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Date: Wed, 7 Jul 93 03:15:30 +0200
From: tor@tss.no (Tor Arntsen)
Message-Id: <9307070115.AA06457@unas.tss.no>
To: riscy@pyramid.com
Subject: My updated wishlist
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My updated wishlist:

* SCSI on board.  I wouldn't mind if it was fast and wide, but that's not
  mandatory for me.  The 53c90 is 8-bit, the 53cf90 is 8-bit fast, the 53cf94 
  can do fast and wide; is this the correct interpretation of the previous
  postings?

* Ethernet on board if feasible.  
  BTW, my ISA 3c503/16 could achieve > 800KB/sec with net-1, less with net-2.
  Donald Becker reported more than 900KB/sec with the WD8013.  Both the 3c503 
  and the 8013 are NatSemi DP8390 based.
  So ISA boards can give quite good performance, BUT also *sucks* CPU!
  (runninng ttcp.)  Would it be efficient to have some DMA-based Ethernet? 
  If so, I guess it should not be put into any ISA bus slot then, or what?
  (If it's on board, and if it's only one interface type, I would prefer
  BNC for thinnet.  If you want good arguments, see Donald Beckers' 
  'Ethercard hardware tutorial' posted now and then at c.o.l :-)

* 8-bit Video on board (actually, I would love to be able to expand to
  24-bit, but that's not mandatory).  Sounds better to me to have a quite 
  'dumb' version than using any 'intelligent' device (i.e. no 34010, certainly 
  no VGA).
  I think at least 1152x900 (the Sun 'standard') is needed.  Working with an 
  A4 (letter) document is not easy even with 1024x768.  I worked for one year
  with a very ergonomically Tandberg X-terminal with an extremely good display,
  but, alas, 1024x768 is just too cramped.  So now I'm sitting here with a
  cheap, not very good focused, not too sharp MAG monitor.  I get flashbacks
  when I move my eyes.  Real bad compared to the Tandberg.  *But* it can do
  1152x900 with XFree86...
  And 1152x900x8 just fits in 1MB (VRAM, of course).

* Up to 64MB RAM at *minimum*.  Someone mentioned that code for MIPS is about
  40% bigger than code for i486.  So compared to that those 64MB is only like
  about 45MB on a PC, *which is not much*.  I'm using 16MB + 32MB swap at the
  moment..  In my opinion the max. limit should be about twice the size that
  one *thinks* one will ever need.  If it ends up with 64MB max, ok.  I hope
  I can live with that.  Please take my comments as just.. comments.  I don't 
  want to start any war about this.. :-)

* RTclock on board, of course

* A couple of serial ports, one for the mouse and one extra.  It seems like
  the opinions goes toward an (ISA) expansion bus, so more ports could be
  added later.

* CPU: r3k is ok, the r4k2 would be even better of course.
  I'm a bit worried about not having the possibility of adding an external
  cache.  It's expensive to put in that fast static RAM of course, but it's
  my impression that a good fast big cache could even outweigh using slower
  DRAM (not that I'm suggesting using slow DRAM :-).
  I must admit that I know next to nothing about the complexity level
  of designing in an external cache, can anyone say something about chips,
  cost, and design complexity level?

* Timers.. I may have missed something, but don't we need some kind of 
  timers to provide interrupts for the time slicing etc.  I would also like 
  to play around with some high-definition timers (what about RT-Linux..).
  Are there any built-in timers able to provide interrupts inside one of 
  those smart I/O chips already mentioned?

* Keyboard controller on board, for IBM style keyboards (could it handle
  PS/2 style keyboards?)

* Bus: I don't care actually, with the above I don't need much more.  
  The only thing I could think of would be a floppy interface, to boot my 
  root/boot floppy when I screwed up something.

That's all I can think of.

Tor
(tor@tss.no - on vacation mid-July to mid-August, not reading mails then)

 
From caret@pyramid.com  Ukn Jul  7 00:51:20 1993
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From: caret@pyramid.com (Neil Russell)
Message-Id: <9307070449.AA14490@sword.eng.pyramid.com>
Subject: Re: My updated wishlist
To: riscy@pyramid.com
Date: Tue, 6 Jul 93 21:49:56 PDT
In-Reply-To: <9307070115.AA06457@unas.tss.no>; from "Tor Arntsen" at Jul 7, 93 3:15 am
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> * Ethernet on board if feasible.  
>   BTW, my ISA 3c503/16 could achieve > 800KB/sec with net-1, less with net-2.
>   Donald Becker reported more than 900KB/sec with the WD8013.  Both the 3c503 
>   and the 8013 are NatSemi DP8390 based.
>   So ISA boards can give quite good performance, BUT also *sucks* CPU!
>   (runninng ttcp.)  Would it be efficient to have some DMA-based Ethernet? 
>   If so, I guess it should not be put into any ISA bus slot then, or what?
>   (If it's on board, and if it's only one interface type, I would prefer
>   BNC for thinnet.  If you want good arguments, see Donald Beckers' 
>   'Ethercard hardware tutorial' posted now and then at c.o.l :-)

It may be possible to get the IDT 3730 to do DMA to an ISA peripheral
even though the peripheral doesn't have DMA support.  Thus, we may be
able to get this type of performance without tying up the CPU any more
than it would be if the Ethernet were on the MB.

> * CPU: r3k is ok, the r4k2 would be even better of course.
>   I'm a bit worried about not having the possibility of adding an external
>   cache.  It's expensive to put in that fast static RAM of course, but it's
>   my impression that a good fast big cache could even outweigh using slower
>   DRAM (not that I'm suggesting using slow DRAM :-).
>   I must admit that I know next to nothing about the complexity level
>   of designing in an external cache, can anyone say something about chips,
>   cost, and design complexity level?

To get real performance, a CPUs cache must have close ties to the MMU.
On the R3000A, the cache controller is part of the CPU and presents
a 'tag' bus in addition to the regular address and data busses.  So
to attach cache to the R3000, you just add chips.  Unfortunately, you
also have to add a read buffer and some write buffers to assist the
pipeline.  On the 3051 series, all this is in the CPU chip.  To reduce
pin count (thus making a cheaper package), the tag bus is not available
outside the chip.  So we would have to implement a cache controller
outside.  The put this another way, it costs too much.

> * Timers.. I may have missed something, but don't we need some kind of 
>   timers to provide interrupts for the time slicing etc.  I would also like 
>   to play around with some high-definition timers (what about RT-Linux..).
>   Are there any built-in timers able to provide interrupts inside one of 
>   those smart I/O chips already mentioned?

Both the 3730 (peripheral controller) and the 3041 (I/O co-processor)
have a 24-bit timer which can be clocked quite fast.  So both peripheral
controller solutions that I proposed would cover that.

> * Keyboard controller on board, for IBM style keyboards (could it handle
>   PS/2 style keyboards?)

AT style keyboards will be supported.  If PS/2 ones are not compatible,
they will not work.  I can see no motivating reason why the should be.


-- 
Neil Russell		(The wizard from OZ)
Pyramid Technology			Email:  caret@pyramid.com
3860 N. First Street			Voice:  (408) 428-7302
San Jose, CA 95134-1702			  FAX:  (408) 428-8845

 
From drew@kinglear.cs.Colorado.EDU  Ukn Jul  7 00:57:55 1993
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To: riscy@pyramid.com
Subject: Re: My updated wishlist 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 06 Jul 1993 21:49:56 PDT."
             <9307070449.AA14490@sword.eng.pyramid.com> 
Date: Tue, 06 Jul 1993 22:56:35 -0600
From: Drew Eckhardt <drew@kinglear.cs.Colorado.EDU>
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    > * Keyboard controller on board, for IBM style keyboards (could it handle
    >   PS/2 style keyboards?)
    
    AT style keyboards will be supported.  If PS/2 ones are not compatible,
    they will not work.  I can see no motivating reason why the should be.

PS/2 keyboards are hardware/software compatable, the connector is the 
only difference (6 pin mini-DIN vs. 5 pin DIN) and commercial adapter 
cables are available.

--------


 
From andy@resi.waldorf-gmbh.de  Ukn Jul  7 06:16:06 1993
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From: Andreas Busse <andy@resi.waldorf-gmbh.de>
Date: Wed, 7 Jul 93 12:05:14 +0200
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To: riscy@pyramid.com
Subject: Re:  My updated wishlist
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> [lots of stuff I agree with deleted]
> * Timers.. I may have missed something, but don't we need some kind of 
>  timers to provide interrupts for the time slicing etc.  I would also like 
>  to play around with some high-definition timers (what about RT-Linux..).
>  Are there any built-in timers able to provide interrupts inside one of 
>  those smart I/O chips already mentioned?

Timers would be quiet good, at least one dumb MC6840 (slow 8bit stuff)
for 70 cents or so. Perhaps a cheap Intel chip would also be ok.
The 3730 contains two counters, one 9bit "timeout counter" intended
to be used for signaling bus and dma cycle timeout and one 27bit counter for
general purpose. I don't know if the RTclock can generate interupts for
scheduling and so on, but if this is the case we would already have one
free timer.

> * Keyboard controller on board, for IBM style keyboards (could it handle
>  PS/2 style keyboards?)

I don't see any reason why we should support PS/2 style keyboards.

> * Bus: I don't care actually, with the above I don't need much more.  
>   The only thing I could think of would be a floppy interface, to boot my 
>   root/boot floppy when I screwed up something.

Someone mentioned that we could use a $15 ISA multi-I/O card with
integrated floppy controller. I can't imagine that we could make it cheaper.
One point more for ISA.

Andy

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Waldorf Electronics GmbH, R&D Department
c/o Andreas Busse
Neustrasse 9-12
D-5481 Waldorf
Phone:  +49 (0)2636-80294
Fax:    +49 (0)2636-80188
e-mail: andy@resi.waldorf-gmbh.de
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From tor@tss.no  Ukn Jul  7 06:52:08 1993
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From: tor@tss.no (Tor Arntsen)
Date: Wed, 7 Jul 1993 12:45:01 +0200
In-Reply-To: Andreas Busse <andy@resi.waldorf-gmbh.de> "Re: My updated wishlist" (Jul 7, 12:05pm)
X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.2.5 10/14/92)
To: riscy@pyramid.com
Subject: Re: My updated wishlist
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On Jul 7, 12:05pm, Andreas Busse wrote:
[...]
>> * Keyboard controller on board, for IBM style keyboards (could it handle
>>  PS/2 style keyboards?)
>
>I don't see any reason why we should support PS/2 style keyboards.

Many non-PC vendors have started to use PS/2 compatible keyboards for
different purposes, as an example I could take the very ergonomic keyboard
of a Tandberg X-terminal and use it instead of the bad keyboard supplied with 
a 700RX HP X-terminal.

BUT PS/2 vs AT is not a problem anyway, as someone has already confirmed
that the only difference is the connector.  Just to replace or use an adapter.


Tor
(tor@tss.no, on vacation mid-July to mid-August)


 
From rohrer@fncrd8.fnal.gov  Ukn Jul  7 10:55:28 1993
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From: rohrer@fncrd8.fnal.gov (Keith Rohrer)
Message-Id: <9307071450.AA11953@fncrdg.fnal.gov>
Subject: Re: My updated wishlist
To: riscy@pyramid.com
Date: Wed, 7 Jul 1993 07:50:39 -0800 (PDT)
In-Reply-To: <9307070115.AA06457@unas.tss.no> from "Tor Arntsen" at Jul 7, 93 03:15:30 am
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For one, I can't afford this new board and 32+ megs of ram...

	Keith


 
