ChipGenius is a small and portable application which can quickly extract information from connected USB devices on a PC.The application can be useful in diagnosing issues connected with broken USB flash drives; it can access devices even if they are not visible in Windows' device explorer.Easy setup and straightforward usageGetting started with the program is quite simple. As a portable application, ChipGenius can be run on a Windows system without the need for installation; just run the executable and you're inside of the interface.The main interface of this software is pretty basic, displaying a list of recognized USB devices which may be selected. The program will then display the information it gathers about the device such as what type of device it is, the current, USB device ID, serial number and the device name and vendor. The chip name and part number are the main useful details it will output.All that is required of using ChipGenius is to make sure that the USB devices in question have been connected to the computer. The main interface will display the device description, processing speed, ID data and the device serial number.Vital details about a device to diagnose and troubleshootChipGenius can be handy in extracting particulars of a USB drive such as the chip vendor and specific part numbers.So whether you're looking to troubleshoot a defective flash drive or a USB keyboard, this program can be a handy application to extract details of devices that Windows cannot.Compatibility and LicenseChipGenius is provided under a freeware license on Windows from hardware diagnostic software with no restrictions on usage. Download and installation of this PC software is free and 4.21.0701 is the latest version last time we checked.
Obviously you will need an Alpha machine that FreeBSD knowsabout. Alpha machines are NOT like PCs. There are considerabledifferences between the various core logic chip sets and mainboarddesigns. This means that a kernel needs to know the intimatedetails of a particular machine before it can run on it. Throwingsome odd GENERIC kernel at unknownhardware is almost guaranteed to fail miserably.
Chip Genius V5
There is another pitfall ahead: you will need a disk adapterthat the SRM console firmware recognizes in order to be able toboot from a disk. What is acceptable to SRM as a boot adapter isunfortunately highly system and SRM version dependent. For olderPCI based machines it means you will need either a NCR/Symbios53C810 based adapter, or a Qlogic 1020/1040 based adapter. Somemachines come with a SCSI chip embedded on the mainboard. Newermachine designs and SRM versions will be able to work with moremodern SCSI chips/adapters. Check out the machine specific infobelow. Please note that the rest of this discussion only refers toSymbios chips, this is meant to include the older chips that stillhave NCR stamped on them. Symbios bought NCR sometime.
If you don't have/want a local disk drive you can boot via theEthernet. This assumes an Ethernet adapter/chip that is recognizedby the SRM console. Generally speaking this boils down to either a21040 or 21142 or 21143 based Ethernet interface. Older machines orSRM versions may not recognize the 21142 / 21143 Fast Ethernetchips, you are then limited to using 10Mbit Ethernet for netbooting those machines. Non-DEC cards based on said chips willgenerally (but are not guaranteed to) work. Note that Intel tookover the 21x4x chips when it bought Digital Semiconductor. So youmight see an Intel logo on them these days. Recent machine designshave SRM support for Intel 8255x Ethernet chips.
Most PCI devices from the PC-world will also work in FreeBSDPCI-based machines. Check the /sys/alpha/conf/GENERIC file for the latest word onthis. Check the appropriate machine type's discussion in case youwant to use PCI cards that have PCI bridge chips on them. In somecases you might encounter problems with PCI cards not handling PCIparity correctly. This can lead to panics. PCI parity checking canbe disabled using the following SRM command:
For Alpha CPUs you will find multiple generations. The originalAlpha design is the 21064. It was produced in a chip process calledMOS4, chips made in this process are nicknamed EV4. Newer CPUs are21164, 21264 etc. You will see designations like EV4S, EV45, EV5,EV56, EV6, EV67, EV68. The EVs with double digit numbers areslightly improved versions. For example EV45 has an improved FPUand 16 kByte on-chip separate I & D caches compared to the EV4 onwhich it is based. Rule of thumb: the higher the digit immediatelyfollowing ``EV'' the more desirable (read: faster / moremodern).
The NoName is a baby-AT mainboard based on the 21066 LCA (LowCost Alpha) processor. NoName was originally designed for OEM-use.The LCA chip includes almost all of the logic to drive a PCI busand the memory subsystem. All of this makes for a low-priceddesign.
Due to the limited memory interface the system is notparticularly fast in case of cache misses. As long as you stayinside the on-chip cache the CPU is comparable to a 21064 (firstgeneration Alpha). These boards should be very cheap to obtainthese days. It is a full-fledged 64 bit CPU, just don't expectmiracles as far as speed goes.
Cache for the NoNames are 15 or 20 ns DIL chips. For a 256 kBytecache you want to check your junked 486 mainboard. Chips for a 1Mbyte cache are a rarer breed unfortunately. Getting at least a256kByte cache is recommended performance wise. Cache-less they arereally slow.
The Miata logic is divided into two printed circuit boards. Thelower board in the bottom of the machine has the PCI and ISA slotsand things like the sound chip etc. The top board has the CPU, thePyxis chip, memory etc. Note that MX5 and the MiataGL use adifferent PCI riser board. This means that you cannot just upgradeto a MiataGL CPU board (with the newer Pyxis chip) but that youwill also need a different riser board. Apparently an MX5 riserwith a MiataGL CPU board will work but it is definitely not asupported or tested configuration. Everything else (cabinet,wiring, etc.) is identical for MX5 and MiataGL.
MX5 has problems with DMA via the 2 64-bit PCI slots when thisDMA crosses a page boundary. The 32 bit slots don't have thisproblem because the PCI-PCI bridge chip does not allow theoffending transfers. The SRM code knows about the problem andrefuses to start the system if there is a PCI card in one of the64bit slots that it does not know about. Cards that are ``knowngood'' to the SRM are allowed to be used in the 64bit slots.
The Miata SRM can boot from IDE CDROM drives. IDE hard disk bootis known to work for both MiataGL and MX5 disks, so you can rootFreeBSD from an IDE disk. Speeds on MX5 are around 14 Mbytes/secassuming a suitable drive. Miata's CMD646 chip will support up toWDMA2 mode as the chip is too buggy for use with UDMA.
The MiataGL has a faster PCI-PCI bridge chip on the PCI risercard than some of the MX5 riser card versions. Some of the MX5risers have the same chip as the MiataGL. All in all there isa lot of variation.
The EB64+ SRM can boot both 53C810 and Qlogic1040 SCSI adapters.Pitfall for the Qlogic is that the firmware that is down-loaded bythe SRM onto the Qlogic chip is very old. There are no updates forthe EB64+ SRM available. So you are stuck with old Qlogic bits too.I have had quite some problems when I wanted to use Ultra-SCSIdrives on the Alpine with Qlogic. The FreeBSD kernel can becompiled to include a much newer Qlogic firmware revision. This isnot the default because it adds hundreds of kBytes worth of bloatto the kernel. In FreeBSD 4.1 and later the isp firmware iscontained in a kernel loadable module. All of this might mean thatyou need to use a non-Qlogic adapter to boot from.
The SRM can boot from Qlogic 10xx boards or the Symbios53C810[A]. Newer Symbios 810 revisions like the Symbios 810AE arenot recognized by the SRM on PC164. PC164 SRM does not appear torecognize a Symbios 53C895 based host adapter (tested with a TekramDC-390U2W). On the other hand some no-name Symbios 53C985 board hasbeen reported to work. Cards like the Tekram DC-390F (Symbios875based) have been confirmed to work fine on the PC164. Unfortunatelythis seems to be dependent on the actual version of thechip/board.
Symbios 53C825[a] will also work as boot adapter. DiamondFirePort, although based on Symbios chips, is not bootable by thePC164SX SRM. PC164SX is reported to boot fine with Symbios825,Symbios875, Symbios895 and Symbios876 based cards. In addition,Adaptec 2940U and 2940UW are reported to work for booting (verifiedon SRM V5.7-1). Adaptec 2930U2 and 2940U2[W] do not work.
PCI bridge chips are sometimes not appreciated by the 164SX,they cause SRM errors and kernel panics in those cases. This seemsto depend on the fact if the card is recognised, and thereforecorrectly initialised, by the SRM console. The 164SX' onboard IDEinterface is quite slow, a Promise card gives a 3-4 times speedimprovement.
Early machines had Fast SCSI interfaces, later ones are UltraSCSI capable. AS500 shares its single SCSI bus with internal andexternal devices. For a Fast SCSI bus you are limited to 1.8 metersbus length external to the box. The AS500 Qlogic ISP1020A chip canbe set to run in Ultra mode by setting a SRM variable. FreeBSDhowever follows the Qlogic chip errata and limits the bus speed toFast.
Webbrick and Monet are high performance workstations/serversbased on the EV6 CPU and the Tsunami chipset. Tsunami is also usedin much higher-end systems and as such has plenty of performance tooffer. DS10, VS10 and XP900 are different names for essentially thesame system. The differences are the software and options that aresupported. DS10L is a DS10 based machine in a 1U high rackmountenclosure. DS10L is intended for ISPs and for HPTC clusters (e.g.Beowulf)
Starting with SRM firmware version 5.9 you can boot from Adaptec2940-series adapters in addition to the usual set of Qlogic andSymbios/NCR adapters. This unfortunately does not include theembedded Adaptec SCSI chips. You can use a KZPEA aka Adaptec 39160for dual channel LVD U160 SCSI, which is bootable from SRM. 2ff7e9595c
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