YDL 6.1 uses rsx for swapping

[Pit0711]

old, or new patch?

sry, know onyl this german website..
http://www.heise.de/open/Yellow-Dog-Lin ... ung/119192

[JFReyes]

What they have done is include the ps3vram patch/feature as part of the distro. Same old patch, I believe.

[Homebrewer]

Hi there, these are the major improvements (translated from German):
- IBM Cell processor Software Development Toolkit 3.1 included
- Firefox 3.0, OpenOffice 2.3
- major peformance gain using the 256 MB RSX video ram as swapspace
- enhanced WLAN configuration tool
- support of Barcelona Supercomputing CellSs (?) implemented
(could be something like IBM's BladeCenter or Sony's video cluster ZEGO BCU-100 Cell+RSX GPU based on extended PS3 hardware - which is by the way also shipped with YDL 6.1 Enterprise=YDL 6.1+Support, I think)
- Kernel 2.6.27, Xorg 1.4.999 and xrandr 1.2.2 included
- already available for existing customers, on DVD in 2 weeks and for free download in 4 weeks (should be already available by now)

What would be more interesting to me:
- Did anyone already successfully test/manage to adopt Gaulrung's and IronPeter's PS3RSX Xorg lib ?
- If yes, is it compatible (no vram conflicts, no crashes) ?

One more: Does anybody know if there is a Macro Assembler out there running on YDL 6.1 for the PS3 Cell or a PowerPC-970 compatible ?

Questions over questions... 8) Thanks!

[J.F.]

One more: Does anybody know if there is a Macro Assembler out there running on YDL 6.1 for the PS3 Cell or a PowerPC-970 compatible ?

AS - duh. Why do people always forget that gcc comes with a full-featured macro assembler? In fact, you can also use the C preprocessor on as files simply by using .S instead of .s for even more macro-y goodness! :)

[Homebrewer]

Oh, yeah. Long time no see! Don't remember why I stopped reading the man docs for that, but I think it was the non-comfy dev suite, if you can call this like that. 8) Never found something like the 6502 Devpac Assembler again.

Does the PS2RSX lib use the (full) vram also ? - YDL 6.1 ps3vram might need to be removed then.

[J.F.]

Oh, yeah. Long time no see! Don't remember why I stopped reading the man docs for that, but I think it was the non-comfy dev suite, if you can call this like that. 8) Never found something like the 6502 Devpac Assembler again.

Does the PS2RSX lib use the (full) vram also ? - YDL 6.1 ps3vram might need to be removed then.

DEVPAC was 680x0... and was my main development environment on the Amiga. It was really nice - as long as you were into assembly only. :)

As to your question, the existing usage of video mem is usually hardcoded in the program. Most things just skip over the framebuffer, which is at the start of vram, and then assume nothing else is using the rest. At some point, tracking vram usage will need to be considered. It's very much like vram on the PSP - it's not tracked by the system either. It's up to the programmer to make sure that their homebrew doesn't accidentally have more than one thing using the same vram for different things.

[Homebrewer]

I also had a A500 after my C64 (6502). You could do nice things with 1 MHz on Assembler by that time. 8)

OK, the decision is easy then: Inactivate ps3vram, since ps3rsx is more interesting.

Thanks.

[jimparis]

As to your question, the existing usage of video mem is usually hardcoded in the program. Most things just skip over the framebuffer, which is at the start of vram, and then assume nothing else is using the rest. At some point, tracking vram usage will need to be considered. It's very much like vram on the PSP - it's not tracked by the system either.

The system does allocate it -- the ps3vram driver allocates VRAM with lv1_gpu_memory_allocate. I don't think ps3rsx does the same, though; if I remember right it makes use of a bug in lv1_gpu_memory_allocate by passing 0 as the size.

[lpopman]

DEVPAC was 680x0... and was my main development environment on the Amiga. It was really nice - as long as you were into assembly only. :)

Actually HiSoft produced Devpac for the ZX Spectrum and C64 long before the Amiga was even a twinkle in Jay Miner's eye ;)

Still got a couple of copies of it somewhere...

[J.F.]

DEVPAC was 680x0... and was my main development environment on the Amiga. It was really nice - as long as you were into assembly only. :)

Actually HiSoft produced Devpac for the ZX Spectrum and C64 long before the Amiga was even a twinkle in Jay Miner's eye ;)

Still got a couple of copies of it somewhere...

Considering Jay started on the Amiga in 1982 or so, I rather doubt that. :)

However, I will concede that Devpac for those 8 bit platforms were out before Devpac on the Amiga. :D

[lpopman]

DEVPAC was 680x0... and was my main development environment on the Amiga. It was really nice - as long as you were into assembly only. :)

Actually HiSoft produced Devpac for the ZX Spectrum and C64 long before the Amiga was even a twinkle in Jay Miner's eye ;)

Still got a couple of copies of it somewhere...

Considering Jay started on the Amiga in 1982 or so, I rather doubt that. :)

However, I will concede that Devpac for those 8 bit platforms were out before Devpac on the Amiga. :D

Ok, I concede the Jay Miner thing, it was more rhetoric than anything else ;p