On Thu, Aug 03, 2023 at 03:39:37PM +0200, Mark Kettenis wrote: > > Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2023 23:11:43 +0200 > > From: Robert Palm <develo...@robert-palm.de> > > > > I own a VF 2 version 1.2a and can successfully install / boot the machine. > > > > The inner network port (dwqe1) works at 100 full duplex and receives > > ipv4 via DHCP. > > > > The outer port currently doesn't seem to get an ip, but gets active > > and in full-duplex 100. > > There is a reason why the VisonFive 2 isn't listed as supported on > > https://www.openbsd.org/riscv64.html > > There are stll bugs and... > > > It seems a lot depends on proper .dtb files (which kind users shared > > with me). > > Yes, and it is a total mess. The device trees are being changed as > support for the board is upstreamed in the Linux kernel. But their > firmware still provides their hacked up device trees that they use > with their hacked up vendor kernel. > > > How did you create the .dtb files ? > > They're build from: > > https://github.com/starfive-tech/linux/tree/JH7110_VisionFive2_upstream > > But that branch keeps getting rebased, and they changed things again, > so PCIe stopped working. So I've decided to stick with what I have > for development and wait until the device tree bindings have been > accepted by the Linux maintainers. Meanwhile, if you're running > -current on one of these, expect your setup to break at some point in > the future. > > > Do you plan to update them ? > > The plan is to provide usable device tree in ports as soon as there is > an upstream Linux version that only needs minor patching. > > > They seem to be quite different to the "official" starfive releases > > (which don't work for me with OpenBSD). > > As I said, that's just the typical unmaintainable vendor crap. > > > Do you plan more work on the VF2 ? > > I probably consider it done as soon as I finc the remaining dwqe(4) > bugs have been found and fixed. > > Cheers, > > Mark
Moving this to misc@ as it's not really technical with my words: Thanks Mark for all the work you've done on the starfive VF2. I suspect that the riscv64 SBC board from pine64.org uses the same SoC so these are probably very compatible. I spoke to Miguel L. privately and we compared what our goals were for a visionfive 2-like computer. I won't say what he said but my reply to him that my order of preference for this was "router, build host, network bastion, GUI client.", so your quest to find bugs with dwqe(4) give me that spark of hope in my eyes. Perhaps if networking is good I'll make one like this a router to replace the RPI4b that I currently use as router. Things move so fast it seems just like yesterday when I configured my managed switch to do vlan routing with the raspberry pi. So the 2nd ethernet interface on the starfive doesn't interest me all that much as long as I can get 600 Mbit/s or more through one port on a riscv64 computer. One trend I've noticed in my usage of computers in Germany is that the cost of electricity is high, the computers keep getting smaller and the end of the days of PC's seem to be close. My wish is to get a riscv64 workstation one day and I've signed up to sifive's P550 (something likethat) notification, when they ship that board. My biggest computers (An Apple G5 close to 20 y.o., and a Xeon 4 core from 2015) are off these days. They simply suck too much electricity. It is cheaper for me to rent a cloud computer from hetzner for a year, than letting any of these just idle with no load in terms of electricity costs. And I've done just that for a new project of mine which I'm hoping to complete in about four years time. That said, I do need to sleep my workstation more when I'm not around to use it. I could save perhaps 100 EUR just by doing so. In that regard I'm very glad for the efforts that go into 'zzz' and perhaps even 'ZZZ'. Regarding the RISC-V computers I do have my work cut out for them and I do look forward with you sharing and testing patches on one board that you agreed to take a look at. The hardware isn't here yet so it's not on its way to Netherlands yet. Also I've moved my QEMU riscv64 instance to a VPS where I have a bit more resources like faster disk lookup and soon after I move patches from the old QEMU which ran on the raspberry pi 4b I'm able to retire that old instance. I'll be saving money locally by doing so. Currently I'm building kernels on it to have .o files premade so that compiling doesn't take forever :-). Long mail, I'll stop now I could go on and on, and who's got time? :-). Best Regards, -peter -- Over thirty years experience on Unix-like Operating Systems starting with QNX.
