Some first results!

Of course I wanted to get some results quickly, but how to achieve that? Looking at WarpOS there are 2 critical functions who could help me to get just that: Results!

RunPPC and Run68K are the two main functions which execute code, RunPPC is called from 68K code to execute PPC code and Run68K is the other way around.

Looking at some of the sources of the demo programs included with WarpOS, the most simple ones just used RunPPC. But after a few hours of coding and a working RunPPC there was nothing to show for. Of course: code got executed, but no meaningful PPC functions were there yet, let alone functions with any meaningful output. So GetInfo() was included in the first version of sonnet.library and various tag functions. This resulted in the very first WarpOS-like program to be run: GetInfo!

Here it is. The MPC750 showing itself for the first time. The GetInfo program reads (amongst other info) the PVR which is a special register of the PowerPC with the CPU info in it.

Looking at the sources of the other WarpOS demo programs, it seemed that CyberPI was an easy program to convert. As the PowerPC of the Sonnet can only access the memory on the Sonnet itself (and PCI memory). WarpOS programs need to be patched to be loaded into the Sonnet memory. Three simple patches later this was the result:

CyberPI with 100000 decimals is completed in 1 minute and 28 seconds. Compared to:

50 minutes on a 25 MHz 68030
30 minutes on a 25 MHz 68040
15 minutes on a 50 MHz 68060
9 minutes on a 150 MHz 603e
4,5 minutes on a 200 MHz 604e

Cybermand also looked like a program which could be patched easily. And it worked almost out of the box:

Next stop is to get the Run68K going followed by multitasking (scheduler) on the PPC.