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haiqu

Senior Member

Joined: 30/07/2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 152

Posted: 07:46am 16 Aug 2011

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unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes, fsck, fsck, fsck, umount, sleep

Bob

Regular Member

Joined: 11/08/2011
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 41

Posted: 10:06am 16 Aug 2011

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Hi haiqu,

That's impressive!
Congratulations on Unix-ifying MM ;-)

All you need now is to create the root filesystem and add a user, and compile those programmes for sd0! That should be the easy part...
No chance of swap though :-(

Regards,
Bob

Bob Dalley
http://www.m0rjd.co.uk

sparkey

Senior Member

Joined: 15/06/2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 819

Posted: 02:25pm 16 Aug 2011

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i told people this was going to be big ....you carn`t stop progress...regards sparkey

technicians do it with least resistance

Bob

Regular Member

Joined: 11/08/2011
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 41

Posted: 03:08pm 16 Aug 2011

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haiqu said

Rob,
It looks as if you resolved the serial port 'problem'.
Which way did you do it?

Regards,
Bob

Bob Dalley
http://www.m0rjd.co.uk

haiqu

Senior Member

Joined: 30/07/2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 152

Posted: 08:10am 17 Aug 2011

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Hi Guys,

I do actually have a root file system on the card but there's some minor bug preventing it from loading. I strapped a MAX232 to the audio port (UART4) to get the console happening Bob, as described earlier. Quick-n-easy.

This is a port of RetroBSD which was announced only 10 days before I had it working. The author Serge Vakulenko worked on it for a year in his spare time and posted the announcement on 6 Aug to the MIPS Developer website. He's running a UBW32 board but he has a Maximite on order too. :-)

RetroBSD is based on 2.11BSD which was the last of the series for the PDP-11 architecture, and thus supports CPUs without a memory management unit. It has a standard Posix API including multitasking (fork, exec, wait4 etc) and on the PIC32 supports up to 6 consoles (multiuser).

So far I have the whole build done, comms working to the board and blinkenlights. The SD card is seen but can't be read, as mentioned above. I'll be implementing the reset switch tonight and working on the SD card problem some more. Serge just added z-modem protocol to the svn repository for file transfers.

It's a beautiful thang!

Rob
Edited by haiqu 2011-08-18

unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes, fsck, fsck, fsck, umount, sleep

Bob

Regular Member

Joined: 11/08/2011
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 41

Posted: 09:11am 17 Aug 2011

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haiqu said Hi Guys,

I do actually have a root file system on the card but there's some minor bug preventing it from loading. I strapped a MAX232 to the audio port (UART4) to get the console happening Bob, as described earlier. Quick-n-easy.

I imagined you would implement async comms in that way. Great!

Quote

This is a port of RetroBSD which was announced only 10 days before I had it working. The author Serge Vakulenko worked on it for a year in his spare time and posted the announcement on 6 Aug to the MIPS Developer website. He's running a UBW32 board but he has a Maximite on order too. :-)

RetroBSD is based on 2.11BSD which was the last of the series for the PDP-11 architecture, and thus supports CPUs without a memory management unit. It has a standard Posix API including multitasking (fork, exec, wait4 etc) and on the PIC32 supports up to 6 consoles (multiuser).

So far I have the whole build done, comms working to the board and blinkenlights. The SD card is seen but can't be read, as mentioned above. I'll be implementing the reset switch tonight and working on the SD card problem some more. Serge just added z-modem protocol to the svn repository for file transfers.

It's a beautiful thang!

Rob

Good luck with the filesystem interface, Rob. It will work soon. Just keep up with the caffeine <g>

Regards,
Bob

Bob Dalley
http://www.m0rjd.co.uk

wizard

Newbie

Joined: 29/07/2011
Location: United States
Posts: 38

Posted: 01:40pm 17 Aug 2011

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Hi All,

Really cool.

I pulled the svn OK.

But the pages retrobsd.sf.net and virtualmips.sf.net.
seem to be unavailable from here?

Could someone post a mirror.

Thanks,
Wiz

wizard

Newbie

Joined: 29/07/2011
Location: United States
Posts: 38

Posted: 01:44pm 17 Aug 2011

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I misspoke :(.

its code.google.com/p/retrobsd and virtualmips that I
can't get to load. Or get to the docs.

Perhaps too many other folks and google.com has gotten tired?

Wiz

wizard

Newbie

Joined: 29/07/2011
Location: United States
Posts: 38

Posted: 01:59pm 17 Aug 2011

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Guess I spoke too soon.

They seem to be coming up now!

Sorry for noise!

haiqu

Senior Member

Joined: 30/07/2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 152

Posted: 03:26pm 18 Aug 2011

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If you're checking out sources, use -r224 because there's a bug introduced after that which causes a memory fault in the MIPS emulator, and probably the hardware too although I haven't tried that.

Also note that my changes to make it run on the Maximite have been sent to Serge but he hasn't yet added them. Meanwhile, you can run it in the emulator and have fun, or load it into a UBW32 if you happen to have one handy.

Rob
Edited by haiqu 2011-08-20

unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes, fsck, fsck, fsck, umount, sleep

haiqu

Senior Member

Joined: 30/07/2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 152

Posted: 04:55pm 18 Aug 2011

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Bob said Good luck with the filesystem interface, Rob. It will work soon. Just keep up with the caffeine <g>

Regards,
Bob

Copious amounts of caffeine *are* being consumed, and much midnight oil burned.

Rob
Edited by haiqu 2011-08-20

unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes, fsck, fsck, fsck, umount, sleep

haiqu

Senior Member

Joined: 30/07/2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 152

Posted: 09:37am 19 Aug 2011

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Current sources at -r229 now include my changes and previous warnings about memory faults can be ignored. Still no SD card though ... mutter, mutter.

Rob

unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes, fsck, fsck, fsck, umount, sleep

haiqu

Senior Member

Joined: 30/07/2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 152

Posted: 09:38am 19 Aug 2011

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We're getting there.

unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes, fsck, fsck, fsck, umount, sleep

pito
Newbie

Joined: 09/06/2011
Location:
Posts: 25

Posted: 10:10am 19 Aug 2011

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Hi guys,
if in doubt move to:

www.retrobsd.org

Regards,
Pito

haiqu

Senior Member

Joined: 30/07/2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 152

Posted: 10:46am 19 Aug 2011

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Hi Pito,

Nice to see you found the Maximite forum. I got it working at last!!

Woo-hoo!!!!

Rob

unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes, fsck, fsck, fsck, umount, sleep

vasi

Guru

Joined: 23/03/2007
Location: Romania
Posts: 1697

Posted: 12:18pm 19 Aug 2011

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Congratulations Rob!!!

Vasi

Edit:
PIC32 have DMA? If you extend the RAM then it will be more than usable.Edited by vasi 2011-08-20

Hobbit name: Togo Toadfoot of Frogmorton
Elvish name: Mablung Miriel
Beyound Arduino Lang

pito
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Joined: 09/06/2011
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Posts: 25

Posted: 04:49pm 19 Aug 2011

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Hi Rob, congratulation with retrobsd!
Hopefuly the discussions and experience sharings will start on the retrobsd.org..
BTW, I joined Maximites 2 months earlier than you (;-))!!
PS: E0 is dedicated to AUX LED, so therefore comes your trouble with it..
PitoEdited by pito 2011-08-21

haiqu

Senior Member

Joined: 30/07/2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 152

Posted: 05:29pm 19 Aug 2011

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Vasi, AFAIK memory expansion on the PIC32 is impossible unless you're talking about serial flash boot or something. But even with the kernel loaded there's still 96k available, should be plenty! See my sig below...

pito, E0 is SD card select on Maximite, no Aux LED present.

Rob
Edited by haiqu 2011-08-21

unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes, fsck, fsck, fsck, umount, sleep

haiqu

Senior Member

Joined: 30/07/2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 152

Posted: 05:32pm 19 Aug 2011

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pito: And maybe you joined Maximite earlier, but I was posting on retrobsd.org first! Hehehe
Edited by haiqu 2011-08-21

unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes, fsck, fsck, fsck, umount, sleep

haiqu

Senior Member

Joined: 30/07/2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 152

Posted: 06:13pm 19 Aug 2011

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Vasi: Sorry, forgot to mention ... there's also a 2Mb virtual memory swapfile (expandable to any size that will fit on the SD card) so memory really isn't an issue.

Rob

unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes, fsck, fsck, fsck, umount, sleep

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