Messages

1

Applications and Porting / Porting the Dolphin Emulator to the modern OpenPOWER systems

« on: March 11, 2025, 12:29:51 pm »

As I am using my Talos II mostly for gaming currently, I decided to port the Dolphin Emulator. From my work on Libre-SOC I have a good understanding of the Power ISA. At the same time I will also continue working on OpenPOWER Microwatt and jit compilers. Hopefully I will be able to reuse some of the code that I plan to write for a later Box86 / Box64. As a first game for testing I have selected SuperTux Wii (or the GameCube port).

2

Applications and Porting / Porting VR games to the Talos II

« on: May 05, 2024, 02:08:56 pm »

Today I did a talk at libreplanet: Gaming on a Talos II: How I avoid using Steam
A gameplay video is here.

My VR setup includes four ICE40 FPGAs, the first one is the Talos II System FPGA.  The two controllers KN0 and KN1 and the headset T20 use their own bigger FPGAs for lighthouse tracking. I plan to design my own hardware that tracks using lighthouse.

There is also a forum thread on the Trisquel site.

3

Legacy POWER Hardware / Dolphin Emulator banned from Steam

« on: May 31, 2023, 10:36:23 am »

When I yesterday saw that Dolphin was banned from Steam due to a DMCA takedown request, I decided to port the Dolphin Emulator to the POWER9. A few weeks ago I had a look at the the IPL replacement modchip called picoboot for the GameCube. Steam never ran on on any IBM CPU, so I loose nothing if Steam does not my Talos II.

4

Firmware / ASPEED 2500 VGA standby mode

« on: November 12, 2022, 04:35:08 am »

When I lock the screen on my Talos II, VGA does not go off, it just shows a black screen. Is there a way to switch VGA completely off in this case and enable VGA again, when I press any key?

5

Applications and Porting / Displaylink on OpenPOWER

« on: May 13, 2022, 11:48:05 am »

Displaylink recently released the Extensible Virtual Display Interface, a linux kernel module that adds a virtual graphics output. It is released under the GNU (L)GPL and used by their DisplayLink Manager. When I was reading the POWER9 Hardware Compatibility List, my assumption that USB3.0 DisplayLink devices do not work with POWER9 was correct. The source code of the DisplayLink Manager application is not published, and there are no binaries for POWER9 either. Since the kernel module is free software that comes with good documentation, I began writing my own replacement for the DisplayLink Manager, which allows me to use the built-in screen of a ThinkPad X200 as a second display, and also indirectly connect a third Monitor via HDMI.

6

Applications and Porting / Re: Porting Godot 4 to POWER9 and the Libre-SOC.

« on: February 25, 2022, 10:44:58 am »

I"m now able to run Godot4 on my Talos II using Debian SID which I installed on an external harddisk.

Godot Engine v4.0.alpha.custom_build.24fa2e75d - https://godotengine.org
Vulkan API 1.2.0 - Using Vulkan Device #0: Unknown - llvmpipe (LLVM 13.0.1, 128 bits)
WARNING: lavapipe is not a conformant vulkan implementation, testing use only.

Embree seems to be optional, and is not used on POWER9 and ARM.

7

Applications and Porting / Re: Porting Godot 4 to POWER9 and the Libre-SOC.

« on: September 23, 2021, 11:17:22 am »

Before getting embree working, I need to get Vulkan rendering on the CPU as there is no GPU on the Talos II.
On the Libre-SOC the CPU is the GPU, the PowerISA is extended to do GPU workloads at 2.5 Watts.
Minetest and other 3D OpenGL are playable on a quadcore Talos II, but Vulkan complains that there is
no DRI3 support.

lspci
0000:00:00.0 PCI bridge: IBM POWER9 Host Bridge (PHB4)
0000:01:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd NVMe SSD Controller SM961/PM961/SM963
0001:00:00.0 PCI bridge: IBM POWER9 Host Bridge (PHB4)
0001:01:00.0 Audio device: Creative Labs Sound Core3D [Sound Blaster Recon3D / Z-Series] (rev 01)
0002:00:00.0 PCI bridge: IBM POWER9 Host Bridge (PHB4)
0003:00:00.0 PCI bridge: IBM POWER9 Host Bridge (PHB4)
0003:01:00.0 USB controller: Texas Instruments TUSB73x0 SuperSpeed USB 3.0 xHCI Host Controller (rev 02)
0004:00:00.0 PCI bridge: IBM POWER9 Host Bridge (PHB4)
0004:01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries NetXtreme BCM5719 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe
0004:01:00.1 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries NetXtreme BCM5719 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe
0005:00:00.0 PCI bridge: IBM POWER9 Host Bridge (PHB4)
0005:01:00.0 PCI bridge: ASPEED Technology, Inc. AST1150 PCI-to-PCI Bridge (rev 04)
0005:02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ASPEED Technology, Inc. ASPEED Graphics Family (rev 41)

glxgears
5432 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1086.261 FPS
5643 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1128.498 FPS

./gears
WARNING: lavapipe is not a conformant vulkan implementation, testing use only.
vulkan: No DRI3 support detected - required for presentation
Note: you can probably enable DRI3 in your Xorg config
Could not find a graphics and/or presenting queue!

8

Applications and Porting / Porting Godot 4 to POWER9 and the Libre-SOC.

« on: September 19, 2021, 09:41:03 am »

I tried to compile Godot 4 on my Talos II, it failed because the Talos II does not not use an Intel CPU. The embree library currently only runs on latest Intel CPUs and the Apple M1 afaik.

9

Talos II / Trying out GUIX on my Talos II

« on: April 10, 2021, 02:36:48 am »

I recently saw a post on the GUIX mailing list "Please review blog post draft: powerpc64le-linux support"

> I've been using the Free Software firmware replacement for the NIC
> since a while now and it's working great:
> https://github.com/meklort/bcm5719-fw/

So I compiled the firmware and installed it on my Talos II. When GUIX for powerpc64le-linux comes out, I will try out.

10

Operating Systems and Porting / Guix now running on the Talos II

« on: November 21, 2020, 06:49:01 am »

I've started porting GNU Guix to modern PowerPC hardware. Currently it runs on my Talos II in BigEndian mode. BigEndian because the 32 bit boostrap binaries already run on older PowerPC hardware which was usually operated in BigEndian Mode. The video for the port is here. The discussion will happen tomorrow.