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  • Helios Server On Faster Processors

    From TangentDelta@21:1/5 to All on Thu Apr 15 08:22:10 2021
    I have a B004-compatible ISA board with a T805 and T400 on it, each with 4MB of RAM. I have the board in a PICMG industrial system with a 166MHz Pentium running MS-DOS. The Inmos Occam toolset works perfectly fine and I can run the examples on the
    Transputers. The Mandelbrot set demo also works great. I've been trying to get Helios working and haven't had much success with that.

    Helios will run if I put the board into my junky 386 box and use the same HOST.CON and initrc files as the Pentium box. On this Pentium machine, it gets hung up waiting for the synchronization byte from the Helios kernel. I've followed Axel's excellent
    guide on his website, and have tried using HBOOT.EXE to pre-load the Transputer's memory (with the correct HOST.CON modifications to prevent it from attempting to boot the Transputer itself), but it always gets stuck waiting for sync.

    I've heard from a number of people that they run Helios just fine on machines that are faster than this one, which makes me think there might be some kind of hardware incompatibility? That'd be odd though, since all of the example programs that I've
    compiled and run in D7305A have worked flawlessly. If anyone has any insight into this problem, I'd like to hear it.

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  • From Damien Carlier@21:1/5 to All on Thu Apr 15 12:27:11 2021
    Hi, strange indeed, the Axel guide works perfectly and I for my part use a B004 or a B008 on a P2 450MHz without any problems.

    I assume that you are on your helios config file, as well as your map file? That your map file has been edited with a linux line feed and not microsoft? If everything is OK on the side, the HBOOT file was written by Michael from transputer.net it will
    surely be the most able to answer

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  • From TangentDelta@21:1/5 to All on Thu Apr 15 15:36:31 2021
    I haven't messed with the map file at all since I'm just trying to get one Transputer running with Helios right now. I'll have to check initrc to make sure the line endings are correct in there. I did the major editing on a Linux PC and just copied it
    over. I do all of the small editing with a port of vi for MS-DOS, so I'd imagine it's fine.

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  • From axel@geekdot.com@21:1/5 to c64...@gmail.com on Fri Apr 16 05:02:50 2021
    c64...@gmail.com schrieb am Donnerstag, 15. April 2021 um 17:22:11 UTC+2:
    I have a B004-compatible ISA board with a T805 and T400 on it, each with 4MB of RAM. I have the board in a PICMG industrial system with a 166MHz Pentium running MS-DOS. The Inmos Occam toolset works perfectly fine and I can run the examples on the
    Transputers. The Mandelbrot set demo also works great. I've been trying to get Helios working and haven't had much success with that.

    Helios will run if I put the board into my junky 386 box and use the same HOST.CON and initrc files as the Pentium box. On this Pentium machine, it gets hung up waiting for the synchronization byte from the Helios kernel.

    Oh, sorry - I've overlooked your mail you've sent 3 days ago.

    The reason is simple: The Helios server (i.e. the Tool running on the Host) on DOS is, well, not the brightest candle on the cake.
    There are some timing/delay loops in there (read: For-Next) which are simply too fast on some high-end beasts like your P166 :-P
    So try setting the BOGOMIPS in the host.con to something like 9999999 - this might help.
    Yes, rewriting those loops is on my list... probably on position #342 :-D

    @Damien: I like the term "Axel Guide" ;-)

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  • From TangentDelta@21:1/5 to ax...@geekdot.com on Fri Apr 16 06:18:13 2021
    On Friday, April 16, 2021 at 8:02:51 AM UTC-4, ax...@geekdot.com wrote:
    Oh, sorry - I've overlooked your mail you've sent 3 days ago.

    That's alright. I figured you were busy with work or something :P

    I've tried running a tool called Bremze that uses interrupts to slow the machine down. Didn't have much luck with that. I have the BOGOMIPS line set to 9999999, but have also tried setting it to the actual BOGOMIPS of this processor for the heck of it.

    Here is a paste of my HOST.CON file: https://pastebin.com/C4K43DAg

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  • From TangentDelta@21:1/5 to All on Fri Apr 16 07:06:13 2021
    Oh, I forgot to add. If I uncomment the lines

    no_reset_target
    no_bootstrap
    no_image
    no_check_processor

    and then run `HBOOT.EXE [paths to bootloader and nucleus]` followed by `SERVER.EXE -A`, the server still says "Resetting link and processor.". Is this intended?

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  • From TangentDelta@21:1/5 to All on Sat Apr 17 12:55:07 2021
    Out of curiosity, I deleted my HELIOS13 directory and copied a fresh copy directly to the disk using another computer. I made the same edits that I had before and now it's working correctly. I must have had a corrupted file somewhere and not known about
    it.

    Thank you for all of the help. I should have tried such a basic troubleshooting step first before bothering everyone with a post on the mailing list.

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  • From axel@geekdot.com@21:1/5 to c64...@gmail.com on Sun Apr 18 23:03:00 2021
    c64...@gmail.com schrieb am Samstag, 17. April 2021 um 21:55:08 UTC+2:
    Thank you for all of the help. I should have tried such a basic troubleshooting step first before bothering everyone with a post on the mailing list.

    IMHO, that's what newsgroups are for... if there were answers only, it would be called an Oracle ;-)

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