Re: PCI

> From: "Heredity Choice" <stork@qnet.com>
>
> > First thing is to get VSTa current with all those PCI systems--before ISA
> > disappears and VSTa can't be run on modern systems!

From what I've seen of PCI, the IDE hard disk and VGA video will
always be where they are. Keyboard and floppy won't move for many
decades. However, the network cards are moving to PCI and bus
mastering, and using them is what you lose by not having PCI.

> I understand the difficulty with adding PCI to VSTa is the BIOS of the Intel
> platform having been written for a macrokernel. WindowsNT (pardon the
> obscenity) supports PCI on a microkernel. If you throw enough code at the
> problem, you can do anything.
>
> Would the PowerPC G4 or the AlphaPC provide a friendlier platform for a PCI
> enabled VSTa?

I looked at the FreeBSD and Linux PCI manager code and from them
wrote my own. There isn't that much to it. My code (also) walks
the buses and adapters and functions looking for something.
Devices register their manufactorer ID and product number and are
called back at the right moment. It is enough to init a 3Com 3C905B
NIC card.

My code assumes CPU addr == bus address, which is only true for
Intel PCI systems. Not true for PowerPC and Alpha.

This code runs inside a protected mode system (not enough code to
call it an OS, yet). It's a school project, and I use the UIUC
BOOT.COM program (thanx to Brian S.). If people are interested I
can separate out the code. Right now is buried inside a tarball.

> Paul Smith

============
 brian witt (SJ2C6) bwitt@arch.sel.sony.com
 Sony US Research, Distributed Systems Lab, USA 408-955-3021
      "Capitalism has taken over at the expense of democracy."
Received on Wed Dec 22 00:00:26 1999