Multi-core/Many-core OS research

The Barrelfish Operating System is research effort addressing how to build OS for multi-core/many-core and heterogeneous core computers. AMD also has some related many-core publications.

Windows Vista on Acer Aspire One (A-150)

Windows XP on my wife’s Acer Aspire One finally died an ungraceful malware induced death and instead of re-installing I figured I’d give Vista a chance.  First step was to get an external USB DVD drive.   I booted a 32-bit Vista SP1 DVD from an ASUS DR-08D1S-U and the basic install went without a hitch. 

Next the adventure of locating drivers.  Out of the box Vista SP1 did not support the wireless NIC, onboard NIC, video, or sound.  Not a big surprise.  Unfortunately, Acer does not provide Vista drivers. 

The first thing I usually try in the situation is the onboard NIC.  It was listed as a “Realtek RTL8101 Family PCI-E Fast Ethernet NIC (NDIS 6.0)”.  At the time of this post a driver is available from the Realtek driver download site.  Followed the menus shown to get to PCI Express Software.

  The driver that worked for me was version 6.225 dated 2009/7/17 in the file named Install_Vista_6225_0709.zip.

After installing the onboard NIC is listed as “Realtek PCIe FE Family Controller”.

Since I had a wired connection to the network I activated Vista and started Windows Update.  Let that chug away downloading and installing for an hour or so.  After all the updates the onboard wireless NIC, sound and video are working.

Porting fracplanet to Qt4 (actually Qt3Support)

I decided to try a quick hack-and-slash port of fracplanet to a more recent version of Qt.  Since I’m using a windows box I installed the Qt SDK for Windows.  Also, downloaded and installed the version of MinGW from trolltech as part of the install.  I installed Qt to C:\Devel\Qt\4.5.1 and MinGW to C:\Devel\Qt\MinGW
First step ran qt3to4 on fracplanet.pro, then qmake VERSION_NUMBER=0.4 fracplanet.pro, and make.  I’m missing dependencies like boost so I didn’t expect this to get very far.  It didn’t.
First problem was the VERSION_NUMBER=0.4.  At line 32 in control_about.cpp their isn’t a automatic conversion from QChar to double.  So next I did qmake VERSION_NUMBER=1 fracplanet.pro, and make.
Got to line 55 of control_about.cpp and had to change it to:
license->setTextFormat(Qt::PlainText);
Did make again and now the boost problem.  Since this was supposed to be a quick hack-and-slash I didn’t bother building boost. Found and  installed Boost-1.34.1-mingw.exe into C:\Devel\Boost-1.34.1 and added the following directives to fracplanet.pro:
LIBS += -lboost_program_options-mt
INCLUDEPATH += C:\Devel\Boost-1.34.1\include
LIBPATH += C:\Devel\Boost-1.34.1\lib
LIBPATH += C:\Devel\MinGW\lib
Then redid qmake VERSION_NUMBER=1 fracplanet.pro, and make.
Next problem was a mission qhbuttongroup.h in control_render.h at line 27.  Appears that the qhbuttongroup was rolled into qbuttongroup at some point. qt3to4 didn’t pick this one up so I mannually changed qhbuttongroup.h to q3buttongroup.h.  Same in control_terrain.h.
Copied usage_text.h out of a previous build with cygwin to get around figuring out how to actually build the documentation.
Changed  line 113 in fracplanet_main.cpp to
progress_dialog->setLabelText(QString(progress_info.c_str()));
Added the following before the use of glDrawRangeElements in triangle_mesh_viewer_display.cpp
PFNGLDRAWRANGEELEMENTSPROC glDrawRangeElements = NULL;
glDrawRangeElements = (PFNGLDRAWRANGEELEMENTSPROC)wglGetProcAddress("glDrawRangeElements");

Then redid qmake VERSION_NUMBER=1 fracplanet.pro, and make.  And the end result… A working copy of fracplanet built against Qt 4 compiled with MingW. 

OK, technically it’s still Qt 3 since it uses Qt3Support.  Also, has to be run from the command line at the moment.  Might fix it up and package it later.

Building fracplanet with cygwin

Took a whack at building fracplanet with cygwin on a Windows box yesterday afternoon.  It was too hot outside to mow the lawn.

Some things that I had to do to get it built:

• Edit the fracplanet.pro file so it could find the installed version of boost.  I added the following:

LIBS += -lboost_program_options-gcc-mt
INCLUDEPATH += /usr/include/boost-1_33_1

• Edit the line 103 in /usr/include/boost-1_33_1/boost/random/mersenne_twister.hpp to

x[j]=gen;

instead of

x[j]=gen();

• Had to go back and install libglut for cygwin.

After that the program compiled and linked.

I ended up using Xming instead of the X server bundled with cygwin.  Of course I had to make sure to start Xming before bash and set the display by hand (export DISPLAY=localhost:0.0).

 

Here is my first planet.

And here it is rendered by POV-Ray for Windows.

MSN Web Messenger

Started playing with the Ubuntu Netbook Remix on an Acer Aspire One and “needed” a quick way to get on Live without using a native linux client.  After a bit of searching came across the MSN Web Messenger.

Homeworld source

Just came across the WikiPedia page for Commercial video games with freely available source code
and noticed that Homeworld is on the list. It's a classic that I used to play.

SDL oriented source is available with restrictions through HomeworldSDL and a Windows SDL version is available here.

Team Mediaportal and dynamic IP

At the moment the computer I'm running Team Mediaportal on gets a new dynamic IP every couple of days so the Mediaportal looses track of the TV Service.

My hack to get around this is to manually stop the TVService; update the SQL table with the server information with the computers current IP; then manually start the TVService.