Re: Raspberry Pi write cycles
On 8/24/2019 2:16 AM, Lars Brinkhoff via cctalk wrote: Zane Healy wrote: I use RPi3’s for PDP-10 and DPS-8 emulation, I haven’t tried them for VAX emulation. I would like to try a RPi4 for VAX emulation. I have an RPi4 running ITS. I attached a fast USB3 memory rather than running off the SD card. For the full ITS rebuild from scratch it takes two hours rather, compared to one hour on my Core i7 2.4 GHz laptop. An RPi2 with slow SD card takes around 24 hours! I just did a "make all" for SimH on a 1GB Pi 4B using a SanDisk industrial 8GB SD card and it took 75 minutes to build the 75 different emulators. It has the latest updates to Raspbian Buster. What USB3 thumb drive did you use? -- John H. Reinhardt
Re: Raspberry Pi write cycles
Zane Healy wrote: > I use RPi3’s for PDP-10 and DPS-8 emulation, I haven’t tried them for > VAX emulation. I would like to try a RPi4 for VAX emulation. I have an RPi4 running ITS. I attached a fast USB3 memory rather than running off the SD card. For the full ITS rebuild from scratch it takes two hours rather, compared to one hour on my Core i7 2.4 GHz laptop. An RPi2 with slow SD card takes around 24 hours!
Re: Raspberry Pi write cycles
> On Aug 23, 2019, at 12:30 PM, John Klos via cctalk > wrote: > > Any Pi processor newer than the original ARM1176JZ should run NetBSD pretty > well. My 900 MHz Pi 2 runs NetBSD/vax almost as fast as a VAXstation 4000/30 > (VLC), which is about 5 VUPS. An original Pi or Pi Zero should be able to > emulate a VAX at least as fast as an 11/780. When I was using an RPi2 for VAX emulation, I showed as having about 1.6 VUPS under OpenVMS 7.3. I’ve since moved to a VMware cluster for my VAX emulation needs. It can beat my fastest VAX. I use RPi3’s for PDP-10 and DPS-8 emulation, I haven’t tried them for VAX emulation. I would like to try a RPi4 for VAX emulation. Zane
Re: Raspberry Pi write cycles
But then it turned out not to be the load at all. No matter what I ran on that Pi, it would corrupt its SD cards in a matter of weeks (the symptom was that the fourth bit of some bytes would just stick on). I assume it was just something broken in the Pi itself. You can simply root off of a USB disk by changing the "root=" parameter in cmdline.txt on the FAT partition on your SD card. Since the card won't otherwise be used unless you mount it if you do this, your next card should last forever. I've got a Suptronics x830 board and enclosure with an 8 TB drive which boots this way. Any Pi processor newer than the original ARM1176JZ should run NetBSD pretty well. My 900 MHz Pi 2 runs NetBSD/vax almost as fast as a VAXstation 4000/30 (VLC), which is about 5 VUPS. An original Pi or Pi Zero should be able to emulate a VAX at least as fast as an 11/780. One issue with CPU intensive things on Raspberry Pis is that even if your power supply provides plenty of current, the slightest drop in voltage can cause throttling. If you know your power supply is good but see a lightning symbol anyway, add "avoid_warnings=2" to config.txt on your SD card's FAT partition. John
Re: Raspberry Pi write cycles
On 8/14/19 8:04 PM, dwight via cctalk wrote: > Some of the newer larger SD cards use a different write voltage than 3.3V. > There is a ways of asking the card what voltage it likes during the init. > Using the full 3.3V on these parts can damage them. > They are all required to init with 3.3V but the voltage for writing may be > different. > I've only played with the ones smaller than 2GB. But any time I get a new > one, I check the voltage. > Dwight Does the Pi use the spi interface or the SD 4 bit interface? The latter is faster and I'd expect the Pi to use it. I've modified the bootloader on my OPi systems to use USB pen drives. Seems to work just fine. FWIW, SD, SDHC and SDXC cards work fine (per spec) at 3.3V. I use 16 and 32GB ones at 3.3V and they work flawlessly. You *can* command SDHC and SDXC to 1.8V, but the conversation is usually started at 3.3V. --Chuck
Re: Raspberry Pi write cycles
Some of the newer larger SD cards use a different write voltage than 3.3V. There is a ways of asking the card what voltage it likes during the init. Using the full 3.3V on these parts can damage them. They are all required to init with 3.3V but the voltage for writing may be different. I've only played with the ones smaller than 2GB. But any time I get a new one, I check the voltage. Dwight From: cctalk on behalf of Alexander Schreiber via cctalk Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 2019 2:36 PM To: Adam Thornton ; General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Raspberry Pi write cycles On Fri, Aug 09, 2019 at 02:43:38PM -0700, Adam Thornton via cctalk wrote: > I did have a case where the Pi I was using as secondary DNS/DHCP and as the > secondary backup server (using USB spinning disk) destroyed its SD card. > > But then it turned out not to be the load at all. No matter what I ran on > that Pi, it would corrupt its SD cards in a matter of weeks (the symptom > was that the fourth bit of some bytes would just stick on). I assume it > was just something broken in the Pi itself. The two usual suspects: - standard consumer sd cards don't do so well outside of their design use case (mostly cameras and media players) and I suspect a journaling FS (which is a perfectly reasonable default, usually ext4 these days, for Linux) is probably especially bad - so I recommend looking for industrial grade SD cards, they cost a little more, are usually only available in smaller sizes (I've seen 8, 16, 32 GB) but they tend to last a lot longer - sub-par power supply, having the power brown out a little is _bad_ for basically any kind of reliable operation - make sure your PSU can actually reliably deliver enough juice (ISTR the recommendation being 3+ amps), I suppose the "official" ones from the Pi foundation should be up to the job > (Traffic encryption via simh is incredibly painful. You have to turn login > delay way up to run NetBSD on VAX on a Pi if you want to be able to ssh > into it; the machine itself runs fine-ish, but the zillions of cycles to > encrypt the traffic swamps it in no time.) If you want to stick with the Raspberry Pi platform, what kind of Pi are you currently using? If it is a Pi 3, maybe try a Pi 4, that is noticeably beefier. Note: with the Pi 4, you have to use the official power supply and cable as they screwed up the USB-C side (by _not_ exactly copying the schematic in the specs, saving one resistor on the BOM with the result that high end cables will mis-recognize the Pi as an 'audio accessory' and not power it). > And, you know, if you manage to cause my SD cards in those machines to > fail, well, gosh, guess I'm out $10 or so for a new one. I'm not bothering > to back up any of the stuff inside 'em, I assume you've got a master image that you just write to a new SD card, replace card, power cycle Pi, done? Kind regards, Alex. -- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison
Re: Raspberry Pi write cycles
On Fri, Aug 09, 2019 at 02:43:38PM -0700, Adam Thornton via cctalk wrote: > I did have a case where the Pi I was using as secondary DNS/DHCP and as the > secondary backup server (using USB spinning disk) destroyed its SD card. > > But then it turned out not to be the load at all. No matter what I ran on > that Pi, it would corrupt its SD cards in a matter of weeks (the symptom > was that the fourth bit of some bytes would just stick on). I assume it > was just something broken in the Pi itself. The two usual suspects: - standard consumer sd cards don't do so well outside of their design use case (mostly cameras and media players) and I suspect a journaling FS (which is a perfectly reasonable default, usually ext4 these days, for Linux) is probably especially bad - so I recommend looking for industrial grade SD cards, they cost a little more, are usually only available in smaller sizes (I've seen 8, 16, 32 GB) but they tend to last a lot longer - sub-par power supply, having the power brown out a little is _bad_ for basically any kind of reliable operation - make sure your PSU can actually reliably deliver enough juice (ISTR the recommendation being 3+ amps), I suppose the "official" ones from the Pi foundation should be up to the job > (Traffic encryption via simh is incredibly painful. You have to turn login > delay way up to run NetBSD on VAX on a Pi if you want to be able to ssh > into it; the machine itself runs fine-ish, but the zillions of cycles to > encrypt the traffic swamps it in no time.) If you want to stick with the Raspberry Pi platform, what kind of Pi are you currently using? If it is a Pi 3, maybe try a Pi 4, that is noticeably beefier. Note: with the Pi 4, you have to use the official power supply and cable as they screwed up the USB-C side (by _not_ exactly copying the schematic in the specs, saving one resistor on the BOM with the result that high end cables will mis-recognize the Pi as an 'audio accessory' and not power it). > And, you know, if you manage to cause my SD cards in those machines to > fail, well, gosh, guess I'm out $10 or so for a new one. I'm not bothering > to back up any of the stuff inside 'em, I assume you've got a master image that you just write to a new SD card, replace card, power cycle Pi, done? Kind regards, Alex. -- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison
Re: Raspberry Pi write cycles
Ditto on Pi taking more amps than advertised. Another catch though are counterfeit SD cards. I only recently learned about them from a friend and YouTube video but they can get into online stores sometimes without the seller even knowing. I ended up finding two of mine bought from ham radio expo are counterfeit. They were labelled 32GB and generic/bulk packaging. However any more than 8GB will be corrupt so they're really 8 and the other sectors will either be corrupt or overwrite the original sectors. It's interesting that it doesn't report errors so the OS is fine writing to the sectors. Only way to tell that I've seen I'd actually writing to full amount of data and confirming all the files are valid. On Fri, Aug 9, 2019, 6:19 PM Jim MacKenzie via cctalk wrote: > > > -Original Message- > From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Adam > Thornton via cctalk > Sent: Friday, August 9, 2019 3:44 PM > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts < > cctalk@classiccmp.org> > Subject: Raspberry Pi write cycles > > I did have a case where the Pi I was using as secondary DNS/DHCP and as > the secondary backup server (using USB spinning disk) destroyed its SD card. > > But then it turned out not to be the load at all. No matter what I ran on > that Pi, it would corrupt its SD cards in a matter of weeks (the symptom > was that the fourth bit of some bytes would just stick on). I assume it > was just something broken in the Pi itself. > === > The usual cause of this is an insufficiently beefy power supply. Every Pi > that I ever had that ate SD cards ceased the habit when I put a better > supply on it. > > Jim > >
RE: Raspberry Pi write cycles
-Original Message- From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Adam Thornton via cctalk Sent: Friday, August 9, 2019 3:44 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Raspberry Pi write cycles I did have a case where the Pi I was using as secondary DNS/DHCP and as the secondary backup server (using USB spinning disk) destroyed its SD card. But then it turned out not to be the load at all. No matter what I ran on that Pi, it would corrupt its SD cards in a matter of weeks (the symptom was that the fourth bit of some bytes would just stick on). I assume it was just something broken in the Pi itself. === The usual cause of this is an insufficiently beefy power supply. Every Pi that I ever had that ate SD cards ceased the habit when I put a better supply on it. Jim
Re: Raspberry Pi write cycles
On 8/9/2019 3:43 PM, Adam Thornton via cctalk wrote: And, you know, if you manage to cause my SD cards in those machines to fail, well, gosh, guess I'm out $10 or so for a new one. I'm not bothering to back up any of the stuff inside 'em, btw (so those of you using 'em, seriously, save your work elsewhere if it's precious--and, um, yeah, unless you're on OpenVMS, TOPS-20, or ITS, you don't have a TCP/IP stack and since you don't have a direct terminal interface into it, that probably means copying and pasting from the terminal session...but if you have something you really want off it that's larger than a couple of screens full, just write me a note and I can likely extract it for you more reasonably). Adam Have you looked at industrial sd cards? Ben.
Raspberry Pi write cycles
I did have a case where the Pi I was using as secondary DNS/DHCP and as the secondary backup server (using USB spinning disk) destroyed its SD card. But then it turned out not to be the load at all. No matter what I ran on that Pi, it would corrupt its SD cards in a matter of weeks (the symptom was that the fourth bit of some bytes would just stick on). I assume it was just something broken in the Pi itself. I will state here, for the record, that if someone can spam effectively -- or be a botnet C node -- from TOPS/10 on a PDP-10 emulated on my Pi, my irritation at having my systems abused will probably be overwhelmed by my admiration at their dedication. (Traffic encryption via simh is incredibly painful. You have to turn login delay way up to run NetBSD on VAX on a Pi if you want to be able to ssh into it; the machine itself runs fine-ish, but the zillions of cycles to encrypt the traffic swamps it in no time.) And, you know, if you manage to cause my SD cards in those machines to fail, well, gosh, guess I'm out $10 or so for a new one. I'm not bothering to back up any of the stuff inside 'em, btw (so those of you using 'em, seriously, save your work elsewhere if it's precious--and, um, yeah, unless you're on OpenVMS, TOPS-20, or ITS, you don't have a TCP/IP stack and since you don't have a direct terminal interface into it, that probably means copying and pasting from the terminal session...but if you have something you really want off it that's larger than a couple of screens full, just write me a note and I can likely extract it for you more reasonably). Adam
