Topics

106

Blackbird / How many fans per FAN header?

« on: May 20, 2020, 10:41:48 am »

I am planning to revamp my chassis cooling so I am wondering how many fans could I split from one fan header? There is no mentioning how many amps per fan header in the service manual btw.

Much thanks in advance

107

Mod Zone / Sun Ultra 45 chassis mod project

« on: May 17, 2020, 10:25:06 pm »

Sun Ultra 45 chassis is one sexy design. The quality that Sun Microsystems put into this chassis is second to none. I was fortunate to buy a used Ultra 45 chassis from an UK eBay seller and get it shipped to Australia for $100 AUD (then the seller updated the shipping cost to $200+). The empty chassis does not come with the proprietary motherboard tray so I have to workaround by drilling 3 small holes for three 1.8cm L-shaped plastic standoffs (sourced from the CPS2 arcade machine - I guess the brass standoffs that are abundant online can be used too). Here is the video of the mother bound mounting

Mount motherboard: https://youtu.be/j3xppDQ_MBk

Next is to ask my friend to laser cut me an I/O shield plate from a thin metal sheet.

I will update this space as I progress.

108

Operating Systems and Porting / Wine developer starts merging Timothy's sets of patches for ppc64le

« on: May 11, 2020, 09:55:46 pm »

Good to now that Wine developer André Hentschel has started merging patches by Raptor Engineering's Timothy Pearson (aka @madscientist159). See André's mail for more details https://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-devel/2020-April/165261.html.

Fingercross that version 5.9 or 6.0 would fully support ppc64le

109

Applications and Porting / [DEV] NGINX's kubernetes nginx-ingress controller

« on: May 11, 2020, 12:11:11 am »

I've lodged a new Github issue with suggestion for ppc64le support at https://github.com/nginxinc/kubernetes-ingress/issues/944

For the time-being, if you are attempting to deploy this controller, you could build that manually OR grabbing my pre-build images from docker.io/powerpc64el/nginx-ingress

110

Applications and Porting / [DEV] Kubernetes DEB packages for Debian 10

« on: May 08, 2020, 09:01:15 am »

Thanks to the K8S's kubepkg tooling, I manage to build DEB packages on Debian 10. You could download them at https://github.com/runlevel5/kubernetes-packages

I am hopeful that K8S project would release official DEB packages in the near future so users do not have to go through many hoops to build their own packages.

111

Applications and Porting / [NEWS] non-x86_64/aarch64 JSVALUE64 platforms affected WebKitGTK (Resolved)

« on: May 07, 2020, 08:56:29 pm »

Thanks to Daniel Kolesa. The regression in JSCore of WebKit GTK which has marred the functionality of GNOME 3.36 is finally resolved. This issue is a blocker for GNOME 3.36 adoption on PowerPC64 platforms.

I found out about this issue during the GNOME 3.37 cycle but unable to pin point the commit that caused the issue. Fortunately, Daniel jumped in to save the day.

I am expecting the downstream Fedora 32 would publish new version of webkit2gtk3 RPM in a day or two.

Ref: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=210685#c23

112

Applications and Porting / [GAMES] Heroes of Might and Magic 3: Complete edition (VCMI client)

« on: May 05, 2020, 09:24:59 pm »

HOMM3 is one of the best turn-based strategy game of the 90s! Its artwork and gameplay is so unique. It has captivated the interests of gamers for many generations. And now in 2020, we are still playing it!

The last known Linux port was by Loki Software for the x86 Linux, unfortunately Loki went out of business and did not port the title to PowerPC. The community has been working hard on an alternative solution, introducing the VCMI project, a free/open source HOMM3 engine for multi-platforms, it sought to re-create the original experience of the game yet at the same time offering new extension for the community to develop new game on top of it.

I've managed to get the software compiled on Fedora 32 though there are some quirks with video/graphic which seems to be only related to Fedora.

Video URL: https://youtu.be/bD5F4gQznLY

113

Mod Zone / Graphic LCD display mod

« on: April 29, 2020, 08:41:57 pm »

I am thinking to buy one of these small LCD to power on/off, check temperature, displaying OpenBMC booting messages, etc.

Link https://www.crystalfontz.com/c/usb-lcd-displays/1

Wondering if anyone has attempted /or how server chassis is doing that.

114

Blackbird / How's the FlexVer connector used?

« on: April 29, 2020, 02:48:08 am »

I've read about the physical tampering FlexVer tech in the whitepaper however I am unsure how it is actually configured and utilised. Wondering if any guru could show me some examples? Much appreciated

115

Operating Systems and Porting / [NEWS] Fedora 32 is released

« on: April 28, 2020, 07:04:13 pm »

RedHat and IBM are now under same roof, the future looks bright for OpenPower. Good news is Fedora 32 is now out.

* Notable changes *
- Kernel 5.6.6
- GNOME 3.36 - faster and better in UX
- TRIM is enabled by default
- GCC 10 / LLVM 10 - even before GCC 10 is released! W00t!
- glibc 2.31
- Python 3.8
- Ruby 2.7
- Golang 1.14
- Workstation flavour - for the first time! - this might be helpful for newcomers

Let's hope the 128-bit floats on ppc64le issue would get addressed in future release.

Download links: https://alt.fedoraproject.org/alt/

EDIT: If you get the "Error loading kernel image" at Petitboot, the workaround is to edit the following boot option for the Fedora 32 Live:

* Kernel: ppc/ppc64/linuz
* Initrd: ppc/ppc64/linux

See https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F32_bugs#Fedora_32_Workstation_.28ppc64le.29_Live_image_failed_to_boot

116

Applications and Porting / [GAME] Relive Wolfenstein 3D classic with ECWolf port

« on: April 25, 2020, 05:42:55 am »

If you were born before the 1990s, you would have known the legendary Wolf3D DOS game. It's probably one of the very first FPS that defines the genre (some would argue DOOM did that). Thanks to id Soft for opening up the engine source code, the community has been active porting the original DOS source code to *NIX with SDL. The Wolf4SDL is the first port that supports SDL 1.x. Another port that enhances Wolf4SDL further, introducing ECWolf. This port supports SDL 2.x yet offers additional enhancements.

I did not have much luck with getting Wolf4SDL compile on Fedora 32 but have no issue with ECWolf up running.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGhLQ12o1Ug

117

Mod Zone / Low profile heatsink?

« on: April 25, 2020, 05:35:16 am »

I am thinking of putting my Blackbird into a small computer case with less room to accommodate the stock 3U HSF that Raptor offers. Wondering if anyone know of any low-profile heatsink that is compatible with the motherboard socket (btw what's the socket name?).

118

Applications and Porting / [NEWS] Ubuntu Server LTS 20.04 is out

« on: April 24, 2020, 08:09:59 am »

Good to know that the latest Ubuntu Server LTS 20.04 is finally out. I have tried it out on VM with libvirt/qemu/kvm. Everything is installed correctly and working fine so far. I have not tried installing it on my host (so unsure if pending issues such as failing to detect nvme has been addressed or not).

Video of installing it with QEMU/KVM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9nhKhNk8cE

119

Mod Zone / Convert GPU PCI-E X16 to X8

« on: April 20, 2020, 01:13:08 am »

My Radeon Vega 64 PCI-E 3.0 X16 card would not take advantage fully of the X16 PCI-E 4.0 X16 bandwidth. Plus the double slot design of this GPU would get in the way of the X8 slot of the Raptor Blackbird. So I bought the X16 to X8 adapter card on Aliexpress so I could install my GPU on the X8 slot. The hack works but I don’t really like it that much because the card profile would now be incompatible with closed PC based.

I wish that the future revision of Blackbird would swap position of X8 with X16 slot. Additionally the X8 slot should be open-ended so that X16 card could fit in perfectly without the needs of using adapter card.

UPDATE: I mod my X8 slot open ended https://youtu.be/93yEag-aryk

120

Applications and Porting / [GAME] yQuake2 runs perfectly :D

« on: April 10, 2020, 11:04:51 pm »

The https://github.com/yquake2/yquake2 port is actually one of the best Quake 2 port atm. Firstly it supports wide range of renderers, from Software to Vulkan. Secondly the author is very active. Thirdly the codebase can be compiled easily for Linux ppc64le without any issue.