Welcome! This document is intended to help new Cheops users set up their systems.
Cheops is basically a stand-alone computer, but it can also be thought of as a SCSI peripheral device which is connected to a host computer in the same manner as a disk drive. Thus, you can just consider it as a device to which you can read and write data, or it can be understood as a computer to which you download programs for stand-alone execution. Most applications use combinations of these two models.
Cheops currently consists of a variable number of processor cards and output cards. However, you will usually deal only with a Cheops set-up of one processor card and one output card. See Figure 1.
Figure 1. Basic Cheops set-up
Cheops has several cords (or sets of cords) coming out of it that you need to be aware of:
Figure 2. The Card Cage
Identify all of these features on the actual piece of hardware to familiarize yourself with this set-up. You will probably find the processor card, P2, and the output card, O1.
Also note the all-important red reset button on the processor card. This is different from the reset button near the power switch in that it resets only the processor card, while the latter resets the entire system (a distinction that is imp-ortant only in multiprocessor systems).
The LED alpha-numeric panel should indicate the monitor version when Cheops is reset or turned on.
The SCSI cable must always be disconnected when turning Cheops on or off, or you risk crashing your host system. Cheops can be turned on or off with the switch on the back of the machine.
Make sure that the SCSI ID of your processor board is set to an unused address on your host system, and that there is a writable hard disk device defined as residing at that address (in /dev). The current setting is shown as the digit following the ``s'' in the Magic7 prompt line. If you need to change the setting to avoid conflicts, you must remove the processor module. With the endplate facing you, the SCSI address is set by turning the rotary switch on the right, just below the i960 chip (the one with the large heatsink). The other switch is the processor ID number and should always be 0 on a single-processor Cheops.If you change the SCSI ID, please refer to the "Setting Up Your Cheops Software Environment" document to set your CHEOPS_SCSI_DEV environment variable to the appropriate pathname of the SCSI device.
As soon as Cheops is powered up, the PROC light should illuminate. If it doesn't, or if the GLOBAL light glows constantly, something is wrong, probably a loose card.
After powering up Cheops, insert the SCSI cable. The version number of the firmware should now appear in the alphanumeric display (If another message appears there -- typically "SRAM PRB" or "REG PRB" -- Cheops has failed its hardware diagnostics. Please contact us for help).
You may open a "window" into the Cheops console with the command, chterm /dev/tty00 (or whatever the device corresponding to the serial port into which Cheops is plugged). A prompt that says something like Magic7 m0s4p0S> should appear in the window. This is the Cheops monitor prompt. This window communicates with Cheops via the serial cable.
There are three levels of resetting Cheops :
If you are programming and something is stuck, try the first two steps before resorting to turning off Cheops and/or rebooting the host.
Sometimes, things can really get messed up, especially if you are doing lower level IPC or SCSI programming which hangs the host. When this happens, you must reboot the host. The exact instructions for rebooting the host vary from system to system.
NOTE: The key to making the host successfully communicate with Cheops is that it must recognize it as a legitimate SCSI device when rebooting. To assure that this happens, Cheops must be running and connected as a SCSI device when the host reboots.
Nice and easy! Press only at the ends of the cards, near the extractors. Never push elsewhere, such as on the SCSI connector. When the cards are properly in place, the ends of the end plate should rest just against the rails on the sides of the card cage. You may need to support the center of the P2 board from underneath as you push it in, as sometimes it sags slightly.
It doesn't matter which slots the boards go in, but try to make sure there is cooling space between them. The chips face up when the cards are properly plugged in.
There should be a terminator card (so small you might not notice it at first) at one end of the backplane. Large backplanes may have one at each end. Be careful not to try inserting another card into a slot with a terminator in it! Also make sure that thick cards like the processor don't bump into it, and watch out for the ribbon cable running from the top of this card to the reset switch on the box.
If you insert them, turn it on, plug in SCSI, and the monitor prompt does not appear in your chterm window, turn Cheops immediately off and make sure that all cards are firmly in. (also, the serial cord must be plugged in for chterm to work at all!)
The boards MUST be connected firmly with good connections in the back.
The configuration of the video output modules is described here.