SS20 Desktop: Kernel Issues

Over the past few weeks I’ve been continuing my work trying to get the latest NetBSD working on my Sparcstation 20. The system has been hanging and I’d had trouble working out why, so I turned to reading as much as I could to see if I could find any clues. I found in the mailing list someone suggesting that not all SCSI drives are co-operative with the on board controller when running a MP (multi-processor) kernel on later versions, so I looked through my collection of SCA drives to see if I had a different model I could try. I found I had an IBM Ultrastar disk that is around 18G in size, so I swapped the Fujitsu drive (model MAJ3182MC) out for it. Surprisingly this made my system behave much better, it would install, and run on the uni-processor kernel with no issues at all where the fujitsu drives seemed to cause the system to hang frequently under disk access.

However booting with a MP kernel still would hang within about 20 minutes or during disk access, so it was at this point I joined the mailing list to ask others what I could do to resolve the issue. The people on the list are quite friendly and have been very helpful in trouble shooting. It seems that there are some kernel bugs related to MP that are present in 7.1 that are at least partially resolved in more recent versions of the kernel. Like most open source OS’s the current stable release is behind by a version or two from where the developers are currently working. It seems that there is some possibility of the fix being back-ported to 7.1, I tested out a patched MP kernel that was greatly improved in this respect. It still hung, but after a much longer period of time, and only when provoked by a specific program. Feedback from the mailing list also seems to indicate that choosing not to use the on board SCSI is another way that I could work around the problem.

So I now have multiple options for running my system. I could switch to using a single processor, I’d have the option of either a 60Mhz SuperSparc (currently installed with a dual 50Mhz module) or 75Mhz Ross HyperSparc, and everything should work well. Alternatively I could acquire an SBus SCSI card to connect my hard drives, or forgo a local disk entirely by using networking booting and a NFS share, both avoiding having to use the on board SCSI. Finally I could use the system as it is now with the patched 7.1 kernel, it worked well enough that this is quite feasible. I’m leaning towards booting the machine over the network at the moment.

In the short term with Christmas approaching, I’ll be putting the project aside until I have more time in the new year.

Loader Larry for DOS

Today’s game was made by Soleau Software, originally released back in 1993. The company was mostly one person, William Soleau, who was a prolific producer of shareware for MS-DOS machines during the early 1990’s, and is still developing new games today.

Loader Larry can be considered a more advanced version of Block man as it has more game mechanics, although the puzzles aren’t necessarily harder. Interestingly both games came out in the same year, I haven’t seen anything to confirm this, but I assume Block man came first as it is the simpler one. I also noted that Taking Care of Business is very similar as well, which makes me wonder if these games are a clone of something older that I can’t think of or find.

Graphically Larry uses pretty much the same technology that all MS-DOS Soleau Software games did, EGA graphics at 640×350 resolution. This has unfortunately squished my screen shots a bit vertically, so I’ve had to scale them to appear as they would on screen. Artistically it’s a little better than Block man with better detail in the tiles, but both are comparable given they use the same technology. PC speaker sound is present but fairly basic.

The controls are pretty much the same as those found in Block man, the movement however has been slightly improved. You can now turn around without moving a tile, and can pick up blocks that are under another. This makes it easier to move around in general, but care still needs to be taken so you don’t get trapped.

I found Loader Larry to be a challenging and charming despite its technical simplicity. It’s just the right amount of game to fill a gap where you need a bit of entertainment and challenge without being so big you have to invest loads of time. That being said you might not find it re-playable once you solve all the puzzles. Soleau Software is still around, so if you have nostalgia for these games you can still get them at their website, where they still offer registration for the MS-DOS games for $8 US.

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