ns DRAMS. The A1200 68EC020 comparison is against a standard PAL A1200 as shipped from Commodore with cache enabled. The reason for the difference in speed to the A2500, is because the A1200 is shipped with CHIP ram only. There will be a significant speed increase when fast memory is added, especially 32 bit memory such as the Microbotics MBX 1200 board. The A2620 comparison is against a standard A2500 with a A2620 card running at 14.3 MHZ. All caches and bursts on. The A3000 25 MHZ comparison is against a standard PAL A3000/25 MHZ with 4 Megs of 1MX4 SCRAMS 80ns 32 bit wide, and 2 Megs of CHIP. Caches and Bursts on except Data Burst (default under V2.04 V37+). Ramsey mode was set at default, BURST ON and STATIC COLUMN OFF. The A4000/040 25MHZ is against a standard PAL A4000 with the standard configuration of 2 Meg Chip and 4 Meg Fast memory. All cache modes are at boot default under 68040.library 37.10 under AmigaDOS V3.00 - Kickstart 39.106, with setpatch 39.7 installed. CPU MIPS (Million Instructions per Second) This test calculation has been coded from all information I have been able to find to date. It seems quite debatable how this is supposed to be coded and I received different information from people. It does a very large loop performing a total of 4.25 million instructions ranging from general instructions, divide, multiply, logic shifts, rotations etc. I CANNOT AND DO NOT GUARANTEE ITS ACCURACY, except to say it is accurate to the point, it did do the number of instructions per second that it stated. Comments on this approach or a better one are most welcome. FPU MFLOPS (Million Floating Operations per Second) This test calculation was similar to the above one, in that information on the recognised way was very sketchy. If an Amiga does not have an FPU, N/A will be shown in this field as any performance test would be meaningless. The final code shows known boards to be at or around thier advertised speeds. It does a very large loop performing instructions that take an average number of clock cycles, times the loop then displays the result. I CANNOT AND DO NOT GUARANTEE ITS ACCURACY. If anyone has a better routine for this I would be very interested. This routine is not compatible with a 68881 on a 68000 system such as the Phoenix board and will show N/A. CACHE GADGETS ------------- These gadgets require AmigaDOS V2.0 or later, otherwise all the gadgets will be ghosted and unavailable. These are a group of six gadgets. Modes that are unavailable for the CPU type fitted in your Amiga, will be ghosted and not available. Clicking these gadgets changes the cache modes for the Instruction and Data caches of the CPU and allows you to compare the difference in speed with different cache settings. The 'ALL' toggle gadget (lower right side) inverts all settings from their current state and vice versa. Some cache manipulation will still be done automatically by the program for some tests (IE. MHZ test). Caches will always be enabled temporarily for test such as this, otherwise the results would be meaningless. ------------------------------------------------------- Remember that if you disable the caches and then exit the proram before enabling them again, they will still be off and you will need to re-enable them will the CPU command or such. ------------------------------------------------------- A4000 and other 68040 OWNERS NOTE --------------------------------- Under 37.10 and greater of 68040.library it is no longer possible to turn CopyBack off. If you click the gadget you will notice that the mode does not change. This is normal. However as CopyBack is a Data Cache mode, if the Data Cache is off, the CopyBack setting has no effect. INTERNAL HARDWARE ----------------- This shows internal harware as the program has found it. HARDWARE CLOCK only looks for the standard A500, A600, A2000, A3000, CDTV or fully compatible hardware clock. It does not look for the multitude of different clocks that were available for the 1000 or other models. DMA/Gfx This will show all current versions of Agnus, and the newer Alice chip. ECS stands for ENHANCED CHIP SET. The program is also able to tell the difference between the 1MB & 2MB versions of Super Agnus. Many users have queried the possibility of doing this and they beleive I check the memory amount. The 1MB and the 2MB Agnus chips do not have any different signature registers so in order to tell them apart I used a trick of the hardware design. The 1MB Agnus only decodes the first meg space and so the second meg space has a 'ghost' image of the first. A 2MB Agnus does decode the second meg space so no ghost image is present. SysInfo checks for this and reports the difference. This theory I beleive is quite sound, and has been tested on many 1MB and 2MB Amiga's. MODE This shows the current display MODE. Under kickstart 1.2 or 1.3 this will show either PAL or NTSC. Under version 2.04+ is has the capability of showing all the various modes. This will mainly be the case using the '-p' option of SysInfo. This is because of the custom screen that SysInfo uses will normally force the display back to your default mode, except for AGA Amigas that have 'Promotion' enabled, this will usually force the Sysinfo screen to DBLPAL or DBLNTSC mode. This will be reflected in the screen display. CPU's 68000, 68010, 68020, 68030 and 68040 are supported and will be displayed if found. If Exec is incorrect then a window will open, and ask you if you want exec to be updated to reflect the correct hardware. This is mainly for Kickstart 1.3, as it is not normally aware of later processors. 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 if Exec is incorrect a window will open and ask you if you want Exec corrected. If a 68040 is found and a CORRECTLY working 68882 emulation then the FPU string will show '68040+68882'. If yours does not show this then contact your board manufacturer and ask for a copy of Commodore's V37.4 (or greater) 68040 software. 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. It will also reflect if the MMU is currently enabled or disabled. VBR is the Vector Base Register. This is applicable to all processors except the 68000. The VBR contains the base address of the exception vector table in memory. The displacement of an exception vector is added to the value in this register to access the vector table. On the 68000 processor the vector table is always located at address zero. 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 if your system is 7MHZ, 16MHZ or 25MHZ etc. All caches, bursts and copyback modes are temporarily enabled during the test for greater stability, but this should be transparent to the user and they will be returned to their original state after the tests. 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. For a 68000 based Amiga, the program will take into account if no fast ram is available and calculate the correct speed accordingly. HORIZ Khz This is the horizontal scan frequency of the current display. Early kickstarts will show 15.60 for PAL and 15.72 for NTSC. Kickstart 2.04 or above will show correctly the horizontal frequency. This will normally only show other than PAL or NTSC when using the '-p' option, because of the reasons specified in the MODE description above. ECLOCK Hz is the frequency of the EClock, as reflected in execbase. This clock is used for the CIA chips. CBACK is an abbreviation for CopyBack. It is only applicable to the 68040 currently. This shows if it is enabled or disabled. This is rather a difficult mode, because with the MMU it is possible that it may be enabled somewhere within the memory map and not others. The test here uses the OS function to determine if it is enabled. CopyBack is a cache mode of the CPU and when enabled, the CPU only updates the cache on writes and memory is only updated when absolutely necessary or it is forced to do so. INS. CACHE or Instruction Cache is applicable to 68020, 68030 and 68040 processors. This shows if it is currently enabled or disabled. INS. BURST or Instruction Burst is applicable to 68030 processor. This shows if it is currently enabled or disabled. It will however show 'ON' if a 68040 is detected due to requests I received from certain 68040 board manufacturers. DAT. CACHE or Data Cache is only applicable to 68030 and 68040 processors. This shows if it is currently enabled or disabled. DAT. BURST or Data Burst is only applicable to 68030 processor. This shows if it is currently enabled or disabled. It will however show 'ON' if a 68040 is detected due to requests I received from certain 68040 board manufacturers. ************************************************************** THE NEXT TWO ARE FOR THE A3000 ONLY. AS I HAVE NOT YET FOUND A 100% GUARANTEED WAY TO DETERMINE AN A3000, ON SOME NON-A3000 AMIGAS THIS INFORMATION MAY BE DISPLAYED BUT WILL BE USELESS, AT THE PRESENT TIME THE PROGRAM LOOKS FOR A WORKING RAMSEY CHIP IN ORDER TO IDENTIFY A 3000 SERIES AMIGA, BUT THIS REQUIRES FURTHER TESTING BEFORE I CAN GUARANTEE ITS ACCURACY. ************************************************************** RAMSEY ver is only applicable to the A3000 series of computers. It will display the revision value of this chip in hexadecimal. Currently there are only two I know of. Type '$D' is the standard A3000 Ramsey and has a bug that causes failure of the 'Page Detect Mode', the other is '$E'. This is a newer chip that has this bug corrected. GARY ver is only applicable to the A3000 series of computers, even though other Amigas do have a GARY chip, I do not know of a way to identify them as I do for the A3000 series. It will show the revision number in hexadecimal. Currently there are only two I know of, type '$0' is the standard A3000 chip and type '$90' which is a newer chip. CARD SLOT is the new "Flash Ram" card slot in the A600. SysInfo looks for the slot and displays if an A600 style card slot is found. SUPPLY Hz is the frequency of the power supply as relected in Execbase. This will normally be either 50 or 60 Hz. VERT Hz is the frequency of the Vertical Frames. All modes are catered for, including the programmable ones of the later custom chips. See the decription for MODE above for restrictions on these displays. THINGS I WOULD LIKE TO ADD -------------------------- 1. I have been receiving conflicting reports about the AT/XT bridgeboards. Could you please check your card and let me know how the current routine works. I have added the new 386SX brideboard, but is also untested. Please report, preferably by email. 3. Your ideas! If you supply suggestions in code form, I would prefer assembler, but I can translate C or other language if I must. 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 or email with the resulting numbers that will be printed to the screen. My phone number, email address or fax is at the top of this file. Happy Computing Nic Wilson Amiga, AutoConfig, AutoConfigure and Intuition are TradeMarks of Commodore Amiga Inc. MC68000, MC68010, MC68020, MC68EC020, MC68030, MC68040 are trademarks of Motorola Ltd. Macro68 is a trademark of DigiSoft.