Re: Booting on RiscPC

On Sun, 24 Mar 2019, Mike Pumford wrote:
> There is someone out there other than me still using this. :)
>
> My subscription to the acorn32 mailing list seems to have lapsed but I 
> happened to spot the message while browsing the list archives.
>> 
>> Using boot32 fails with Unknown OS_ReadSysInfo call because it's
>> relying on a post-3.7 subcall. I'll look at fixing this.
>> 
> I cheated and commented out the call to get a working version. Its only 
> needed on Kinetic RiscPCs to detect Kinetic setups.

It's fixed in -current now.

>> I tried using BtNetBSD (the BASIC version) by altering the
>> penultimate line in fastboot from:
>> 
>> 
>> Set Alias$RunNetBSD <BtNetBSD$Dir>.boot32 <NetBSD$Kernel>
>> <NetBSD$BootOptions>
>> 
>> to: Set Alias$RunNetBSD <BtNetBSD$Dir>.BtNetBSD <NetBSD$Kernel>
>> <NetBSD$BootOptions>
>> 
> Let me know if you need working versions as I've still got them download from 
> ages ago.
>
>> I needed to alter the screen mode down to something like 800x600 to
>> not get out-of-sync garbase on the screen (I use a custom 1680x1050
>> mode). I also needed to comment out line 1740 ("SYS "OS_FSControl",
>> 23) because of a non-responding IDE disk on my Simtec podule. The
>> instkern kernel loaded, however it panicked early on:
>> 
>> panic: kernel diagnostic assertion "(ph->ph_nmissing <
>> pp->pr_itemsperpage)" failed: file "/usr/src/sys/kern/subr_pool.c",
>> line 893 pool_get: kmem-32: page empty
>> 
> That's new. I clearly need to try an updated current kernel (I'm assuming 
> this is current).
>
>> The keyboard is also completely messed up at this point, so you can't
>> type anything.
>> 
>> 
>> I tried other kernel versions with slightly more success, but
>> keyboard problems have been around for a long time:
>> 
>> netbsd-8 - booted, but
>> no keyboard -current - booted, but panic after:
>> 
>> [   1.0000200] clock: hz=100 stathz = 0 profhz = 0 [   1.0000200]
>> WARNING: delay(10000) took 0us [ 4294967296.7] panic: divide by 0
>> 
> I've attached the patches I used to get things booted. I did try to get them 
> applied (at least to current) but nobody seemed to be paying attention. This 
> implements a working delay (which solves the keyboard problem) and also fixes 
> a bug that causes the kernel to panic when it takes its first interrupt.

I've tried your patches on up to date -current and netbsd-8. Immediately 
after the DRAM and VRAM blocks are displayed, it stops:
Stopped in pid 0.1 (system) at  netbsd:cpu_Debugger+0x4:  mov pc, r14

Keyboard is still messed up, so cannot type anything useful.

> Let me know if you want install kernels with the patches applied. I do have 
> 8.0-STABLE builds from yesterday.

I'm curious, yes, to see if your kernels are any different.

-- 
Stephen