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[Unmoderated] ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ?ANN.lu
Posted on 08-Jul-2004 06:47 GMT by brotheris140 comments
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Here's the summary of the last posts from hot topic. It may finaly put some dots on I's. Up to now we have heared a lot of small bits from variuos parties and finaly we can put the puzzle together. Read more about it. I'll play Amon_Re of the past:

It all started when Chris Hogdes started explaining few things (in this thread and @226 comment).

During DMA transfers, the ArticiaS does not flag accessed memory as "dirty", therefore the CPU does not automatically know, that it has to update/flush its caches

Later (@ comment 247, 248 and others) Bernie Meyer explained how such a lack of feature (or call it a bug) affects stability, performance and may cause data corruption even in AmigaOS-like enviroment while using CachePreDMA()/CachePostDMA().

And then we discover quotes from ArticiaS documentation:
"The snoop cycle is used to probe the primary and secondary cache for updated data when the PCI accesses DRAM. This is done to maintain data coherency between the Floating Buffer, DRAM and both caches. The Articia S performs the Snoop cycle. When there is a snoop hit on a modified cache line in either level one or two cache, the contents are written back directly to the Floating Buffer. A PCI Bus master can subsequently later on fetch the data directly from the Floating Buffer. The Floating Buffer is flushed back to DRAM during a PCI write cycle. The corresponding line in level one or level two cache is thus invalidated. Snoops are hidden, meaning the CPU can continue its current data access without being interrupted while the Articia S simultaneously queries both caches."

You can find similar information using google cache. It seems like some people lied. Is lack of Cache Coherency a bug or a feature (it was advertised that there is Cache Coherency, so it had to work) ? We may now put this case to rest.

ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 101 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by Johan Rönnblom on 10-Jul-2004 15:15 GMT
In reply to Comment 96 (Sammy Nordström):
Sammy, since you're obviously not able to dispute my arguments with a
successful outcome, I take it that you agree with me that the ArticiaS
is broken, then? After all, this is your own criteria - and I've met
it.



As for this part:
> You're asking me to tell me how you should prove me your theory,
> while I don't think your theory is possible to prove to begin with
> since I don't think it's true.

Exactly. I don't think your theory is true. I've told you how to prove
it anyway: Produce a working driver.

I also don't think that horses can fly. But I know how this could be
proven: Show me a flying horse!

I also don't think that the moon is made of cheese. But: Send a
spaceship to the moon and bring back a part of it, and if it tastes
like cheese, I'll agree that I was wrong about that.

You don't think the ArticiaS is broken? Fine. But if it was, how would
you prove it?


As for the court analogy, well you're dead wrong this time I'm afraid.
Lots of people are being put on trial even though there's no case at
all, and most of them oppose this by pointing out evidence that could
have been brought out against them if they were guilty, but which have
not been brought out.
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 102 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by Janne on 11-Jul-2004 07:46 GMT
In reply to Comment 97 (Sammy Nordström):
>No, you have facts proving certain circumstances, but not the cause for those
>circumstances. You are making use of those facts for specualtions that goes
>way beyond what we know as a matter of fact, that's all. But then, you're
>free to *prove* me wrong anytime.

I guess, if you wish to continue with this court analogy (which I find a bit melodramatic but gladly play along :-), what Johan has is circumstantial evidence.

- To date, and this is more than two year old chip, we have no fully working DMA hard-disk driver in the public for Articia S.

That is certainly circumstantial evidence, not a smoking gun or an eye-witness. I think we both agree on that. Probably not enough to convict a murderer beyond "reasonable doubt", right? How about coupled with other testimony? We have differing eye-witness accounts:

- bPlan engineers saying it is broken and making an expensive switch-over
- AFAIK Tratech/Barbie engineers saying it is broken, canceling product
- Eyetech/MAI saying it is not broken, continuing with their product

I guess, in a court of law, it would come down to a jury deciding who to trust. They have the so far indisputable circumstantial evidence mentioned above, and they have these eye-witnesses saying different things.

And I guess that is the way many things unfold in life as well. The facts that you, Sammy, so eagerly are asking and looking for, very often are not so clear. There are many things you would consider fact but someone else might still dispute them. Both might have evidence. Funny thing is, this is the whole meaning of science - we think we know something, yet science spends a lot of its time trying to prove the current science wrong and redefine our understanding of the universe. And obviously, so it should be. So, really, who to trust?

I don't think Johan's question to you is all that unreasonable. Nor do I think his stance is. Once a working driver is out there and independently verified, we at least know the chip can be made to work (whether there are defects or not). If this, for one reason or another, never happens, or some people still have issues with the driver and many do not, we may never really know for sure.

Personally I think a working Linux driver should be a requirement as well (considering the chip's/board's target market), but that's just my opinion.

I guess Johan's question (or mine at least) is: Will you, if things remain even a tad bit unclear (e.g. as long as one party out there claims otherwise), always consider the chip defect-free, or is there some limit? How much time, how many people, what kind of evidence (or who specifically) would it take for you to believe otherwise or at least believe in the possibility of it?

And yes, Sammy, I must agree with those who think you degenerate threads with meaningless word games. Not so much your message, but the volume of it.
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 103 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by Sammy Nordström on 11-Jul-2004 09:17 GMT
In reply to Comment 102 (Janne):
Here's the deal in a short summary:

Eyetech has released an early production run of their computer hardware product called "AmigaOne", targeted mostly at software developers since the end user version of the OS it was made for is not available yet. It is also available for those wanting to run Linux on it, but they have made it perfectly clear that they will not provide any support for Linux and if you're looking for a fully functional and ready-to-go system, they recommend that you buy an AmigaOne with AmigaOS4 once AmigaOS4 has been officially released for normal end users.

Considering the above circumstances, I really don't see why a problem with DMA under Linux would neccessarily be a problem caused by a fault in the hardware rather than Linux itself. Johan is repeatingly claiming that it is a problem with the hardware but fails to prove it. It is also quite obvious that Johan has a motive for making it look like it is a fault of the hardware even if it's not true. That goes for the claims from bPlan as well, BTW.

For this reason and all the other circumstances above, I will not give Johan's claims any form of credibility until he is able to actually prove it. That includes not encouraging these pointless arguments by responding to his request for criterions of what it would take to give his claims more credibility since that in itself would be giving his claims more credibility than it deserves.

As for your circumstancial "evidence":

>To date, and this is more than two year old chip, we have no fully working DMA
>hard-disk driver in the public for Articia S.

To date, and this is more than two year old hardware, we still have no fully working *operating system*. I mean, there still is no PPC native graphic drivers available as well and that has nothing to do with the hardware design of the AmigaOne. I'm sorry but what you just said means exactly nothing for the issue at hand.

> bPlan engineers saying it is broken and making an expensive switch-over

Yet another empty claim from a rather unbiased source(TM).

> AFAIK Tratech/Barbie engineers saying it is broken, canceling product

Never heard of that one before. I know they cancelled their product, but I have seriously never heard that it would be because of the Articia S chipset. I would appreciate if you have something to back this up, I would be very interested to see under what circumstances this claim was made. I mean, wasn't the guy behind it rather mad at the Eyetech/Amiga/Hyperion trio for the AmigaOS4 licensing scheme? I have a vague memory of him showing up on the ANN.lu forums telling us about how he was expecting Hyperion to support his hardware on an unconditional basis, or maybe I'm just mixing things up here.

Anyway, I still don't see anything about these circumstances that would be enough for a case. Unless you do get some real evidence, let's just wait until AmigaOS4 is released as a final and complete version. Is *that* really so hard?
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 104 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by brotheris on 11-Jul-2004 09:42 GMT
In reply to Comment 103 (Sammy Nordström):
I really don't see why a problem with DMA under Linux would neccessarily be a problem caused by a fault in the hardware rather than Linux itself

ArticiaS docs clame that there is cache coherency, but now you see that there isn't one (because it's not reliable).

<Tratech>
Never heard of that one before

There were posts on ANN where we could see engineers explanation that there is a problem, but he was attacked heavily by MAI on this and backed out completely (he mentioned, that he had developed a fix and MAI wanted to force him to give that fix to them). As ANN search is 'borken', I can't provide you a link. Someone has better searchable ANN mirror, maybe those who have access will give you this link. But I know you will find explanations for everything :-)
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 105 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by Johan Rönnblom on 11-Jul-2004 09:49 GMT
In reply to Comment 103 (Sammy Nordström):
Sammy, I don't think OS4 will ever be released for the A1 as a "final
and complete version", as I don't think it can be complete without
working DMA support, and I don't consider it to be complete without
that.

So, what you're asking me for is to wait forever, which is very hard
indeed.


But - all I'm saying is that people shouldn't buy an A1 if they expect
working DMA, unless someone shows that the DMA actually works. Since
you expect this to be proven "soon", do you have a problem with this
recommendation?
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 106 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by Sammy Nordström on 11-Jul-2004 10:19 GMT
In reply to Comment 104 (brotheris):
>(he mentioned, that he had developed a fix and MAI wanted to force him to give
>that fix to them)

Sounds just like bPlan and their April "fix", doesn't it? You know, I really don't understand this "your hardware is broken and I have a fix, but I'm not going to let you or anyone else see what it does" -attitude. It all sounds like a load of crap to me. I mean, if there really is such fault in the hardware, why not help MAI solve it? Wouldn't it benefit both the chipset provider and the hardware manufacturer if they would help each other? Making public statements about flaws of their chipset provider's product while at the same time refusing to help the provider find the problem and fix it sounds very much like they already decided to not have them as their chipset provider anymore. Using simple logic, there must have been something else that is the real cause for why Tratech decided to drop development and bPlan decided to switch chipset provider.
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 107 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by Sammy Nordström on 11-Jul-2004 10:43 GMT
In reply to Comment 105 (Johan Rönnblom):
>But - all I'm saying is that people shouldn't buy an A1 if they expect
>working DMA, unless someone shows that the DMA actually works. Since
>you expect this to be proven "soon", do you have a problem with this
>recommendation?

First of all, you are not the one to turn to for recommendations about the AmigaOne to begin with, period. You do realize that, right?

Second of all, I have not made any mention of within which time period the AmigaOS4 is going to be released in it's final end user version. I'm just saying that either you wait, find another way to prove your theory or simply keep your theories to yourself. The choice is yours, just stop making these claims without facts to back it up.

Thirdly, I have a problem with your "recommendation" since you are claiming that it is broken without facts that supports your claim. Or, are you saying that I'm free to go around making baseless claims about bugs in the design of the Pegasos in all Amiga and Pegasos related online websites and forums?

Since we don't have proof wether it is broken or not, why make a recommendation to begin with? How about if someone would ask you about wether your opinion about the AmigaOne, you simply answer; "don't ask me, I don't know" or "well, I prefer product x so I'm really not the right person to ask"? Really, why would you *have to* make any claims or recommendations when you obviously don't know anything of your theories as a matter of fact to begin with?
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 108 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by brotheris on 11-Jul-2004 14:02 GMT
In reply to Comment 106 (Sammy Nordström):
Sounds just like bPlan and their April "fix", doesn't it?

Yes.

You know, I really don't understand this "your hardware is broken and I have a fix, but I'm not going to let you or anyone else see what it does" -attitude

MAI denied (and still does) existence of the bug, threatened both parties about disclosure. Would you cooperate with people who abuse and backstab you ? You just stab their nose into shit (bplan released April) and throw them out.

And you are ignoring cache coherency.
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 109 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by Johan Rönnblom on 11-Jul-2004 15:04 GMT
In reply to Comment 107 (Sammy Nordström):
Sammy wrote:
> I mean, if there really is such fault in the hardware, why not help
> MAI solve it?

They offered to help, Gerald staid for weeks working with MAI's
engineers, but in the end MAI weren't very cooperative.

Let's face it Sammy, it's not like either bPlan or Tratech were
neutral on this issue. They *relied* on MAI. They had invested a lot
of time and effort in a product based on their chips. They didn't want
to find bugs in them. But despite this, they did - at great expense
for themselves.


> First of all, you are not the one to turn to for recommendations
> about the AmigaOne to begin with, period.

Why not? Who is the one to turn to, then?

I think I'm fairly neutral on this issue, let's compare the parties
involved:

Genesi: I've done business with them, or rather with Thendic France,
but unfortunately it turned sour, as after the bankruptcy I didn't get
the money we had agreed upon. I have never bought a product by them.
bPlan: No business or customer relation. Eyetech: No business or
customer relation. MAI: No business or customer relation.
Hyperion: I've bought a couple of their games.

So yes, I think I'm perfectly able to form my opinion solely on the
merits of the respective products here. Also, note that I'm not saying
that no one should buy an A1.



About making claims about bugs in the Pegasos computers, of course,
please go ahead. If you do know something, tell us. I'm quite sure
that most Pegasos users would be quite interested, at least that's my
experience thus far when problems have been found.
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 110 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by Sammy Nordström on 11-Jul-2004 15:51 GMT
In reply to Comment 108 (brotheris):
Of course they will insist on that their product is not broken until you prove it to them. It's no secret that bPlan refused to tell MAI what their April chip supposedly "fixed", which makes it quite difficult for MAI to figure out how to make a solution that would make the April redundant, don't you agree?

You know, when it comes to cooperating with third parties, bPlan/Genesi seems to have quite a few difficulties. MAI is just one out of several companies/organizations that they have failed to cooperate with. Amiga Inc., KMOS, Hyperion, Eyetech, Haage&Partner, the OpenBSD development team, ShopIP, etc. These are all companies/organizations that has miserably failed to cooperate with bPlan/Genesi, even resulted in pretty awful conflicts, which makes it difficult for me to believe bPlan/genesi when they claim that it would be the other ones that are impossible to cooperate with. It's simply not plausible anymore due to the constant re-occurences.
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 111 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by Sammy Nordström on 11-Jul-2004 16:02 GMT
In reply to Comment 108 (brotheris):
>And you are ignoring cache coherency.

Yes. For a simple reason; I don't even know what it is nor what it does. I'm the kind of guy that prefers to discuss things at a level that I'm able to comprehend about issues that I understand. The things I've discussed in here doesn't require that we go into those kind of technical details.
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 112 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by Sammy Nordström on 11-Jul-2004 16:20 GMT
In reply to Comment 109 (Johan Rönnblom):
>> I mean, if there really is such fault in the hardware, why not help
>> MAI solve it?
>
>They offered to help, Gerald staid for weeks working with MAI's
>engineers, but in the end MAI weren't very cooperative.

How do you know that it was MAI that refused to cooperate? AFAIK, bPlan refused to tell MAI what their "fix" (AKA "April") actually "fixed".

>Let's face it Sammy, it's not like either bPlan or Tratech were
>neutral on this issue. They *relied* on MAI. They had invested a lot
>of time and effort in a product based on their chips. They didn't want
>to find bugs in them. But despite this, they did - at great expense
>for themselves.

Instead of cooperating, bPlan/Genesi chose another provider and made use of the opportunity to slander their competitor's chipset provider in public. Hyperion and Eyetech decided to continue cooperating, and still do today, completely without conflicts. These are the facts known to us today.

>> First of all, you are not the one to turn to for recommendations
>> about the AmigaOne to begin with, period.
>
>Why not? Who is the one to turn to, then?

You're obviously biased. I mean, why would anyone ever insist on making claims and "recommendations" without facts to back it up if it's not because you have a motive for doing so?

>I think I'm fairly neutral on this issue, let's compare the parties
>involved:
>
>Genesi: I've done business with them, or rather with Thendic France,
>but unfortunately it turned sour, as after the bankruptcy I didn't get
>the money we had agreed upon. I have never bought a product by them.
>bPlan: No business or customer relation. Eyetech: No business or
>customer relation. MAI: No business or customer relation.
>Hyperion: I've bought a couple of their games.

You don't need to be neutral, you need to be *objective*. The difference is that instead of speculating, you stick to what we know as a matter of fact. If you do so, it's completely irrelevant if you're associated with one of the parties involved or not. See?

>So yes, I think I'm perfectly able to form my opinion solely on the
>merits of the respective products here. Also, note that I'm not saying
>that no one should buy an A1.

You are of course free to have any kind of opinion you like. However, making claims and accusations is a completely different story.

>About making claims about bugs in the Pegasos computers, of course,
>please go ahead. If you do know something, tell us. I'm quite sure
>that most Pegasos users would be quite interested, at least that's my
>experience thus far when problems have been found.

Well, I don't see the point in degrading myself to your level. That would make me quite a hypocrite, now wouldn't it?
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 113 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by Janne on 11-Jul-2004 17:11 GMT
In reply to Comment 103 (Sammy Nordström):
>>To date, and this is more than two year old chip, we have no fully working DMA
>>hard-disk driver in the public for Articia S.
>To date, and this is more than two year old hardware, we still have no fully
>working *operating system*.

Well, that is certainly one way of putting it. :) That is the very nature of circumstantial evidence, isn't it. You could also claim programmer incompentency, incomplete documentation or whatnot. But coupled with claims from other parties (namely bPlan, AFAIK Tratech too), and the fact that Linux runs quite nicely on a lot of hardware, things look a little more suspect.

Enough for you? Obviously not. Enought for suspicion? Sure, in my opinion.

Look, I would be personally very surprised - and have been saying this from the get go - if DMA doesn't turn up working on AmigaOne running AmigaOS 4.0 and later Linux too. They're bound to find a way sooner or later. Fault or peculiarity, usually there is a work-around and we may never really know is there a defect or is there not. I certainly hope they get it working.

However, what I find rather worrying is the way this issue is brushed under the carpet by some people. Obviously people running Linux on AmigaOne have been disappointed even very recently. Some thought the problem was already solved and obviously it is not. I would welcome a more open approach by everyone involved, even if the meant discussing unfortunare subjects in public.

>> bPlan engineers saying it is broken and making an expensive switch-over
>Yet another empty claim from a rather unbiased source(TM).

But was the source unbiased? If anything, they used to be biased towards MAI. They had a product that depended on it, for crying out loud. The switch-over must have been expensive as hell. I'm sure they didn't want to invent April and the rest. They felt like they had to, because they felt the chip didn't work. You can dismiss that all you want, but for me it is one testimony.

That, obviously, doesn't mean bPlan engineers couldn't have made a mistake. Sure, maybe they are wrong. But just dismissing them as biased makes no sense.

>> AFAIK Tratech/Barbie engineers saying it is broken, canceling product
>Never heard of that one before. I know they cancelled their product, but I >have seriously never heard that it would be because of the Articia S chipset. >I would appreciate if you have something to back this up,

Well, others covered that ground already and you found your way to dismiss it. For me, again, it adds more credibility to the argument that Articia S doesn't work as advertised.

But, again, I'd be surprised if they don't get DMA working just fine in the end. Work-arounds, using features or whatever.
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 114 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by brotheris on 11-Jul-2004 17:13 GMT
In reply to Comment 111 (Sammy Nordström):
It's no secret that bPlan refused to tell MAI what their April chip supposedly "fixed"

April is second step. First step was when Gerald went to MAI and pointed with finger to the problem. You remember how Eyetech got fixed first ArticiaS problem (patch wires) ? Later Gerald found more problems. That's how April was born. MAI didn't want to cooperate. It is all public knowledge.

Yes. For a simple reason; I don't even know what it is nor what it does

Then read Chris Hodges explanation, there is a link to it in the news item. Read it.
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 115 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 11-Jul-2004 17:28 GMT
In reply to Comment 111 (Sammy Nordström):
"I'm the kind of guy that prefers to discuss things at a level that I'm able to comprehend about issues that I understand."

When did you start?
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 116 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 12-Jul-2004 08:07 GMT
In reply to Comment 111 (Sammy Nordström):
Cache coherency is a property which means that software running on the CPU can pretend that the cache doesn't exist and it will just work. If you read values, and they happen to come from the cache, they will be the same values that you would have got from RAM, and if you write values and they're written to the cache, they will have the same effect as if they'd been written to RAM.

Without cache coherency all operations that might change the contents of RAM must be accompanied by countermeasures (in software) to ensure that the cached values are either discarded or properly updated. An example of such an operationg would be a DMA transfer, in which data is copied from say the hard disk controller into RAM, without direct supervision by the CPU.

So on Pentium PC, or an Apple Mac, or whatever your programs just do a DMA transfer, and when it finishes everything is hunky-dory, very fast and efficient. The work needed to update caches is done transparently in hardware.

But if cache coherency is not present, or if it's BROKEN then you need to manually invalidate the cache somehow, or ensure that the DMA transfer is done to and from (obviously slower) non-cached RAM. Bernie Meyer described these scenarios a year or so back and Ben Hermans agreed that they were what the OS4 team intended...

Problems of this sort aren't particularly rare, you might see one new design each year, especially in hardware not originally intended for high performance work, which has such a defect purely by accident. The defect is fatal to high performance work, without a workaround data is corrupted, and the workaround savages performance.
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 117 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 12-Jul-2004 15:58 GMT
In reply to Comment 105 (Johan Rönnblom):
> But - all I'm saying is that people shouldn't buy an A1 if they expect
>working DMA

so they should buy an A1 right away then? ;-)
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 118 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 12-Jul-2004 16:01 GMT
In reply to Comment 77 (Anonymous):
> The chip *IS* broken.

err, no. The chip doesnt follow your basic, normal PC design. The fact that its follows another paradigm methodology is the issue here.

READ the docs on how it works, and you'll understand.

bleating that its broken, cant do DMA , needs hardware fixes etc is just pure wrong. the more people that can get this basic fact into the heads, the better it will be for the whole of ann.lu in general - i'm sick of this stupid conversation appearing each bloody week!
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 119 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by brotheris on 12-Jul-2004 20:04 GMT
In reply to Comment 118 (Anonymous):
The chip doesnt follow your basic, normal PC design. The fact that its follows another paradigm methodology is the issue here.

But it was advertised with cache coherency.
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 120 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by Sammy Nordström on 12-Jul-2004 23:55 GMT
In reply to Comment 119 (brotheris):
Advertised? I don't know. However, according to this old document about the Aticia S from google's cahe, it has cache coherency but with a bit different flow.

Link

Quote:

"Articia’s Cache Coherency Flow

If snoop miss, the device needs to request data from DRAM again

Lower performance with extra request cycles when snoop miss

Higher performance with concurrent processing of snoop operation and DRAM data requesting"


You kow, I think mr Anonymous might actually be right for once.
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 121 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by Sammy Nordström on 13-Jul-2004 00:15 GMT
In reply to Comment 120 (Sammy Nordström):
This is also an interesting read where they explain how the Articia supports both software and hardware cache coherency and the advantages/disadvantages of both approaches.
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 122 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by Sammy Nordström on 13-Jul-2004 00:23 GMT
In reply to Comment 121 (Sammy Nordström):
If that link doesn't work, try this one instead.
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 123 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by brotheris on 13-Jul-2004 04:25 GMT
In reply to Comment 120 (Sammy Nordström):
Good luck to all A1 owners.
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 124 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by Sammy Nordström on 13-Jul-2004 18:19 GMT
In reply to Comment 123 (brotheris):
Why? Because of all they have to take from people like Johan Rönnblom? Because of these people's inability to refrain themselves from repeating that the AmigaOne is a broken product unless someone manages to "prove" otherwise?

Well, I agree that we will need quite alot of good luck if we ever intend to become a successful and viable computer platform again. However, these attacks from people with the Pegasos as their prefered choice of computer tells me that they need it even more.
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 125 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by Johan Rönnblom on 13-Jul-2004 19:20 GMT
In reply to Comment 111 (Sammy Nordström):
Sammy, if you agree yourself that you don't know what you're talking
about, why do you keep talking about it?

I know pretty well what the bug in Articia is. I don't know what gates
would need to be changed to fix it and I don't know the exact logical
mechanism of the failure, but I know how it can be reproduced, I know
the effects, I know the penalties associated. I've pointed to a lot of
facts in support for my stance. You're dismissing my arguments
(even claiming that I don't have any facts to base them on, quite
hilarious!) and yet you admit that you don't even understand the
issue.
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 126 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by Johan Rönnblom on 13-Jul-2004 19:22 GMT
In reply to Comment 118 (Anonymous):
Anonymous wrote:
> The chip doesn't follow your basic, normal PC design. The fact that
> its follows another paradigm methodology is the issue here.

Very funny. :-)

Unfortunately, postmodernism and computer technology doesn't match
very well. At the end the bit is either one or zero, no matter how you
try to argue your way around it. :-)
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 127 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 14-Jul-2004 20:17 GMT
In reply to Comment 124 (Sammy Nordström):
Why?

Because they need it while linux runs on their board and they really need it to get yet to be released AmigaOS4.
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 128 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by Sammy Nordström on 15-Jul-2004 03:32 GMT
In reply to Comment 126 (Johan Rönnblom):
>At the end the bit is either one or zero, no matter how you
>try to argue your way around it. :-)

In your world, perhaps. In my world, there is color TVs and we have no end to how many times you can divide 1 before the quotient becomes 0.
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 129 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by Sammy Nordström on 15-Jul-2004 03:41 GMT
In reply to Comment 127 (Anonymous):
Nice try, but no AmigaOne owner "needs" Linux anymore. They have the AmigaOS4 developer pre-release now. Besides, Eyetech made it perfectly clear that they don't have any support for Linux and that you're basicly buying the AmigaOne before AmigaOS4 has been released on your own risk. This is something all AmigaOne owners has been aware of right from the start, but most notably this is why there is noone but non-AmigaOne owners that is complaining about it.
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 130 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by Johan Rönnblom on 15-Jul-2004 09:13 GMT
In reply to Comment 129 (Sammy Nordström):
Sammy wrote:
> Johan Rönnblom wrote:
>> Unfortunately, postmodernism and computer technology doesn't match
>> very well. At the end the bit is either one or zero, no matter how
>> you try to argue your way around it.
>
> In your world, perhaps. In my world, there is color TVs and we have
> no end to how many times you can divide 1 before the quotient
> becomes 0.

Wow. Your colour TV is based on computer bits with values different
than 0 or 1? And you have a computer whose bits each can store any
division of 1? You're not trying to tell us that this computer would
be the AmigaOne and that this would explain what most people consider
to be garbled data, resulting from failed DMA transfers?
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 131 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by brotheris on 15-Jul-2004 10:19 GMT
In reply to Comment 129 (Sammy Nordström):
Nice try, but no AmigaOne owner "needs" Linux anymore.

Sure they do, if they don't have a pc around.

PS that was me in that message
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 132 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by Sammy Nordström on 15-Jul-2004 11:34 GMT
In reply to Comment 130 (Johan Rönnblom):
No. I'm saying that we're (or, atleast I am) living in an analogue world where almost nothing is 1 or 0 and most oftenly somewhere in between.

The color TV analogy was about the ability to display a complete spectrum of colors rather than just black and white, but you already knew that, didn't you?
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 133 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by Sammy Nordström on 15-Jul-2004 11:48 GMT
In reply to Comment 131 (brotheris):
For Linux, a PC will do the job so much cheaper, faster and better than an AmigaOne (or a Pegasos) ever will. This is no surprise to anyone and wether DMA works or not doesn't change this one bit. In fact, I'd say the virtual memory handling and overall performance of Windows slows down a PC by far more than any version of LinuxPPC running on a harddrive in PIO mode. For this reason, the DMA is simply not an issue if you just want to be able to make use of Linux for doing those everyday PC dominated tasks.
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 134 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by Johan Rönnblom on 15-Jul-2004 12:52 GMT
In reply to Comment 132 (Sammy Nordström):
Sammy: Yes, but unfortunately, postmodernism and *computer technology*
doesn't match very well. At the end, the bit is either one or zero, no
matter how you try to argue your way around it.
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 135 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by Sammy Nordström on 15-Jul-2004 19:12 GMT
In reply to Comment 134 (Johan Rönnblom):
Well, I got the impression that you were not just talking about computer bits...

Anyway, that still doesn't make sense. I mean, even if bits have to be either 1 or 0, the AmigaOne is a 32bit architecture based computer, including DMA transfers. That leaves us with atleast 4,294,967,295 different possibilities for each transfer rather than just 1 or 0, right?
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 136 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by Johan Rönnblom on 15-Jul-2004 19:44 GMT
In reply to Comment 135 (Sammy Nordström):
Wrong. It leaves us with 2 to the power of n possible transfers, where
n is the number of bits in the actual transfer. For a 4 gigabyte
transfer, which I guess is what you're trying (failing) to refer to,
the number of possibilities would be 2^1099511627776. Out of these
possibilities however, only one - exactly one - would be the right
one, and all the other ones would be wrong - quite wrong.
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 137 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by Sammy Nordström on 15-Jul-2004 21:30 GMT
In reply to Comment 136 (Johan Rönnblom):
I was thinking along the lines of each transfered group of 32bits...

However, you don't seem to get my point either. Who said anything about "right or wrong"? We were talking about binary digits, 1 and 0. None of them are "right" or "wrong" and both values are just as neccessary when transmitting data in binary form. The more bits you have, the more possibilities you have for storing and transmitting data. Each possible combination of bits is of course unique in itself, but that does still not mean that the other combinations are "wrong".

I guess what you meant to say was that it only takes one false bit in order to corrupt a file, while I'm trying to say that you need more than a single bit addressing mode in order to tell right from wrong. Oh well... It's bedtime now.
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 138 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by brotheris on 15-Jul-2004 21:43 GMT
In reply to Comment 133 (Sammy Nordström):
For Linux, a PC will do the job so much cheaper, faster and better than an AmigaOne

Are you sugesting to buy PC to those who have AmigaOne ?

I'd say the virtual memory handling and overall performance of Windows slows down a PC by far more than any version of LinuxPPC running on a harddrive in PIO mode

1. You have no clue
2. There is no rule to run Windows on x86 hardware.

I don't understand how you manage to amaze me everytime. You should run for president :-)
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 139 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by Johan Rönnblom on 15-Jul-2004 22:16 GMT
In reply to Comment 137 (Sammy Nordström):
Sammy, what I'm saying is that in every transfer, every possible
result except one is the wrong result. There's just no arguing about
that. There's no "other way of looking at it". There's no "not
perfect, but good enough". Either it's right - or it's wrong.
ArticiaS: mystery finaly solved ? : Comment 140 of 140ANN.lu
Posted by hammer on 18-Jul-2004 06:54 GMT
In reply to Comment 133 (Sammy Nordström):
>I'd say the virtual memory handling and overall performance of Windows slows
>down a PC by far more than any version of LinuxPPC running on a harddrive in PIO >mode
Any benchmarks with that statement?
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