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Everything Else => Zaurus Distro Support and Discussion => Distros, Development, and Model Specific Forums => Archived Forums => Sharp ROMs => Topic started by: Anonymous on February 04, 2004, 07:49:56 pm

Title: 4 sharp rom kernels to choose from
Post by: Anonymous on February 04, 2004, 07:49:56 pm: Hi,
I see from download page , there are 4 different sharp rom kernels for sl-5600.
We have two preemptive standard kernels (version 1.1 dated 1/4), version 1.2 (dated 1/18) .

Then 2 special kernels (version 1.0) dated 1/6, and version 1.1 dated 1/18 (all about same size).

From reading descriptions, the only thing different I see is that the \"special kernel\" may have wireless extensions turned on but that this was not tested.

Is this the only real difference between special and preemptive)?
What was added in later versions?
So I guess if you want to run wellenreiter you want special kernel 1.1?

Is that correct

Thanks
Greg
Title: 4 sharp rom kernels to choose from
Post by: Tehas on February 04, 2004, 08:42:42 pm: There are two main possibilities. Preemptive and preemptive with overclocking. Each of these has had a patch uploaded to correct some wireless stuff. So, go for the most recent of either one depending upon wheter you want to try the overclocking boost.
Title: 4 sharp rom kernels to choose from
Post by: rgbman on February 04, 2004, 10:54:39 pm: Quote
There are two main possibilities. Preemptive and preemptive with overclocking. Each of these has had a patch uploaded to correct some wireless stuff. So, go for the most recent of either one depending upon wheter you want to try the overclocking boost.

I believe the first two are just two versions of the pre-emptive standard, meaning no overclocking, and the second two are versions of the special, which includes the anti-patch-patch, and overclocking.

I\'ve tried both the pre-emptive (v1.2) and the special (v1.1.), but can\'t tell the difference. I mean they both are faster than the defaul kernel (or non pre-emptive), but clock speed remains the same in /proc/cpuinfo from pre-emptive standard and the special. Am I missing something or is that expected?

File sizes _are_ slightly different between the two.
Title: 4 sharp rom kernels to choose from
Post by: tumnus on February 05, 2004, 03:19:48 am: The ZUG downloads doesn\'t seem to let you override or delete a previous version, so when I added Wireless Extensions to just the plain pre-emptive kernel and the \'Special\' (overclocked) kernel I could only add them to the downloads.

The plain pre-emptive kernel is simply the standard 5600 kernel source with the pre-emptive patch and PXA250 bug workaround turned off (which is what really gives the speed boost)

The \'Special\' kernel is actually the C860 kernel source configured for the 5600 with various patches applied, including the pre-emptive patch and a patch to give access to the CCCR register which is what controls the XScale CPU speed. Also the PXA250 bug workaround is turned off in this kernel too, which again is what gives the main speed boost.

To benchmark your 5600 with different kernels, use something like this: http://laurent.lieben.free.fr/zaurus_kernel/dhry21 (http://laurent.lieben.free.fr/zaurus_kernel/dhry21)
(It\'s only a binary so you have to copy it to somewhere in the Path on your Z and make sure it is executable)

With the \'Special\' kernel you can control the clock speed using this application:
http://www.piro.hopto.org/~piro/zaurus/qcl...ge_0.1a_arm.ipk (http://www.piro.hopto.org/~piro/zaurus/qclockchange_0.1a_arm.ipk)

This is different to QOverclock on the 5500/5000D as the StrongARM CPU uses different registers for controlling the CPU speed. You can downclock your 5600 with this tool and it remembers the CPU speed even when you suspend and resume, unlike the 5500. So the \'Special\' kernel is more flexible.
Title: 4 sharp rom kernels to choose from
Post by: ced on February 05, 2004, 05:40:32 am: what people should do, is creating an init.d script to set the normal clock speed if they don\'t want to overclock their zaurus. by doing this little trick then we don\'t need multiple kernel... just one.
Title: 4 sharp rom kernels to choose from
Post by: Anonymous on February 05, 2004, 03:16:38 pm: Tumnus, is it supposed to be a .bin file? It shows up as .txt

Thanks
Title: 4 sharp rom kernels to choose from
Post by: tumnus on February 05, 2004, 04:38:50 pm: Shows up as a .bin file for me (which is what it is supposed to be).
Title: 4 sharp rom kernels to choose from
Post by: kurochka on February 07, 2004, 07:33:37 am: I don\'t seem to find where all these four kernels are. In the download section there is only one kernel for 5600. Am I missing something? I want to be really careful about this.
Title: 4 sharp rom kernels to choose from
Post by: tumnus on February 07, 2004, 08:45:29 pm: Look in this section:
http://www.zaurususergroup.com/modules.php...download&sid=53 (http://www.zaurususergroup.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=UpDownload&file=index&req=viewsdownload&sid=53)
Title: 4 sharp rom kernels to choose from
Post by: Anonymous on February 09, 2004, 01:34:36 am: Hi Tumnus,

So if the speed using the special kernel is boosted to 471mhz, what is it with just the pre-emptive standard kernel?

I do see that in the special kernel it uses an c860 source. Also is the wireless extensions in all of above?

Wouldn\'t the overclocking be present in all of these kernels though?

Thanks
Greg
Title: 4 sharp rom kernels to choose from
Post by: tumnus on February 09, 2004, 03:58:27 am: Quote
So if the speed using the special kernel is boosted to 471mhz, what is it with just the pre-emptive standard kernel?
400Mhz

Quote
I do see that in the special kernel it uses an c860 source. Also is the wireless extensions in all of above?
Yes

Quote
Wouldn\'t the overclocking be present in all of these kernels though?
No
Title: 4 sharp rom kernels to choose from
Post by: Anonymous on February 10, 2004, 09:58:16 am: Thank you for the reply. Its becoming clearer to me. These are just kernel upgrades , you can use them with different roms (non Sharp ones). That way if you opt for non sharp ROM , you can still go for the speed increase....
Title: 4 sharp rom kernels to choose from
Post by: tumnus on February 10, 2004, 10:19:50 am: Well, maybe. It has only been tested with the Sharp ROMs AFAIK. The OpenZaurus ROM, for example, might well depend on something that isn\'t normally compiled into the Sharp kernels.
Title: 4 sharp rom kernels to choose from
Post by: Anonymous on February 17, 2004, 02:17:56 pm: Does the \"special\" overclock by default ? ... Or do you have to install the app mentioned above to overclock it ?

Is it possible to get the \"special\" without the overclocking out-of the box ?

Cheers
JohnM
Title: 4 sharp rom kernels to choose from
Post by: ced on February 18, 2004, 03:12:53 am: yes by creating a init.d file like that:

Code: [Select]
#!/bin/sh echo 0241 > /proc/cccr_change
Title: 4 sharp rom kernels to choose from
Post by: tumnus on February 18, 2004, 03:41:04 am: The clock speed is also remembered between suspend/resume cycles (although not reboots) when changed directly (as ced demonstrated) or by using the clock change app.

I might see about removing the pre-emptive patch as it doesn\'t give a significant speed boost (it\'s turning off the PXA250 bug workaround that doubles the speed) and it seems to cause more trouble than its worth. I think I\'ve found a problem with the patch and the VNC server. I\'ll also reduce the number of kernel binaries to just one if I get time to do this.
Title: 4 sharp rom kernels to choose from
Post by: Ethereal on February 24, 2004, 07:26:13 pm: Quote
I might see about removing the pre-emptive patch as it doesn\'t give a significant speed boost (it\'s turning off the PXA250 bug workaround that doubles the speed) and it seems to cause more trouble than its worth. I think I\'ve found a problem with the patch and the VNC server. I\'ll also reduce the number of kernel binaries to just one if I get time to do this.

Any progress on this? This sounds like a good compromise between performance enhancement and compatibility problems/other unintended consequences.

BTW, in the \"is this a sick joke?\" dept., my SL-5600 with PXA 255 processor arrived with a kernel that I assume has the PXA250 cache workaround, since it benchmarks at about 160 VAX MIPS with dhry21.
Title: 4 sharp rom kernels to choose from
Post by: Ethereal on February 24, 2004, 10:03:51 pm: Quote
BTW, in the \"is this a sick joke?\" dept., my SL-5600 with PXA 255 processor arrived with a kernel that I assume has the PXA250 cache workaround, since it benchmarks at about 160 VAX MIPS with dhry21.

And now with special kernel...VAX MIPS 271!