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Conference decwet::nt-developers

Title:MS Windows NT Developers
Notice:See note 1222 for MS bug reporting info
Moderator:TARKIN::LINEIBER
Created:Mon Nov 11 1991
Last Modified:Tue Jun 03 1997
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:3247
Total number of notes:15633

3235.0. "max size for HalAllocateCommonBuffer" by BACHUS::VANHAVERE (Willy Van Havere 8786) Wed May 07 1997 12:42

    I am trying to design a driver for a PCI module which requires a large
    buffer (40Mbytes) from which it can read selected parts 
    autonomously under the controle of a microcpu on the PCI module.
    
    The easiest way would be to allocate the buffer with
    HalAllocateCommonBuffer and communicate the logical address to the
    module. Total system memory will be more than 128Mbytes so getting the
    nonpagedpool should not be a problem.
    
    My problem is that on the alphastation 400 am using for testing
    HalGetAdapter return a max registermap count of 0x200 (521) which is
    way to small to map my 40 meg buffer.
    
    I stepped through the HalGetAdapter code and the 0x200 comes from some
    data cell. 
    
    From my VMS experiance I know that the apecs chips used for this 
    mapping can be configured for much larger sg windows. 
    
    Is there any reason such a small window (4 mb) was used?
    
    Is this setup by the HAL and have other systems (alphas) 
    different values (bigger) or is this some thing that is common to all.
    
    Thanks in advance
    
    Willy
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3235.1DECWET::VOBAWed May 21 1997 01:0111
    Re .0, somehow i missed this entry... sorry!
    
    A nit, you had a typo - the maximum number of map registers returned by
    the HalGetAdapter() is 512.  This is, unfortunately, fix and currently
    is the maximum value for all Alpha Windows NT platforms.
    
    DECwest Engineering has been doing some re-thinking on this subject. 
    Anything we decide on this one will not show up until NT 5.0 time
    frame.
    
    --svb