Prometheus PCI supported by NetBSD

[strim]

Prometheus PCI bridge is now supported by the NetBSD operating system.

The driver allows using all PCI cards, which are supported by NetBSD machine-independent drivers. However, only non-DMA cards are usable, due to hardware limitations of Prometheus.

[Heiroglyph]

This is really awesome news, good work!

I'll have to get NetBSD running on my system soon.

[strim]

Unless you're an experienced NetBSD user, you may want to wait for the upcoming NetBSD 6 release. Now the driver is enabled in HEAD only (development branch of NetBSD, downloadable at http://releng.NetBSD.org/).

[billt]

However, only non-DMA cards are usable, due to hardware limitations of Prometheus.

I thought the DMA improvement was done long ago. Why was it never released?

[Zac67]

DMA support needs to activated by firmware update first. I contacted Michael Boehmer about that a couple of years ago but he doesn't seem to find the time...

[Robert17]

The Prometheus hasn't been on production for a long time, I suppose it's quite low on his list of things to do - I Remeber buying mine back in 2004 when they were just starting to sell out, I think Redrumloa had all the remaining stock, Ah memories :-)

[Crumb]

Prometheus PCI bridge is now supported by the NetBSD operating system.

The driver allows using all PCI cards, which are supported by NetBSD machine-independent drivers. However, only non-DMA cards are usable, due to hardware limitations of Prometheus.

I'm curious about what PCI graphic cards are supported.

[Crumb]

@billt

Will you release your Radeon driver for 68k classics?

[strim]

I'm curious about what PCI graphic cards are supported.

There are a few problems:
- Prometheus will not work with many modern cards because it is 5V-only (purely hardware issue, same problem as with older Mediators).
- NetBSD has drivers for 3Dfx Voodoo, ATI Radeon, ATI Rage 128, Permedia 2 and a couple of other cards, however most drivers rely on hardware initialization done by the firmware. Prometheus has no such firmware and Amiga is not able to execute the x86 BIOS on these cards, so drivers need to be extended to include such init code. Currently only Radeon driver is able to initialize the card, but I was not able to test it, because all my Radeons are 3.3V...
- Console handling code on Amiga port is a mess and someone needs to rewrite that to take advantage of modern cards.

[Crumb]

There are a few problems:
- Prometheus will not work with many modern cards because it is 5V-only (purely hardware issue, same problem as with older Mediators).

I have made a 3.3v adaptor using a pci riser so that's not a problem :-)

- NetBSD has drivers for 3Dfx Voodoo, ATI Radeon, ATI Rage 128, Permedia 2 and a couple of other cards, however most drivers rely on hardware initialization done by the firmware. Prometheus has no such firmware and Amiga is not able to execute the x86 BIOS on these cards, so drivers need to be extended to include such init code. Currently only Radeon driver is able to initialize the card, but I was not able to test it, because all my Radeons are 3.3V...

Unfortunately I haven't NetBSD installed to try out. Another solution to avoid writting specific support would be using:
a) a 8086 emulator for common x86 pci cards
b) a small forth interpreter for Mac pci cards

[billt]

@billt

Will you release your Radeon driver for 68k classics?

That's more a question for Joshua. I worked on things, but I don't have ownership of them. He'd have to check the paperwork about being allowed to or not, if our contracts with others might be a barrier to that. Also, we never made a 3.x driver. Though at the start 4.0 was 68k, I'm not sure how things would move over to 3.x. Might be easy, might be hard, I don't know.

[strim]

8086 emulator for common x86 pci cards

We already have an in-kernel x86 emulator, but it needs some (probably a lot) glue code to be able to run VGA BIOS.

[billt]

a) a 8086 emulator for common x86 pci cards

Early Radeon PCI cards wouldn't need an x86 emulator, we parsed the BIOS information tables directly per ATI's instructions. I believe their organization may have since changed, I'm not sure if things are the same now or not. I've heard mention of the Atom BIOS for Radeon now, but I don't know what that is or how it compares with early Radeons, and I don't remember what the newest Radeon we used in the classic PCI slot was. I had an original (befor enumber scheme) Radeon PCI and a 7000 I think. Most of what we used was AGP in the XEs, so I'm not sure if 8K or 9K BIOS series was the same either.

[Motormouth]

Has anyone tried using a 8029 based ethernet card with the prometheus and netbsd?
do the drivers work?

[strim]

Has anyone tried using a 8029 based ethernet card with the prometheus and netbsd?
do the drivers work?

Yes, the drivers for NE2000 cards (including RTL8029) work just fine with Prometheus.