Driver:MIPS

MIPS

This article and the corresponding MAME driver focus on computers sold by MIPS Computer Systems which use MIPS R2000/R3000 processors and run RISC/os (also known as UMIPS), a port of UNIX System V release 3 with BSD extensions.

Introduction

• 

  MIPS RS2030

• 

  MIPS RC3230

• 

  MIPS M/2000

Status

At this time, the RC2030 and RS2030 systems work well; the main remaining defect in the emulation is the failure of the power-on diagnostics, which do not appear to affect the normal operation of the system. The RC3230 and RS3230 systems are emulated and close to working state. Other variations have not yet been emulated due to missing firmware dumps.

Hardware

MIPS Computer Systems range[1]

Model	Board	CPU	Clock	Slots	Disk	Package	Notes
M/500	R2300	R2000	5MHz	VME	ESDI
M/800	R2600	R2000	8MHz	VME	ESDI
M/1000	R2800	R2000	10MHz	VME	ESDI
M/120-3	R2400	R2000	12.5MHz	PC-AT	SCSI	Deskside	aka Intrepid
M/120-5	R2400	R2000	16MHz	PC-AT	SCSI	Deskside
M/180	R2400
M/2000-6	R3200	R3000	20MHz	VMEx13	SMD	Rack Cabinet
M/2000-8	R3200	R3000	25MHz	VMEx13	SMD	Rack Cabinet
M/2000-?	RB3125	R3000	33MHz
RC2030	I2000	R2000	16MHz		SCSI	Desktop	aka M/12, Jupiter
RS2030	I2000	R2000	16MHz		SCSI	Desktop	aka M/12, Jupiter
RC3230	R3030	R3000	25MHz	PC-ATx1	SCSI	Desktop	aka M/20, Pizazz
RS3230	R3030	R3000	25MHz	PC-ATx1	SCSI	Desktop	aka M/20, Pizazz, Magnum 3000
RC3240		R3000	25MHz	PC-ATx4	SCSI	Deskside	M/120 with CPU-board upgrade
RC3330		R3000	33MHz	PC-AT	SCSI	Desktop
RS3330		R3000	33MHz	PC-AT	SCSI	Desktop
RC3260		R3000	25MHz	VMEx7	SCSI	Pedestal
RC3360	RB3133	R3000	33MHz	VME	SCSI	Pedestal
RC3370	RB3133
RC6260	R6300	R6000	66MHz	VME	SCSI	Pedestal
RC6280	R6300	R6000	66MHz	VMEx6	SMD	Data Center
RC6380-100		R6000x1	66MHz	VME	SMD	Data Center
RC6380-200		R6000x2	66MHz	VME	SMD	Data Center
RC6380-400		R6000x4	66MHz	VME	SMD	Data Center

Preparation

Prerequisites

To complete the installation of RISC/os described here, you will require the following:

• MAME version 0.211 or newer
• ROM images for the RS2030 or other supported system
• RISC/os 4.52 network installation media
• Host operating system TAP networking support

These instructions should apply to any of the supported MIPS systems, however specific examples may be based on the following:

• Windows host operating system
• TAP adapter configured with address 192.168.137.1 (192.168.137.2 used by the MAME guest)
• MAME rs2030 driver

Network

MIPS computers use a combination of BFS, BOOTP, TFTP and Berkely r-command (rsh/rcp, etc.) network protocols to perform network booting and installation. While BOOTP, TFTP and the r-commands are still able to be found and deployed on modern host platforms, BFS is a MIPS-specific protocol which provides similar functionality to BOOTP, and is the only option available for older MIPS systems such as the RS2030.

In addition, these systems are programmed with an assumption that IP network broadcast addresses should be constructed with zeroes in the host portion rather than ones (e.g. 192.168.137.0 versus 192.168.137.255). This fact makes receiving broadcast packets produced by BFS/BOOTP on these systems quite challenging, and two workarounds are required to resolve this issue. The MAME driver includes one workaround internally, which patches the firmware for the systems to use a standard broadcast address. A second workaround must be implemented externally to MAME by patching the sash program binary to apply the same fix.

A utility implementing the BFS protocol, and sufficient portions of BOOTP, TFTP and the r-commands in Python is available to support the installation of RISC/os as described here. The utility has been used successfully on Windows, and should also work on Linux or other operating systems with some minor tweaking.

Storage

Use the chdman createhd command to prepare a new CHD for the operating system installation, and then the addmeta command to apply a manufacturer string used to identify the drive make/model information that will be returned by the SCSI INQUIRY command.

chdman createhd -o riscos.chd -c none -chs 1731,15,80
chdman addmeta -i riscos.chd -t IDNT -vt "SEAGATE ST11200N        1.00"

The SCSI INQUIRY response data (defined by the IDNT meta-data tag in the CHD) should consist of an 8 character manufacturer name, 16 character model number, and 4 character version number, all left justified and padded with spaces.

Configuration

TODO: mame configuration

mame64 rs2030 -hard riscos.chd

Installing RISC/os

Environment

After powering on the system, you should be presented with the MIPS Monitor prompt. The help command shows the syntax recognized, and additional information may be found in the manual[2].

To complete a network installation, it's necessary to set the system TCP/IP address to one compatible with the external networking environment, using the setenv command. The current environment settings are retained in non-volatile memory, and may be displayed using printenv.

setenv netaddr 192.168.137.2

Format

The format utility allows disks to be formatted, partitioned and labelled. There are two versions of this utility, with format.std being used for all but the RC2030 and RS2030 systems, which have their own dedicated version format.2030.

Launch the applicable format utility using the boot command, being sure to provide the path name matching your BFS or TFTP data path.

boot -f bfs()tree/stand/format.2030

Once format is launched, accept the defaults for all prompts except the following, adjusting the disk geometry to match that provided to chdman.

Prompt	Response
name of device	dksd
device parameters	13
number of cylinders	1731
number heads in vol 0	15
number sectors per track	80
number bytes per sector	512
media defect command	q
write new volume header	y

The utility will exit to the monitor once the volume header has been written.

Miniroot Installation

As with the format utility, there are two versions of the standalone shell (sash). sash.std is used for all but the RC2030 and RS2030 systems which have their own dedicated version, sash.2030. Launch sash as follows.

boot -f bfs()tree/stand/sash.2030

From the sash prompt, use the cp command to copy the miniroot filesystem from TFTP to the boot partition of the hard disk.

cp bfs()root.fs dksd(0,0,1)

This process should take around 10 minutes to complete.

RISC/os Installation

After the miniroot has been copied to disk, RISC/os may be booted using it as a root file system with a kernel loaded from TFTP.

boot -f bfs()unix.i2000_std root=sdc0d0s1

From the miniroot shell prompt, configure the environment to specify a network installation and the name of the installation server, and start the RISC/os installation utility inst.

From=en
Server=host
inst

Most of the prompts from inst are fairly self-explanatory, however there are some which may require further guidance:

• The "remote package root" and "remote packaging information tree" responses must correspond to the "tree" and "umips4.52" directories within the RISC/os network installation structure respectively.
• The "mh" package is damaged and cannot be installed successfully from the currently available installation media.
• It is recommended to skip the disk space check, as it can be quite time-consuming and is unnecessary if using a sufficiently-sized disk.
• It is recommended to skip the network configuration steps, as they may cause inst to abort if unable to copy rsh configuration files from the host.

A minimal installation (root, rc2030, usr) should take about 10 minutes, after which the system should be shut down with telinit.

telinit 0

Booting RISC/os

Once installation is complete, the MIPS monitor may be configured to boot RISC/os normally:

setenv bootfile dksd(,,8)sash

After this, the auto command may be used to boot RISC/os.

At first boot, some questions about networking should be completed allowing the network to be configured, after which a login prompt will be presented and RISC/os is ready for use.

• 

  MIPS Monitor

• 

  MIPS Standalone Shell

• 

  RISC/os Miniroot

• 

  RISC/os

References

The following are useful references pertaining to MIPS computer systems.

Topic	Links
Archived post describing RISC/os installation	[3]
Blog describing installation and use of an RS2030	[4] [5] [6]
MIPS Monitor reference	[7]
RISC/os documentation	[8]