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Documentation about the Vampire hardware

Network Freezes With Vampirepage  1 2 

Marcus Gerards

Posts 58
16 Apr 2016 22:36


Hi all,

I reported Vampire lockups "under network stress" last week at a1k.org. Affected are not only PCMCIA, but also USB ASIX-based dongles (connected to a subway). However, the lockups occur sooner/more frequently with PCMCIA-cards,  probably because they are faster.

Things that might happen:
- crashes of various network-releted programs (like SampleNetSpeed from the Roadshow package or IBrowse)
- extreme machine slowdowns while accessing SMBFS-shares (you can e.g. observe DOpus 4.16 draw its button frames)
- complete lockups/freezes of the whole machine

Here's the information for you to reproduce my findings:

System:

- A600 Rev. 1.5D (no CardPatch - absolutely unnecessary in an A600, as Simo already mentioned),
- original CNET CN40 PCMCIA
- Roadshow TCP/IP-STack (latest version)
- OS 3.1

Procedure (boot with no startup-sequence):
setpatch
stack 100000
assign env: ram:
addnetinterface devs/netinterfaces/cnet
ftp de.aminet.net ; log in as anonymous
lcd ram:
cd aminet/demo/tp96
get HC_Reality.lha ; because it's big

Observation:

The transfer speed quickly raises to ~590 kb/s and the machine locks completly after some seconds. (every time)

Alternate testing procedure:

Same as above, but use wget and grab the file via http instead. I repeated this several times - sometimes the transfer via wget succeeds, sometimes the machine will freeze completely for some seconds and then resume the transfer.

Best regards,

Marcus


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
17 Apr 2016 08:12


Hallo Marcus,

thanks for the report.
Which Apollo-Core version do you use?


Marcus Gerards

Posts 58
17 Apr 2016 09:01


Hi Gunnar,

sorry, I forgot to mention: Latest public core (Silver 3a)

Best regards,

Marcus



Simo Koivukoski
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 601
17 Apr 2016 09:44


Quick FTP download test:
   
    Vampire 600 V2 (core V3_3201_x11)
    AmigaOS 3.9
    Genesis stack from os39
    D-Link PCMCIA
    cnet.device 1.9
    AmiFTP 1.834 (HC_Reality.lha 55.9Mb / ~340.38 kB/s)
   
    EXTERNAL LINK   
   


Wawa T

Posts 695
17 Apr 2016 13:13


maybe the stack is the problem?


John William

Posts 563
17 Apr 2016 15:20


Simo Koivukoski wrote:

Quick FTP download test:
     
      Vampire 600 V2 (core V3_3201_x11)
      AmigaOS 3.9
      Genesis stack from os39
      D-Link PCMCIA
      cnet.device 1.9
      AmiFTP 1.834 (HC_Reality.lha 55.9Mb / ~340.38 kB/s)
     
      EXTERNAL LINK     
   

What is it about using an Amiga to download stuff and watching it downloading stuff is so pleasurable? So satisfactory? Just using Amiga to download files to me feels like I have invented some special invention and I am a billioner because of it and changed the world with it.



Marcus Gerards

Posts 58
17 Apr 2016 15:37


@Simo - your transfer is not fast enough.

1.) use a faster FTP client or Samba (from the command line)
2.) transfer the data from a local server

I get up to 900KB/s with the new SMBFS, which is an incredible speed for any Amiga network card. The faster the transfer, the higher the chance of freezes.

@Wawa_T: 100kb of stack ought to be enough for almost any Amiga software (except for some Quake ports), default stack size of OS3.9 is 8192 bytes AFAIR. Read Olaf Barthel's comments about stack size of his new SMBFS version in the changelog.




Simo Koivukoski
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 601
19 Apr 2016 17:09


Download test from the local server:

Vampire 600 V2 (core V3_3203_x11)
AmigaOS 3.1
AmiTCP-3.0b2
D-Link PCMCIA
cnet.device 1.9
ncftp-1.5.6 (HC_Reality.lha 55.9Mb / ~2033.01 kB/s)

EXTERNAL LINK 


Marcus Gerards

Posts 58
19 Apr 2016 19:31


Hi Simo,

I'm using core 3181-11x from the website. You seem to use a newer version. Comparing results this way does not make a lot of sense, doesn't it? :)

The issue here is definetely TCP-Stack/network related. Fastest way to freeze the machine is to use TCPSpeed from aminet (comm/tcp/tcpspeed.lha). I'll try out AmiTCP, next.




Marcus Gerards

Posts 58
19 Apr 2016 22:31


Ok, AmiTCP3.02b freezes as fast as Roadshow does.

System is still stable when doing stuff like lha/copying to/from USB/rendering, etc.

I have another cnet-card I could try, but after that... Any suggestions from the developers?



Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
19 Apr 2016 22:44


Marcus Gerards wrote:

Any suggestions from the developers?

Let me try to sum up:
- Your system crashes - under very heavy network copy load.
- Our guys could not reproduce this here.
- Even network traffic with 2 MB/sec did not crash us.

Do you have other hardware in your A600?
Can you please list the hardware?

Which model of power supply do you have?
Do you have a 2nd power supply you could use as test?


John William

Posts 563
20 Apr 2016 18:27


Gunnar von Boehn wrote:

Marcus Gerards wrote:

  Any suggestions from the developers?
 

 
  Let me try to sum up:
  - Your system crashes - under very heavy network copy load.
  - Our guys could not reproduce this here.
  - Even network traffic with 2 MB/sec did not crash us.
 
 
  Do you have other hardware in your A600?
  Can you please list the hardware?
 
  Which model of power supply do you have?
  Do you have a 2nd power supply you could use as test?

ooo,
He have JJens USB thing. I read through his sentence and he said USB soooo.,..it maybe the combination of USB, vampire it may incompatibility issue or like you said possible weak power supply.  I advice him to disable the USB all together and see what happens there first...if everything is rocking and rolling then that is the culprit.


Marcus Gerards

Posts 58
21 Apr 2016 18:55


@John: You may address me directly. I'm listening. And no, I don't have a RapidRoad in that machine. However, your suggestion kinda makes sense.
 
  @Gunnar: Apart from the floppy, the A600 is equipped with an A604 chip memory expansion and a Subway USB card. The A600's motherboard has been recapped with ceramic caps.
 
  I tried three different PSUs: Two 3.0A switching PSUs and one transformer/linear PSU (A500, 3.6A combined from 1988). All three are obviously old and have never been recapped. However, all supplies work fine with an ACA620, which develops lots of heat compared to the Vampire. They are also able to power an A500 with an ACA500/ACA1232-50Mhz combo. I'd guess the 68020 on the ACA620 alone draws more power than your card altogether.
 
  I'm going to build a PicoPSU/ATX-based supply with 80W, remove all additional hardware and rerun the test.
 
  What supplies are you guys using?
 
 
 
 


Ulf Andersson

Posts 29
22 Apr 2016 10:37


For my A600+Vampire 2 i am using an A500 PSU 4.5A on 5v, 1A on +12v.
This PSU i also used with my A1200+1260. Newer failed me.


Nixus Minimax

Posts 416
22 Apr 2016 11:19


Marcus Gerards wrote:
What supplies are you guys using?

I'm using some 80W lab power supply that fits the original Amiga PSU casing. I found it googleing for Amiga PSU solutions. Cost me like 30€ or so.



Marcus Gerards

Posts 58
07 May 2016 11:40


Further testing results...(both Silver core 3a & 5)

1. I replaced the stock PSU with a PicoPSU solution (80W). No change, still freezes at high network loads. Maybe not so often as with the stock PSU, but don't pin me down to that...

2. Next thing was to replace the CNET CN40 with a Netgear FA411, using cnet16.device instead of cnet.device. Maximum speed via FTP is 1,2 MB/s downstream and 1,5 MB/s upstream here.

Observation: Still freezes on fast downloads (the machine sometimes recovers after 5-10 seconds), no freezes with uploads(!) so far. Overall the situation has improved a lot!

I will try to investigate, if it's really a download problem only. This could imply a possible interrupt issue (or not).

Another user suggested to check for the revision of the GAYLE chip. So next thing would be to try another mainboard (which I'd have to get first). Did you observe anything Gayle-related?

Best regards,

Marcus



Marcus Gerards

Posts 58
07 May 2016 18:53


There's another user on A1k.org with a Rev. 1.5 A600 who's experiencing freezes, too (under network load).
 
  What boards Revs have the testers been using?


Marcus Gerards

Posts 58
11 May 2016 22:19


Update:

Following Philippes suggestion, I rdowngraded the Vampire to SILVER2 et voila - Netgear FA411 is suddenly stable with downloads, while CNet CN40 still freezes.

Next test: copy file from SMBFS-share to a FTP server. We get 1,7MByte/s here (up- and download combined) and now the FA411 freezes again after two successful transfers.

I'd say cnet.device is buggy and the faster the Vampire core gets / the higher the IOPS are, the higher the chance to triggers those bugs.



Philippe Flype
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 299
15 May 2016 23:04


Hi Marcus,

Could you test this new core (SILVER6 - bug fix only) ?

CLICK HERE


Marcus Gerards

Posts 58
16 May 2016 09:35


Philippe Flype wrote:

  Could you test this new core (SILVER6 - bug fix only) ?
 

Just did. :)

I tested 4 different PCMCIA cards and a USB-Asix-based NIC. All work fine now, no freezes, no slowdown, no lockups.

Thank you!


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