Message-ID: <3C8574C9.E1E4688C@windeath.2y.net>
Date: Tue, 05 Mar 2002 19:45:45 -0600
From: "James M." <Dart@windeath.2y.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
Cc: Bill Davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: 2.4.19-preX: What we really need: -AA patches finally in the tree
In-Reply-To: <E16iPsR-00052J-00@the-village.bc.nu>
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Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org

Alan Cox wrote:
> 
> >   I won't bring it up again, I'd love to think Rik, Alan and Ingo will
> > keep working on performance patches for 2.4, but I wouldn't bet on it.
> 
> I certainly will work on collating them - over time it will get less and
> less of a win. A lot of the now very visible ones are really hard to fix in 2.4
> and will be 2.5 things (like block). And when you fix block you'll find the
> next one and so on forever

I'd love to see some performance patches. I've been watching my quake
"timerefreshes" drop since 2.2. I've been using Ingo's scheduler patches
on 2.4.17 with vast improvements in "smoothness" with what seems like an
occasional block on big writes. I also tried 2.4.19-pre2-ac2(with
scheduler merged), in that case the smoothness wasn't quite so apparent
even with X niced to -10. There were also a lot of sound skips that
didn't happen with 2.4.17/sched-K3. I attributed those to the renicing
of X to smooth out the mouse.

> 
> > done in -pre2, might be worth a try. I'm going to build pre2-ac2 and mjc
> > for some laptop benchmarks, I'll turn on ZIP support and try my old unit
> > (the original protocol). I'll try to report back on that in the next day
> > or so.
> 
> Im running both 2.4.18/19pre2 on laptops. PLIP still doesnt work but at
> least I think I now understand why. If you want to hack on plip ping
> Tim Waugh <twaugh@redhat.com> he's definitely as far from the Al Viro end
> of polite computing as you can get and can probably tell you what bits you
> need to tweak

As I indicated to Bill in a private mail the parport code has *never*
properly detected my ECP/EPP although my zipdrive(IMM) DOES work. It's
in compatibility  mode and horribly slow. I've been futzing with probe.c
with no luck. More info available on request. I believe ECP is supposed
to work with this thing at around a theoretical 1.2 MB/sec. This is an
Intel GX chipset with an Award v6.0 bios, Winbond 83977TF 2meg bios
chip.

parport info:
parport0: PC-style at 0x378 (0x778), irq 7<7>0x378: FIFO is 16 bytes
0x378: writeIntrThreshold is 16
0x378: readIntrThreshold is 16
0x378: PWord is 8 bits
0x378: Interrupts are ISA-Pulses
0x378: ECP port cfgA=0x10 cfgB=0x48
0x378: ECP settings irq=7 dma=<none or set by other means>
, dma 3 [PCSPP,TRISTATE,COMPAT,EPP,ECP,DMA]
parport0: device reported incorrect length field (61, should be 62)
parport0 (addr 0): SCSI adapter, IMG VP1
imm: Version 2.05 (for Linux 2.4.0)
imm: Found device at ID 6, Attempting to use EPP 32 bit
imm: Found device at ID 6, Attempting to use PS/2
imm: Communication established at 0x378 with ID 6 using PS/2
scsi1 : Iomega VPI2 (imm) interface
  Vendor: IOMEGA    Model: ZIP 100           Rev: P.05
  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Attached scsi removable disk sda at scsi1, channel 0, id 6, lun 0
SCSI device sda: 196608 512-byte hdwr sectors (101 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
 sda: sda4
invalidate: busy buffer
invalidate: busy buffer

Hdparm:
/dev/sda4:
 Timing buffer-cache reads:   128 MB in  1.01 seconds =126.73 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  64 MB in 438.02 seconds =149.62 kB/sec
 
Bill isn't the only one that does "interesting things with
computers"....:=)

BTW Alan I've given up on my "special" epic100(broken/workaround since
2.4.4..completely dead at 2.4.10), we've talked about this before. I see
fixes in the latest -pre patches but I just replaced it a week or two
ago and am tired of futzing with it right now. I'll try it again
sometime if anyone is interested. 

-- 
James M. aka "Dart"

"I have studied many philosophers and many cats. 
 The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior." -- Hippolyte Taine
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