Sick and tired of being a permanent beta-tester.

Sigh. I was really angry about this, but now I'm just disappointed.I'm just sick and tired of being a permanent beta-tester, or even alpha-tester, for `linux distributions' and much of the software they use. That was never terribly cool, but it was entirely acceptable up until about the turn of the century. But today there's no excuse anymore, and really only one way to describe it, and that's bullshit. It just doesn't seem to be getting better either, and if anything seems to be taking a turn for the worse in the last few years (Notwork Manager, Puss Audio, KDE 4, EXT4, anything from f.d.o, and so on).In the usual bullshit goal to add new features, stability and usability are being cast aside in the permanent quest for shiny. It certainly isn't confined to the linux world - just look at vista or apple - but they don't affect me personally so i couldn't care less.

The latest case to affect me being Grub 2 (apparently it's been in use for a while, but today is my first experience with it). I installed Ubuntu 9.10 on a fresh system, and it just doesn't boot. No problem ... go to rescue mode and fix it. Ahhh, what the feck is this mess? They've turned the boot-loader into a friggan `platform'. I don't want to have to learn a whole new over-engineered `script' format, together with each distribution's overly extensible frame-work designed to make it `usable' - for something that doesn't work anyway, and wont add anything most people need. It's just a bloody boot loader after-all. I know grub had some issues, but it just doesn't need a huge run-time extensible module system and sophisticated scripting platform to copy a disk image to ram and change the cpu's program counter to point to it. And particularly since they still seem to be short on developers - the last thing they need is to make it more complex.

It's a fundamental problem which starts at the project developers and filters it's way through to the distribution makers - but ultimately it is the distribution makers who are making the wrong choice. For starters, if basic things like sound, network, or booting don't work, they rightly bear the brunt of the anger. They are responsible for not just compiling a group of disparate projects and ensuring they work together, but that the application choices actually work. Distributions too often seem to confuse `stable' with `unmaintained' as well - the noisiest busiest projects get the attention, even if an alternative already does the same thing but isn't being actively developed any more since it doesn't need to be. And their choices can have pretty negative effects on projects; including a project 6 months before it is actually ready for production use can leave a sour taste in many users and tar it's image for years.

Project developers do need to take their share of the blame too. Sure nobody wants to maintain old software forever, but if they decide to drop support for and old product, they had better make sure the replacement works pretty well before pushing it for inclusion into distributions (or accept that nobody will use it till it does). Too often unwanted software is forced onto all users as a way to ensure it gets the testing required to make it a complete product, or worse, to ensure a competing project doesn't gain a footing (this is particularly problematic inside Linux where politics has started to blatantly undermine merit). As much as I dislike it, I realise this is part of Fedora's policy, so it can be excused to some extent, but most distributions actually promise a usable system from the start.

I guess i'll try Centos again - I tried it earlier but I couldn't get dual-screen working, and the network went all strange when I went to download decent drivers (the former not entirely their fault - bloody nvidia) ... hmm, maybe I shouldn't bother. And if that doesn't work easily I guess it'll have to be Fedora 10, or perhaps an earlier Ubuntu. At least they just worked as far as I need them (i.e. I don't need sound).

I suppose this strategy of avoiding the unstable shiny shit will work for a couple of years ... and hopefully by then the distributions will have got their fracken shit together, but somehow I just don't think that will happen.So you might be wondering - just what are you doing about it then, you whiney prick?

Well for starters, there just isn't anything I can do about Linux or it's distributions - they are too big with their own culture and momentum - and way too much politics. At the most I might be able to write a small application or work on a larger one with other people - but that wouldn't have any impact. Even when I was working on Evolution I didn't have full control of the project, which sometimes stopped me fixing some of the larger problems. And too often I find myself in the minority and don't have the skills to make my case effectively (for example it is pretty hard explaining something when you think it's so obvious it shouldn't need any).

I have poked around AROS a little bit, and Haiku - I dislike a lot of the way GNU/Linux works and I think the only practical solution to that is just a completely different OS. But so far I just haven't been able to get into them for whatever reason, and sometimes you just have to work to your own strengths - and perhaps working on such projects just isn't for me. I think Haiku probably has the most promise at this point, and I think AROS is a little too conservative in it's goals to ever be really useful for most people. I think that despite always screaming for them, projects like these secretly don't really want any new developers anyway - the developers are quite happy to make their little wins on a system completely of their own devising, without having to worry about the politics and simply the hassles of dealing with anyone new. And I think that's an entirely reasonable approach to take too if you're in it for the hobby - it's a hell of a lot more fun that way for starters, and why else would you be doing it?

PS The pile of dirt hasn't moved, but I did have a pretty good nap - although that'll probably just mean a late night!

Yawn

Ahah, well starting work again Monday. Sounds like it could be more interesting than I thought. But I guess time will tell. It might be keeping me pretty busy for the first few months too, but hopefully I still have time for the distractions offered by the beagleboard.

Rode to a meeting and rather than taking the train, which was probably a bit unwise. Apart from not preparing properly and meeting in a cycling jersey ... the weather was unexpectedly hot yesterday (the forecast the day before was about the same but it was no-where near as hot on the road). Every time I put a bit of oomph into it I started to feel a bit weird from over-heating, so had to take it pretty easy most of the way (only about 24km each way). Apart from not having ridden much lately and so not having a decent summer acclimatisation, I think it mostly just comes down to badly needing a haircut and getting a super-hot head from the bouffy hair. Well, having a dreadful hangover and 5 hours of sleep didn't help i'm sure.

The day before I got out and had a look for old computer stuff in pawnbroker shops. Didn't find much, although there were a couple of shops tucked away which had a fun range of old tools and other junk which might merit another visit one day. I did pick up an old keyboard that looked hardly used. I took all the keycaps off and gave them a good wash, and it looks almost new now (apart from putting the - and = on the wrong way around). Oh apart from that **it's just a keyboard** - none of those bullshit `multimedia' keys or even worse - windows keys! It's even got a steel base. It's the little things sometimes ...

On the way home yesterday I ordered some roadbase so I can get stuck into the retaining wall at last (last day of holidays - the one i partly took to do such things - typical).

The dirt.

It got delivered at 8am - and I was all keen to go get a haircut so I can move it without passing out, but somehow the day is slipping away and i'm stuck doing little things around the house again. Almost feels like I still have the hangover from yesterday morning - but I didn't go out last night at all. I think I just need a really good sleep (and maybe some better meals), but seem stuck going to bed too late and rising too early.

The hole.

The trench isn't quite right, and I probably need to dig out the stairs before starting to fill it, but it's almost ready. I should be out there now, but it's a bit warm to be working in the full sun in the middle of the day (when you have a choice anyway). Have to drag myself out a little later to get stuck into it.

Smooth as a baby's bum

Well I didn't end up getting out, but I had a break for a while. I also started thinking about what I want to do now I have interrupts working and decided I couldn't be bothered doing too much with the vblank demo. But since there was nothing on TV for a bit I tidied it up and committed it as is.

It's moving smoothly, honest.

Yes, not much of a screenshot, but I thought the page needed some colour and a break from all the text of late. It just smoothly scrolls from one screen to the other and back again, drawing one box on the lower screen every time it's fully hidden. Demo in irq-scroll.c, with the interrupt code from yesterday in exceptions.S.

So what to do next. Well there's still the idea of a little game or demo or so, but i'm lacking a bit of inspiration, and besides, a bit of support to actually run the code in, for things like sound. So i'm starting to think about working on a little real-time micro-kernel.

Many months ago I had been writing one for x86 but got a bit pissed off with all the PC crappyness, and found something more interesting to do instead. So i'll probably start with that, although i'm not sure how much i'll end up using (not that I can remember the state I left it in anyway). For example, currently it does all the VM and process management inside the kernel (it made it simpler at the time), but I want to move that to a process instead so the kernel can work without any pre-emption or locks. Basically the goal is to make the kernel as simple as possible (nano-kernel?) without the simplification getting in the way. What I had been working towards was something like a mix of Minix 3 and AmigaOS; taking features like memory protection and processes from Minix, in addition to the asynchronous non-copying message passing, shared libraries, tasks, and the device mechanism from AmigaOS, with a bit of a reworking to make it all fit. Ahh well, maybe a tad on the optimistic side so I wouldn't hold my breath, on the other hand apart from device drivers there's not all that much to the core of such a design.

Not sure if i'll put it in PuppyBits or another project, but for now I still need to work out some basic routines like context switching and so on so i'll definitely put that stuff in PuppyBits at the least.

Interrupt progress

Had another poke at interrupts late last night. And finally got a simple interrupt handler working. As usual a couple of simple mistakes initially thwarted my efforts.

1. To start with I was trying to use the FRAMEDONE interrupt from the display controller. But it seems I needed to use VSYNC for HDMI out, and the EVSYNC_ODD/_EVEN for S-Video.
2. I was using the rfe instruction, but neglected the ! on the register, so it wasn't fixing the stack pointer properly on exit. Somehow the application code managed to run ok for a few seconds with a constantly changing stack!
3. I forgot to fix lr before saving it on the stack using the srs instruction (subtract 4). Again, rfe was thus skipping an a application instruction every interrupt, and again somehow the code didn't crash immediately either.

Other than using the ARMv6 instructions above, the code is basically straight out of the OMAP TRM § 10.5.3 MPU INTC Preemptive Processing Sequence, the step numbers below relate to that section. I haven't implemented the priority stuff yet (I was hoping it wasn't necessary for such a simple bit of code since I don't need priorities, but it seems it is for other reasons), so it doesn't actually implement re-entrant interrupts, but I might try to get that working before committing it.

        .set    MODE_SUPERVISOR, 0x13

ex_irq:
        // 1. save critical registers
        sub     lr,lr,#4
        srsdb   #MODE_SUPERVISOR!
        cps     #MODE_SUPERVISOR
        push    { r0-r3, r12, lr }

        ldr     r3,=INTCPS_BASE

        // 2,3 save and set priority threshold (not done)

        // 4. find interrupt source
        ldr     r0,[r3,#0x40]

        // 5. allow new interrupts
        mov     r1,#1
        str     r1,[r3,#INTCPS_CONTROL]

        // 6. data sync barrier for reg writes before enable irq
        dsb                              // not sure what options it should use
        
        // 7. enable irq

        // 8. jump to handler
        ldr     r2,=irq_vectors
        and     r0,r0,#0x7f
        ldr     lr,=ex_irq_done
        ldr     pc, [r2, r0, lsl #2]
        
ex_irq_done:
        // 1. disable irq

        // 2. restore threshold level (not done)

        // 3. restore critical registers
        pop     { r0-r3, r12, lr }
        rfeia   sp!

        .data
        .balign 4
        .global irq_vectors
irq_vectors:
        .word   exception_irq, exception_irq, ...
        .word   ... total of 96 vectors

The srs instruction and cps instructions are used to run everything on the supervisor stack/in supervisor mode. On entry the code is executing in irq mode, so it first saves lr_irq and spsr_irq onto the supervisor stack (after fixing the return address in lr!), and then switches to supervisor mode. Without the srs instruction (pre ARMv6) things are pretty messy since you either have to muck about with the irq stack first (and last), or have to switch between modes a few times to get everything sorted (see the links at the end of this post).I also implement a simple vectored interrupt table to simplify the C side of things, although I think I can just use a simple mov lr,pc before jumping to the vector rather than a literal load.

The ARM ARM actually recommends using the system mode for re-entrant interrupts (you can't use the interrupt mode itself because lr could be clobbered), so why am I using the supervisor stack? Partially historically because at first I couldn't work out how to save the state without clobbering some system stack registers (they're shared with user state). But I also have other plans where this scheme might work better, and if nothing else it stops broken code in user-mode crashing interrupts by breaking the stack pointer.

And finally one more thing I noticed whilst reading bits and pieces is that the AAPCS (EABI) specifies that the stack pointer should remain double-word (8-byte) aligned for entry points. I probably read it before but didn't take notice. This just normally means you always need to push an even number of registers onto the stack before calling other functions. Fortunately this just falls out with this code ... but with interrupt handlers which can be invoked at any time, we don't know what the alignment of the stack is so a specific check is needed too, according to the ARM Info Centre (damn, and I definitely know i've read that before just looking it up now - and it has some other important other bits too!).

Hmm, now i'm thinking about it ... i'm not sure I even need re-entrant interrupts at all. I'm thinking of working towards something along the lines of a microkernel architecture similar to AmigaOS or Minix 3, where device drivers are just high priority unprivileged tasks - the Cortex-A8 should be more than fast enough for this to work. All interrupt handlers will need to do is post events to these tasks, and the software will handle the priorities and whatnot. I suspect re-entrant interrupts are much more important in an embedded system where you just leave most of the work to the interrupt handlers, where DMA isn't available for everything, or the CPU speed is a limiting factor.

Specific Handler

The next step after the interrupt handler is the interrupt vector code itself. This is just a plain function call since the entry point has handled all the nitty gritty. But it still has to deal with the hardware - to identify which interrupt caused it to be invoked, and to clear it. Even with 96 interrupts in the interrupt controller, most of them map to multiple physical events.In the case of the video subsystem, there is a single interrupt DSS_IRQ (25) which can be triggered from 29 different events in either the DISPC module or the DSS module (actually I just noticed there are many more from the DSI module). § 15.3.2.2 Interrupt Requests has a pretty good overview. Fortunately there is a couple of bits in the DSS_IRQSTATUS which lets the code determine which are asserted to simplify processing. After that test is made, each bit needs to be checked in turn and processed accordingly. And finally the interrupt bits must be reset by writing a 1 to each bit in the DISPC_IRQSTATUS or DSI_IRQSTATUS register - otherwise it will go into an infinite loop re-invoking the interrupt as soon as it exits.

void dispc_handler(int id) {
        uint32_t dssirq = reg32r(DSS_BASE, DSS_IRQSTATUS);

        // see if we have any dispc interrupts
        if (dssirq & DSS_DISPC_IRQ) {
                uint32_t irqstatus = reg32r(DISPC_BASE, DISPC_IRQSTATUS);

                if (irqstatus & DISPC_VSYNC) {
                        ... do vsync code ...
                }

                // clear all interrupt status bits set
                reg32w(DISPC_BASE, DISPC_IRQSTATUS, irqstatus);
        }

        // check for dsi ints (to clear them)
        if (dssirq & DSS_DSI_IRQ) {
                // not expecting this, just clear everything
                reg32w(DSI_BASE, DSI_IRQSTATUS, ~0);
        }
}

This is basically the same process that all interrupt handlers need to go through. Identify the source, handle it, clear the assertion.

There are lots of 'gotchas' with interrupt handler writing at first, but the main thing is to not call any functions which share state with non-interrupt code. e.g. anything non-reentrant, or using hardware registers. Oh, and they should always run as fast as possible - all the `real work' your cpu could be doing is halted the entire time the interrupt is executing, and you could be processing thousands per second in a busy system.

The last piece of the puzzle is the interrupt enable masks. You don't just get all interrupts possible in the system all the time, you can mask (or enable) which ones you want to receive. This is all set-up before interrupts are enabled but after the hardware in question is setup. Here I clear all the status bits as well, just to make sure I don't get an unexpected surprise when I enable CPU interrupts later.

        // disable all but vsync
        reg32w(DISPC_BASE, DISPC_IRQENABLE, DISPC_VSYNC);
        reg32w(DISPC_BASE, DISPC_IRQSTATUS, ~0);
        // dss intterrupt can also receive DSI, so disable those too
        reg32w(DSI_BASE, DSI_IRQENABLE, 0);
        reg32w(DSI_BASE, DSI_IRQSTATUS, ~0);

I think I have some sort of set-up bug because I think that i'm sometimes getting interrupts when no event i'm testing is asserted. I will have to check the extra DSI interrupts I just noticed whilst writing this - they should all be masked off (should be reset condition anyway, but ...).

My little demo code right now just does a vsync'd smooth-scroll by changing the video dma base registers. The TRM states that the register is a `Shadow register, updated on VFP start period or EVSYNC.' There is another little trick though, it looks like all DISPC registers themselves are shadowed again, so you always have to set the GOLCD bit in DISPC_CONTROL whenever you make changes for them to make their way to the hardware. I guess I realised that anyway, but initially forgot.

        // update the graphic layer 0 address (video out) to scroll it
        reg32w(DISPC_BASE, DISPC_GFX_BA0, addr);
        reg32w(DISPC_BASE, DISPC_GFX_BA1, addr);
        reg32s(DISPC_BASE, DISPC_CONTROL, DISPC_GOLCD, ~0);

I might come up with a more impressive demo before committing though. Actually now I have interrupts working it opens up a lot of possibilities, such as a real sound driver, serial driver, and proper timing events (in a very odd twist, sometimes my delay loops seem to run twice as fast as other times ...).

Links

I came across a couple of links on the internet about bare-metal ARM coding, some of it doesn't apply/wont work on OMAP3, but the general ideas are the same.

• Simplest bare metal program for ARM;
• And a related article on Embedded.com Building Bare-Metal ARM Systems with GNU. or a much easier to read PDF version I just found.

Oh, I finally got out in the yard yesterday - if only for a couple of hours. More or less finished the trench for the main retaining wall foundation. Now I just need to get off my lazy bum and order some road-base and sand. Can't say I felt the fittest - easily out of breath, although I'm sure that has something to do with the sleep apnoea, my particularly poor sleep the night before (i let the cat stay in and he was wandering around all night), as well as my bum sitting. Glorious day today, and no meeting organised yet about work, so I should probably get out on a bike. Maybe I can scan a few pawn shops in the extremely unlikely event any have C64's lying around.

The cult of stupid

I've been thinking about writing about this for some time, and even written a couple of posts, but I was never happy with how they ended up.

Is it just me, or does it seem as though a new religion has started to gain hold, at least amongst the west. And the religion I speak of is a religion of stupidity and ignorance. All religion relies on a certain level of ignorance in order to maintain the integrity of their flock, but this new one is taking the idea to a whole new non-denominational level.

One only has to see any discussions that arise when climate change is mentioned, or recently almost any science-related topic.

The discussion quickly devolves into a slanging match against science in general. All sorts of people pop out of the wood-work in an incessant and boorish tirade of willful ignorance and stupidity. That people can mis-understand science to such a level in an age of universal education and information access is simply astounding. Unless every argument is framed in the purely black and white, good vs evil terms of an undeveloped mind, they cannot grasp it (or at least, this is the impression they wish to give). Science of course does not work this way, even scientific `facts' are not solid. Science only works because of informed scepticism (e.g. don't believe what you're told, without reason), but these fools are not sceptics. They are deniers.

So I wonder, just from where is this stupidity springing forth? Or more importantly, how is it able to gain a hold in such educated societies as Australia and the UK?

I have some ideas, but for now, the following is the article which finally prompted me to publish my thoughts. It is very sickening reading. It is the first part of a five part series discussing this new religion against science, and has already attracted over 500 comments at this time. Whilst the abusive e-mails in the article are alarming, the numerous comments are simply depressing - it seems that Australians really are that stupid.

I await the follow-on parts with interest.

Bullying, lies and the rise of right-wing climate denial.

Well so much for that.

Well that was an odd week. I did a lot of nothing ... instead of getting out and about or digging in the garden I spent most of it reading about the world's woes and getting worked up about it.

Maybe I should've stuck with the coding, but my mind did need a little rest anyway.

I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that I will have to get USB working ... but boy is it a lot of work. The *BSD and Linux implementations are massive - although I don't need anywhere near that sophistication. The Haiku one is about the only other public free implementation I've been able to find (and in-fact the only with a suitable license), and thankfully it is much simpler, although in C++. Most other free operating systems just don't implement USB. Maybe I should just shelve that whole idea and try and get Haiku working instead ... but my last patch hasn't gone anywhere so I lost some interest in that.

I did have a little play with trying to get interrupts working ... but no real progress on that front yet.

Another side-track was that I ended up with an old casio electronic keyboard to play with (for nothing). Given I have so much spare time I thought i'd try and learn a little piano, or at least see if I can drum up enough interest to want to learn it properly. Still not sure yet, my fingers seem to seize up pretty quickly, but it passes the time in the sort of cathartic way that reading the news or programming doesn't.

It gave me other ideas too, like hooking it up to a beagleboard, since I have a spare one still sitting in it's box. There are enough GPIO pins to hook up the matrix scan directly, although the 1.8v level logic adds a twist. Could make a fun little synth, even if I can't play it properly. Alternative is to use a smaller part like a PIC or AVR to decode the keyboard and ship out USB, serial, or even midi. Haven't played with hardware for ages.Somehow that got me onto another site (through hack-a-day) that had some guys remarkable efforts with old Commodore 64's. I could just use the keyboard and box to put a beagleboard in to make a usable computer and not have to worry so much about USB and the like (and even if I just ran some version of linux on it, it would make a nice box to put everything in, particularly the C64-C or Amiga 600 cases).

My brother still has a few old computers at home, so I might try and get one

(shit, he threw them all out!), or ask around.

All good things must come to an end.

Looks like my extended holiday will soon be over - the work i've had lined up for some time is finally in the last stages of it's paperwork. Damn! Hmmm, working again will be tough, although the work will be more interesting than last time (or, at least it bloody well better be!).

Might take a bit of a break from (or at least, a significant reduction of) the beagle board hacking whilst I catch up on house work, yard work, sleep, exercise, get a hair cut, and/or just to go to the beach in the few days I have left in this hot weather. Damn i'm so far behind on sleep. I never catch up on that. Sleep sleep sleep. Sigh, repeating it doesn't help either. Sleep sleep. Worth a try.

I felt i'd hit a bit of a wall anyway, so it's probably a good time to take a break, and making progress on sound was a nice milestone.

Mary had a ...

Had a go out sound in - and couldn't get it to work at first, so I went for a nice ride. Just a casual 58km with a long beer and pizza stop at a mate's on the way. I was a little sore and tired by the time I got home (mostly from the saddle; haven't ridden that bike much for ages), but after a decent sleep, not a hint of soreness.

After I got home and became bored with TV I decided to have a search on the net about sound again - and the vital clue - aux-in is line-level and not mic-level (well I should've known that but it all goes through the same amps). So the code was working after-all, I plugged a laptop out into line-in and got some results.

Actually I worked out that if I use a speaker (or headphones) as the line-in, I can get enough signal as well, but I left the gain at 0dB for a line-level signal.

Then I wrote a very simple synthesiser loop which plays 'mary had a little lamb' (badly) with a triangle-wave and simple ADSR envelope (in true SID-chip style!), and then jumps to a rather annoying 440Hz sound which phases from side to side, whilst showing the line-in waveform on the screen (as in the screenshot).

Source in audo-beep.c, which includes all of the initialisation code as well.There's a commented line in the init:

aregw(AV_ATX2ARXPGA, (7 << 3) | 7);

which can send the digital signal from line-in directly to the output. But the signal is really rather awful, and doesn't seem to match the data received, with lots of clipping and nastiness. Probably some bad interaction with the synethsiser data, and not biasing things properly.

This code doesn't use DMA, so is about as simple as you can get whilst still making noises.

Hmm, I wonder what to do next. Having USB for keyboard and mouse is a real pain, it's pretty hard to do much interesting `computer' stuff when you only have a serial port for communications.

Now to get 'mary had a little lamb' out of my head ...