Re: [PATCH 0/5] m68k: Instantiate ESP and next-net in the next-cube machine

[Mark Cave-Ayland]

On 30/09/2023 14:23, Thomas Huth wrote:

> Mark Cave-Ayland recently asked me about the ESP patches for the
> next-cube machine that I once posted a long time ago, but never
> got it merged (since Mark is currently working on improving the
> ESP device). With his help, I dusted off the ESP patch, but we
> had to discover that the firmware also wants to see the NIC
> device in the MMIO region, otherwise it often crashes or hangs.
> So here's now the current set of patches for the next-cube machine.
> Both, the ESP SCSI controller and the NIC do not properly work
> yet, but at least the next-cube firmware gets much further now
> during it selftest, so I think this is a good base for future
> work and experiments.
>
> Thomas Huth (5):
>    hw/m68k/next-cube: Mirror BIOS to address 0
>    hw/scsi/esp: Work around problem with PIO data read for the NeXT-Cube
>      machine
>    m68k: Instantiate the ESP SCSI controller for the NeXTcube machine
>    hw/m68k/next-cube: Remove unused NEXTDMA_EN code
>    m68k: Add NeXTcube network controller
>
>   hw/m68k/next-cube.c         | 194 +++++++++----
>   hw/net/meson.build          |   1 +
>   hw/net/next-net.c           | 538 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>   hw/scsi/esp.c               |   2 +-
>   include/hw/m68k/next-cube.h |  10 +
>   5 files changed, 692 insertions(+), 53 deletions(-)
>   create mode 100644 hw/net/next-net.c

Thanks Thomas! So... just looking at this series (along with the existing NeXT 
files), it is obvious that the NeXT code hasn't been touched for some time. The 
problem I see with trying to bring the code in line with our current standards is 
that there are still quite a lot of experimental parts within it, so it's not always 
even clear what the correct behaviour should be without quite a bit of 
experimentation and testing.

If the plan is to keep the NeXT code and to work on it over time, then I'm inclined 
to say merge this series as-is so at least it provides test cases for hardware such 
as ESP, brings upstream up-to-date with Bryce's original work, and allow a future 
cleanup. So on this basis:

Acked-by: Mark Cave-Ayland <mark.cave-ayland@ilande.co.uk>


ATB,

Mark.