Starting last year I resumed writing yearly review after a long break. Since 2019 was no less active in various personal computer related projects, I believe it may start a tradition of such retrospective reviews for the years to come. So without further ado, I will move on the last year's activities.
Downgrade from Radeon RX 460 to Radeon R7 370
For almost two years, I used the AMD Radeon RX 460 GPU based Asus Dual RX460 OC edition graphics card. However, since 2019, I started using NetBSD much more regularly alongside with Manjaro Linux (which is still my primary OS) and, unfortunately, Radeon RX 460 GPU is unsupported by the former. Because of that, I decided to downgrade to an older generation hardware, so I can be comfortable in using them. After a broad research, I opted for the GIGABYTE GV-R737WF2OC-2GD which is a Radeon R7 370 based card. R7 370 uses Pitcairn Pro GPU core based on the 1st GCN architecture. The main motivation behind choosing this specific model was its similar performance to RX 460, its reasonable price and its availability in stock at local stores.
Despite some fears, the card didn't disappoint. NetBSD immediately recognized the GPU and applied proper drivers giving the expected hardware acceleration. Because of this, I started using NetBSD on my desktop quite regularly. To my surprise, it visually felt more responsive than RX 460 on Linux as well. Despite being an older model, its performance is actually at par with the replaced card in general usage, except possibly increased power usage.
Unexpectedly though, one local shop offered Dell QLogic 57810 (Dell part 540-BBGS) dual port 10Gbit network card for a sizable discount. I checked that it was supported by at least FreeBSD, the Linux kernel had mainline kernel driver as well, so I took the bait and bought it. The card itself is much bigger than Edimax, having an active cooler and requires PCI-E 2.0 x8 slot instead of PCI-E 2.0 x4. On the other hand, it is a way more professional product having sophisticated firmware and two SFP+ ports. Once installed, it worked out of the box in Windows, Linux and FreeBSD, with no manual work required. Contrary to Tehuti NIC, it had no issues on resume in Linux as well. In general, I believe this purchase was pretty successful, except the fact that it is not supported by NetBSD.
I dream to port the FreeBSD driver to NetBSD, however, it may be too complicated task, since the driver is huge. Nevertheless, I am planning to make an attempt this year (sometime in 2020) and see what happens.
The new hard drives were two identical Toshiba MG04ACA600E model drives which showed quite visible performance improvement in read operations but write speed seemingly was restricted by driver issues and showed only minimal improvement compared to older drives. Thanks to LVM RAID0 setup I also reused older 3TB drives as additional back-up storage.
NetBSD support is somewhere in the middle among the three. In order to boot the system with "ACPI aware OS" option enabled in BIOS, IDE should be set to "legacy mode". Otherwise, various timeout exceptions will occur and system will fail to boot. Similarly to OpenBSD, neither USB nor network will work in this case but both CPU cores (SMP) will work without requirement to rebuild the kernel. Booting with ACPI and SMP disabled (boot -12) will give USB support. Furthermore, it is possible to make network work in this case as well, but removing vte_reset() calls in if_vte.c (R6040 driver) and rebuilding your custom kernel. In case loosing SMP and ACPI are acceptable options, it makes a fully working system. Unfortunately, a workaround for the network didn't work for OpenBSD (more specifically, it actually does work, but network still fails to connect due to some other issue).
Despite some fears, the card didn't disappoint. NetBSD immediately recognized the GPU and applied proper drivers giving the expected hardware acceleration. Because of this, I started using NetBSD on my desktop quite regularly. To my surprise, it visually felt more responsive than RX 460 on Linux as well. Despite being an older model, its performance is actually at par with the replaced card in general usage, except possibly increased power usage.
Dell QLogic 57810 10G Ethernet card
Since my router supports one SFP+ 10Gbit Ethernet port, I was curious to try it out and bought the Edimax EN-9320SFP+ 10Gbit network card back in 2018. Though, being the cheapest 10Gbit solution at that time with the smallest card around, it had few annoying flaws. The card was based on Tehuti TN4010 NIC, which is poorly supported by the alternative operating systems except Windows. Any of the BSDs don't have a driver at all. Linux has one, but not in the mainline kernel. Thus, the Linux driver needs to be compiled and installed manually, and the process needs to be repeated almost after every kernel update (which happens relatively often). In the end, the Linux driver still had at least one issue - if computer goes to standby mode, NIC stops working after resume with only reboot bringing it back. Nevertheless, I was not planning to replace it, since alternatives were too expensive (especially Intel based solutions). Btw, Edimax also have never updated the driver in their page, I was using the one from github.Unexpectedly though, one local shop offered Dell QLogic 57810 (Dell part 540-BBGS) dual port 10Gbit network card for a sizable discount. I checked that it was supported by at least FreeBSD, the Linux kernel had mainline kernel driver as well, so I took the bait and bought it. The card itself is much bigger than Edimax, having an active cooler and requires PCI-E 2.0 x8 slot instead of PCI-E 2.0 x4. On the other hand, it is a way more professional product having sophisticated firmware and two SFP+ ports. Once installed, it worked out of the box in Windows, Linux and FreeBSD, with no manual work required. Contrary to Tehuti NIC, it had no issues on resume in Linux as well. In general, I believe this purchase was pretty successful, except the fact that it is not supported by NetBSD.
I dream to port the FreeBSD driver to NetBSD, however, it may be too complicated task, since the driver is huge. Nevertheless, I am planning to make an attempt this year (sometime in 2020) and see what happens.
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| Dell QLogic 57810 dual SFP+ Ethernet controller |
Toshiba MG04ACA600E and D-Link DGE-528T
Yet another hardware update was already extensively described in my blog. Though, the main goal was just to upgrade from 3TB hard drives to 6TB ones in my NAS server, it ended up with the bigger project from migration to Artix Linux to LVM RAID configuration on recycled 3TB drives.The new hard drives were two identical Toshiba MG04ACA600E model drives which showed quite visible performance improvement in read operations but write speed seemingly was restricted by driver issues and showed only minimal improvement compared to older drives. Thanks to LVM RAID0 setup I also reused older 3TB drives as additional back-up storage.
Realtek RTL8169SC based D-Link DGE-528T network card was used to circumvent loss of the second Ethernet port. Together with integrated Realtek 8111C NIC it showed worse network speed over Intel based daughterboard card, but it was expected and acceptable downgrade.
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Toshiba MG04ACA600E
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Sanwa MA-TB41S trackball
For around ten years I was successfully using Kensington Optical Orbit trackball. It was bought in Sweden by my former colleague and friend. Initially I thought that it will stay only as an experiment, but proved to be one of the best devices I've ever used. Unfortunately, the right button started to fail so badly by the end of the last year, that I was finally forced to look for the possible alternative. Despite pretty limited trackball options, I must admit it was one of most challenging decisions on hardware selection process. The main reason for that was the lack of possibility to try them physically. I believe, there is a great risk of to buy uncomfortable trackball from the images only. It doesn't matter how much reviews you will read, there are too many factors which can affect the comfort, from your hand size to device quality and sensitivity. That is probably the reason why you can find so many contradicting opinions on the same product.
Theoretically I could even buy the same model, since Kensington is still selling it together with few other long-living models, but I wanted to find one with the scroll wheel. After long research I narrowed down the options to these three models:
Though, Sanwa trackball was my last choice, I ended up buying it because of difficulty to find Elecom model in Europe, and relatively bad reviews regarding the quality of Kensington trackball buttons. Unfortunately, I can't tell yet if I made a right choice... During, the first month I was really disappointed. The trackball appeared to be a bit too big for my hand, making it difficult to reach buttons comfortably. Quite often I was accidentally moving the ball before clicking mouse buttons, thus easily missing intended button or other UI element. Scroll wheel was too slow, too big and clunky. My hand was constantly getting tired. Nevertheless, I started to get used to it over the time, thus decreasing the strain of the hand and increasing precision. Though, the scroll wheel still stays as the biggest inconvenience, since it was the major feature I had been looking for. It works, but scrolling is very slow and reaction time after rotating the wheel visibly lags behind. Furthermore, my thumb gets painful and tired easily, even over the time I haven't really gotten used to it. Honestly, I am not sure, if I will keeping using it, I may switch to a regular mouse or try the Kensington Orbit trackball with the scroll ring. It is probably the most unsuccessful hardware purchase in 2019.
Theoretically I could even buy the same model, since Kensington is still selling it together with few other long-living models, but I wanted to find one with the scroll wheel. After long research I narrowed down the options to these three models:
Though, Sanwa trackball was my last choice, I ended up buying it because of difficulty to find Elecom model in Europe, and relatively bad reviews regarding the quality of Kensington trackball buttons. Unfortunately, I can't tell yet if I made a right choice... During, the first month I was really disappointed. The trackball appeared to be a bit too big for my hand, making it difficult to reach buttons comfortably. Quite often I was accidentally moving the ball before clicking mouse buttons, thus easily missing intended button or other UI element. Scroll wheel was too slow, too big and clunky. My hand was constantly getting tired. Nevertheless, I started to get used to it over the time, thus decreasing the strain of the hand and increasing precision. Though, the scroll wheel still stays as the biggest inconvenience, since it was the major feature I had been looking for. It works, but scrolling is very slow and reaction time after rotating the wheel visibly lags behind. Furthermore, my thumb gets painful and tired easily, even over the time I haven't really gotten used to it. Honestly, I am not sure, if I will keeping using it, I may switch to a regular mouse or try the Kensington Orbit trackball with the scroll ring. It is probably the most unsuccessful hardware purchase in 2019.
NetBSD
I was quite active in the NetBSD project community this year: I managed to port IC Plus IP1000/1001 PHY driver from OpenBSD (used by many VIA EPIA boards, also IC Plus own network cards), fixed support for VIA VX800 (and possibly VX855, VT8237S) SATA controller (previously partially working in IDE mode only), 4World USB to Serial adapter (already mentioned in 2018 review), found the fix for the Biostar X370GT5 SATA controller locking issue, requested to pull-up the fix for D-Link DUB1312 USB network card to NetBSD 8 release. In addition, I noticed and identified the applied fix for the long standing bug on Ryzen system, where the OS was failing to identify a second SATA hard drive. This bug was causing to stall even UEFI POST process on reboot. Fortunately, this fix made it into NetBSD 9.0 release. Also I noticed some typos and white-space issues in the code. Finally, I updated the seemingly abandoned Codelite IDE package in pkgsrc to build the latest stable version at that time (from 9.1 to 13.0). Despite these successes, I also had some let-downs. I couldn't fix the USB and Ethernet issues on eBox 3352DX3-AP computer. I found a workaround to make Ethernet controller work, in case SMP and ACPI is disabled, but the proper fix is still unclear. Besides that, once suddenly Fnatic Gear Rush keyboard stopped working, with the help of NetBSD developer I identified that it was caused by accidental switch to 6KRO mode. It appeared to be working in NKRO mode only (which was the opposite up to NetBSD 7.1 release). Hopefully, it can be fixed to work on both modes in the future. Seeing quite a successful last year, I hope that I will be able to solve some issues in 2020 as well.
eBox 3352DX3-AP
The last chapter I will dedicate to some insights on how to run BSD system on eBox 3352DX3-AP VortexDX3 based system, since I promised that on the last review.
FreeBSD 12.0 works the best out of BSDs, which can perfectly boot on default BIOS configuration. The only issue is the integrated network controller (R6040) which fails to work. This issue is common to all BSDs, since drivers are based on FreeBSD one. Similarly to the described below workaround on NetBSD, it may be also applied for the FreeBSD. By removing all the vte_reset() calls in the driver and recompiling a custom kernel, it should make the network work. Unfortunately, the latest release at time of writing (12.1) introduced some regression which causes instant failure on boot. I submitted the bug report but I don't expect it to be resolved soon. So, in case FreeBSD is a preferred choice, I recommend to run 12.0 release. Alternatively to editing and compiling the custom kernel, USB based network controllers can be used to enable the network.
OpenBSD is probably on the worst situation. I identified only one way to boot into the system without kernel recompilation by disabling "ACPI aware OS" option in BIOS. However, neither USB nor Ethernet works, which renders the system usefulness limited to some local automatic jobs only. It can boot with ACPI enabled/IDE in legacy mode by recompiling kernel without DIAGNOSTIC option. SMP works in both cases. If you want to work with OpenBSD for any reason, I would recommend to look for the system with COM ports (or try to solder the one).
FreeBSD 12.0 works the best out of BSDs, which can perfectly boot on default BIOS configuration. The only issue is the integrated network controller (R6040) which fails to work. This issue is common to all BSDs, since drivers are based on FreeBSD one. Similarly to the described below workaround on NetBSD, it may be also applied for the FreeBSD. By removing all the vte_reset() calls in the driver and recompiling a custom kernel, it should make the network work. Unfortunately, the latest release at time of writing (12.1) introduced some regression which causes instant failure on boot. I submitted the bug report but I don't expect it to be resolved soon. So, in case FreeBSD is a preferred choice, I recommend to run 12.0 release. Alternatively to editing and compiling the custom kernel, USB based network controllers can be used to enable the network.
OpenBSD is probably on the worst situation. I identified only one way to boot into the system without kernel recompilation by disabling "ACPI aware OS" option in BIOS. However, neither USB nor Ethernet works, which renders the system usefulness limited to some local automatic jobs only. It can boot with ACPI enabled/IDE in legacy mode by recompiling kernel without DIAGNOSTIC option. SMP works in both cases. If you want to work with OpenBSD for any reason, I would recommend to look for the system with COM ports (or try to solder the one).
NetBSD support is somewhere in the middle among the three. In order to boot the system with "ACPI aware OS" option enabled in BIOS, IDE should be set to "legacy mode". Otherwise, various timeout exceptions will occur and system will fail to boot. Similarly to OpenBSD, neither USB nor network will work in this case but both CPU cores (SMP) will work without requirement to rebuild the kernel. Booting with ACPI and SMP disabled (boot -12) will give USB support. Furthermore, it is possible to make network work in this case as well, but removing vte_reset() calls in if_vte.c (R6040 driver) and rebuilding your custom kernel. In case loosing SMP and ACPI are acceptable options, it makes a fully working system. Unfortunately, a workaround for the network didn't work for OpenBSD (more specifically, it actually does work, but network still fails to connect due to some other issue).
Summary and 2020
2019 was a pretty good year in the hardware/software context. Most of my projects went smoothly, and newly acquired hardware met or even exceeded expectations (except the trackball). It was also the most active year in NetBSD for me. Besides starting using it as Desktop operating system quite regularly, I managed to provide several patches to improve hardware support and provided my first contribution to pkgsrc project. I hope to keep this pace in 2020 as well, though time-constraint is my main enemy. Hardware wise, I don't have specific plans for 2020. I may upgrade to a newer Ryzen CPU and upgrade some other parts but non of these are a high priority. Like last year, such decisions probably will depend on pricing and unexpected deals. I do plan to revive my Alpha CPU based Microway PC164 Screamer system and I already have bought "old new" 8x32MB modules of SIMM RAM (Samsung KMM53616000AK-6) for it. Considering all these future plans, I believe that I will write at least a few articles this year, which I hope will be an interesting read.
