VOGONS


Reply 80 of 114, by STrRedWolf

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Hey all! Radience32 directed me to this forum off his channel. I have both an HP 200LX (Double-speed 8mb) and an 100LX (Stock 1mb).

I heard there was plans to do a PCMCIA card that links to an ESP32 or similar for Wifi... and I see there's some onus for sound, parallel port, and maybe storage? A "dream card" would be wifi, sound, and storage off an SD card. Adafruit has 128MB microSD cards (MB, not GB), strangely enough. Gotta back up that RAM.

Reply 81 of 114, by radiance32

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STrRedWolf wrote on 2021-12-29, 22:13:

Hey all! Radience32 directed me to this forum off his channel. I have both an HP 200LX (Double-speed 8mb) and an 100LX (Stock 1mb).

I heard there was plans to do a PCMCIA card that links to an ESP32 or similar for Wifi... and I see there's some onus for sound, parallel port, and maybe storage? A "dream card" would be wifi, sound, and storage off an SD card. Adafruit has 128MB microSD cards (MB, not GB), strangely enough. Gotta back up that RAM.

Check out this thread: PCMCIA Sound Cards
The user who's working on it's nickname is yyzkevin

Also, Your 8MB 200LX, is it a 1MB or 2MB base model, and what kind of memory upgrade do you have ?
IS it 2MB model, with a 6MB expansion board fitted onto the motherboard ?

Cheers,
Radiance

Check out my new HP 100/200LX Palmtop YouTube Channel! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCVChzZ62a-c4MdJWyRwdCQ

Reply 82 of 114, by Cloudschatze

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Has anyone else messed with the crystal selection bits of the system control register? I haven't run into any mention of it, but it certainly seems like it might be usable for either soft-overclocking a stock system, or further overclocking a crystal-upgraded unit.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-1Eh R/W System Control Register
bits 7-6 speaker volume
= 00 off (0V)
= 01 soft (3V)
= 10 medium (5V)
= 11 loud (8V)
bits 5-4 crystal speed selection
= 00 10.738636 MHz
= 01 15.836773 MHz
= 10 21.477272 MHz
= 11 31.673550 MHz
bit 3 unused
bit 2 = 1 display on
bit 1 = 1 unit has been in backup mode
bit 0 = 1 CPU shutdown (set only)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The default setting for this register with my stock 200LX is 0xDD, corresponding with the 15.836773 MHz clock selection, and with which Jim Leonard's TOPBENCH utility reports the following:

TOPBENCH | 16-bit real-mode x86 Benchmarking Suite | Version 0.40a
Score: 9
Memory: 2178 µs
Effective addressing: 1050 µs
Opcode exercise: 732 µs
Vid adapter speed: 460 µs
3DGame opcode exercise: 709 µs

With a setting of 0xFD, TOPBENCH reports the following:

TOPBENCH | 16-bit real-mode x86 Benchmarking Suite | Version 0.40a
Score: 22
Memory: 958 µs
Effective addressing: 445 µs
Opcode exercise: 310 µs
Vid adapter speed: 196 µs
3DGame opcode exercise: 310 µs

A consequence of the latter setting is behavior similar to that of upgrading the crystal. That is, rates relevant to the display, PIT and serial UART, among others, are affected. It's seemingly the opposite behavior of the hardware upgrade though, where instead of the affected rates needing to be halved to compensate, they may instead need to be doubled. Still experimenting with this...

Last edited by Cloudschatze on 2021-12-30, 04:25. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 83 of 114, by radiance32

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Cloudschatze wrote on 2021-12-29, 23:33:
Has anyone else messed with the clock selection bits of the system control register? I haven't run into any mentions of it, but […]
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Has anyone else messed with the clock selection bits of the system control register? I haven't run into any mentions of it, but it certainly seems like it might be usable for either soft-overclocking a stock system, or further overclocking a crystal-upgraded unit.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-1Eh R/W System Control Register
bits 7-6 speaker volume
= 00 off (0V)
= 01 soft (3V)
= 10 medium (5V)
= 11 loud (8V)
bits 5-4 crystal speed selection
= 00 10.738636 MHz
= 01 15.836773 MHz
= 10 21.477272 MHz
= 11 31.673550 MHz
bit 3 unused
bit 2 = 1 display on
bit 1 = 1 unit has been in backup mode
bit 0 = 1 CPU shutdown (set only)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The default setting for this register with my stock 200LX is 0xDD, corresponding with the 15.836773 MHz clock selection, and with which Jim Leonard's TOPBENCH utility reports the following:

TOPBENCH | 16-bit real-mode x86 Benchmarking Suite | Version 0.40a
Score: 9
Memory: 2178 µs
Effective addressing: 1050 µs
Opcode exercise 732 µs
Vid adapter speed: 460 µs
3DGame opcode exercise: 709 µs

With a setting of 0xFD, TOPBENCH reports the following:

TOPBENCH | 16-bit real-mode x86 Benchmarking Suite | Version 0.40a
Score: 22
Memory: 958 µs
Effective addressing: 445 µs
Opcode exercise 310 µs
Vid adapter speed: 196 µs
3DGame opcode exercise: 310 µs

A consequence of the latter setting is behavior similar to that of upgrading the crystal. That is, rates relevant to the display, PIT and serial UART, among others, are affected. It's seemingly the opposite behavior of the hardware upgrade though, where instead of the affected rates needing to be halved to compensate, they may instead need to be doubled. Still experimenting with this...

Very interesting 😀
What do you think would happen on a doublespeed crystal system ?

Terrence

Check out my new HP 100/200LX Palmtop YouTube Channel! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCVChzZ62a-c4MdJWyRwdCQ

Reply 84 of 114, by radiance32

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Cloudschatze wrote on 2021-12-29, 23:33:
Has anyone else messed with the clock selection bits of the system control register? I haven't run into any mentions of it, but […]
Show full quote

Has anyone else messed with the clock selection bits of the system control register? I haven't run into any mentions of it, but it certainly seems like it might be usable for either soft-overclocking a stock system, or further overclocking a crystal-upgraded unit.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-1Eh R/W System Control Register
bits 7-6 speaker volume
= 00 off (0V)
= 01 soft (3V)
= 10 medium (5V)
= 11 loud (8V)
bits 5-4 crystal speed selection
= 00 10.738636 MHz
= 01 15.836773 MHz
= 10 21.477272 MHz
= 11 31.673550 MHz
bit 3 unused
bit 2 = 1 display on
bit 1 = 1 unit has been in backup mode
bit 0 = 1 CPU shutdown (set only)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The default setting for this register with my stock 200LX is 0xDD, corresponding with the 15.836773 MHz clock selection, and with which Jim Leonard's TOPBENCH utility reports the following:

TOPBENCH | 16-bit real-mode x86 Benchmarking Suite | Version 0.40a
Score: 9
Memory: 2178 µs
Effective addressing: 1050 µs
Opcode exercise 732 µs
Vid adapter speed: 460 µs
3DGame opcode exercise: 709 µs

With a setting of 0xFD, TOPBENCH reports the following:

TOPBENCH | 16-bit real-mode x86 Benchmarking Suite | Version 0.40a
Score: 22
Memory: 958 µs
Effective addressing: 445 µs
Opcode exercise 310 µs
Vid adapter speed: 196 µs
3DGame opcode exercise: 310 µs

A consequence of the latter setting is behavior similar to that of upgrading the crystal. That is, rates relevant to the display, PIT and serial UART, among others, are affected. It's seemingly the opposite behavior of the hardware upgrade though, where instead of the affected rates needing to be halved to compensate, they may instead need to be doubled. Still experimenting with this...

Also, do you notice any speed difference when executing applications ?
Or is the faster benchmark score just incorrect because of wrong timers used etc ???

Terrence

Check out my new HP 100/200LX Palmtop YouTube Channel! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCVChzZ62a-c4MdJWyRwdCQ

Reply 85 of 114, by Cloudschatze

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radiance32 wrote on 2021-12-30, 00:18:

Also, do you notice any speed difference when executing applications ?

There's definitely a speed difference, but the undesirable consequential behaviors make it sort-of pointless, unless those can be rectified.

I'm not sure what the behavior might be with a hardware-modded unit. The MS-DOS debug utility can be used to set the indexed register, if you want to test:

-o 22 1e
-o 23 fd
-q

Reply 86 of 114, by Cloudschatze

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I/O against a CompactFlash card in the PCMCIA slot is similarly improved.

Stock/default (1Eh, 0xDD):

DiskTest, by James Pearce.  Version 2.3

Preparing drive...
Configuration: 4096 KB test file, 256 IOs in random tests.

Write Speed : 223.34 KB/s
Read Speed : 409.60 KB/s
8K random, 70% read : 9.2 IOPS
Sector random read : 11.1 IOPS

Average access time (includes latency and file system overhead), is 90ms.

Tweaked (1Eh, 0xFD):

DiskTest, by James Pearce.  Version 2.3

Preparing drive...
Configuration: 4096 KB test file, 256 IOs in random tests.

Write Speed : 811.09 KB/s
Read Speed : 957.01 KB/s
8K random, 70% read : 20.6 IOPS
Sector random read : 28.3 IOPS

Average access time (includes latency and file system overhead), is 35ms.

Reply 87 of 114, by radiance32

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Cloudschatze wrote on 2021-12-30, 03:53:
I/O against a CompactFlash card in the PCMCIA slot is similarly improved. […]
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I/O against a CompactFlash card in the PCMCIA slot is similarly improved.

Stock/default (1Eh, 0xDD):

DiskTest, by James Pearce.  Version 2.3

Preparing drive...
Configuration: 4096 KB test file, 256 IOs in random tests.

Write Speed : 223.34 KB/s
Read Speed : 409.60 KB/s
8K random, 70% read : 9.2 IOPS
Sector random read : 11.1 IOPS

Average access time (includes latency and file system overhead), is 90ms.

Tweaked (1Eh, 0xFD):

DiskTest, by James Pearce.  Version 2.3

Preparing drive...
Configuration: 4096 KB test file, 256 IOs in random tests.

Write Speed : 811.09 KB/s
Read Speed : 957.01 KB/s
8K random, 70% read : 20.6 IOPS
Sector random read : 28.3 IOPS

Average access time (includes latency and file system overhead), is 35ms.

Are you sure the read/write speed is better, or does it just report better results due to the timer to calculate them running faster ?
If you say copy a large file, and manually measure the speed with a stopwatch, does it really copy the whole thing that much faster ???
Seems strange as the write speed reported is nearly 4x as fast, not 2x...

Radiance

Last edited by radiance32 on 2021-12-30, 05:11. Edited 2 times in total.

Check out my new HP 100/200LX Palmtop YouTube Channel! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCVChzZ62a-c4MdJWyRwdCQ

Reply 88 of 114, by radiance32

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Cloudschatze wrote on 2021-12-30, 00:37:
There's definitely a speed difference, but the undesirable consequential behaviors make it sort-of pointless, unless those can b […]
Show full quote
radiance32 wrote on 2021-12-30, 00:18:

Also, do you notice any speed difference when executing applications ?

There's definitely a speed difference, but the undesirable consequential behaviors make it sort-of pointless, unless those can be rectified.

I'm not sure what the behavior might be with a hardware-modded unit. The MS-DOS debug utility can be used to set the indexed register, if you want to test:

-o 22 1e
-o 23 fd
-q

Maybe you can adapt the clkup31 or clkup32 to negate the differences ?

Radiance

Check out my new HP 100/200LX Palmtop YouTube Channel! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCVChzZ62a-c4MdJWyRwdCQ

Reply 89 of 114, by radiance32

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Cloudschatze wrote on 2021-12-30, 00:37:
There's definitely a speed difference, but the undesirable consequential behaviors make it sort-of pointless, unless those can b […]
Show full quote
radiance32 wrote on 2021-12-30, 00:18:

Also, do you notice any speed difference when executing applications ?

There's definitely a speed difference, but the undesirable consequential behaviors make it sort-of pointless, unless those can be rectified.

I'm not sure what the behavior might be with a hardware-modded unit. The MS-DOS debug utility can be used to set the indexed register, if you want to test:

-o 22 1e
-o 23 fd
-q

I tried it on one of my 32MHz crystal machines, with the clkup32.sys loaded,
and I see no difference, everything behaves normal... (eg the system runs as it always runs with a CPU clock of 16MHz)
I guess the 32MHz crystal does what you're trying to do already.

I'll test it with a non upgraded machine too and see if the PCMCIA IO speed is the same between a hardware upgraded machine and a stock machine with the values set...

Radiance

Check out my new HP 100/200LX Palmtop YouTube Channel! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCVChzZ62a-c4MdJWyRwdCQ

Reply 90 of 114, by Cloudschatze

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radiance32 wrote on 2021-12-30, 05:01:

Are you sure the read/write speed is better, or does it just report better results due to the timer to calculate them running faster ?
If you say copy a large file, and manually measure the speed with a stopwatch, does it really copy the whole thing that much faster ???

~21.27 seconds and ~18.23 seconds, respectively, as concerns the copy of a 4MB file from the CompactFlash card to the internal RAM disk. So, slightly faster, but certainly not the difference suggested by the DiskTest results.

This whole exercise is a moot point for me though - I've run the numbers, and there doesn't appear to be any way to get a 38400 bps serial rate when using either of the two "faster" soft changes to the crystal selection bit.

Reply 91 of 114, by radiance32

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Cloudschatze wrote on 2021-12-30, 05:25:
radiance32 wrote on 2021-12-30, 05:01:

Are you sure the read/write speed is better, or does it just report better results due to the timer to calculate them running faster ?
If you say copy a large file, and manually measure the speed with a stopwatch, does it really copy the whole thing that much faster ???

~21.27 seconds and ~18.23 seconds, respectively, as concerns the copy of a 4MB file from the CompactFlash card to the internal RAM disk. So, slightly faster, but certainly not the difference suggested by the DiskTest results.

This whole exercise is a moot point for me though - I've run the numbers, and there doesn't appear to be any way to get a 38400 bps serial rate when using either of the two "faster" soft changes to the crystal selection bit.

Are you sure you don't want me to send you a 32MHz crystal ? It's really worth it 😀
After a few days you'll be thinking why you did'nt install one sooner 😀

Radiance

Check out my new HP 100/200LX Palmtop YouTube Channel! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCVChzZ62a-c4MdJWyRwdCQ

Reply 92 of 114, by radiance32

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Cloudschatze wrote on 2021-12-30, 05:25:
radiance32 wrote on 2021-12-30, 05:01:

Are you sure the read/write speed is better, or does it just report better results due to the timer to calculate them running faster ?
If you say copy a large file, and manually measure the speed with a stopwatch, does it really copy the whole thing that much faster ???

~21.27 seconds and ~18.23 seconds, respectively, as concerns the copy of a 4MB file from the CompactFlash card to the internal RAM disk. So, slightly faster, but certainly not the difference suggested by the DiskTest results.

This whole exercise is a moot point for me though - I've run the numbers, and there doesn't appear to be any way to get a 38400 bps serial rate when using either of the two "faster" soft changes to the crystal selection bit.

I think your performance results aren't right. Maybe the timer to calculate them is off...
If it is easy to double the speed via software, this simple do double-speed the hornet SOC, someone would have discovered this during the last 3 decades, I'm sure, no ?

It might be interesting to see if I can increase the PCMCIA IO speed though on my doublespeed system with one of the options,
but i'll also have to update the cklup32 driver

Terrrence

Last edited by Stiletto on 2021-12-31, 00:05. Edited 1 time in total.

Check out my new HP 100/200LX Palmtop YouTube Channel! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCVChzZ62a-c4MdJWyRwdCQ

Reply 93 of 114, by Cloudschatze

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radiance32 wrote on 2021-12-30, 05:09:

I tried it on one of my 32MHz crystal machines, with the clkup32.sys loaded,
and I see no difference, everything behaves normal... (eg the system runs as it always runs with a CPU clock of 16MHz)

Turns-out the "CLKUP" drivers already configure the crystal speed selection bits for the 31.673550 MHz setting as part of their routine, which makes sense.

radiance32 wrote on 2021-12-30, 09:54:

I think your performance results aren't right. Maybe the timer to calculate them is off...

The timer is definitely off, which probably explains everything. With the stock crystal and speed selection settings, TCLK is 1.193182 MHz. With the stock crystal and modified speed selection, TCLK drops by exactly half, to 0.922004 MHz. Consequently, the speed perception differences, as well as the slight differences with the timed file copy, are likely just the result of the DMA refresh being affected.

Ah, well. This was interesting for a minute or two. 😀

That said, there are registers for directly altering the DMA refresh rate and various system wait states, so another avenue for minor, software-based speed tweaking yet exists...

If it is easy to double the speed via software, this simple do double-speed the hornet SOC, someone would have discovered this during the last 3 decades, I'm sure, no ?

Most likely, but having personally discovered a number of "hidden" settings and functions for even older systems, this sort of thing isn't exactly inconceivable either.

Reply 94 of 114, by STrRedWolf

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radiance32 wrote on 2021-12-29, 22:27:
Check out this thread: PCMCIA Sound Cards The user who's working on it's nickname is yyzkevin […]
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Check out this thread: PCMCIA Sound Cards
The user who's working on it's nickname is yyzkevin

Also, Your 8MB 200LX, is it a 1MB or 2MB base model, and what kind of memory upgrade do you have ?
IS it 2MB model, with a 6MB expansion board fitted onto the motherboard ?

Cheers,
Radiance

It's actually a 4MB base model. I haven't had a chance to open it up and look in it -- I bought it "as is" on eBay (the person who sold it didn't know about the double-speed upgrades, and thought it was broken) and was able to "fix" it. 😀 Now if I can do long file names, it'll be a nice little machine for sneak-writing some stories.

Reply 95 of 114, by radiance32

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STrRedWolf wrote on 2022-01-03, 11:56:
radiance32 wrote on 2021-12-29, 22:27:
Check out this thread: PCMCIA Sound Cards The user who's working on it's nickname is yyzkevin […]
Show full quote

Check out this thread: PCMCIA Sound Cards
The user who's working on it's nickname is yyzkevin

Also, Your 8MB 200LX, is it a 1MB or 2MB base model, and what kind of memory upgrade do you have ?
IS it 2MB model, with a 6MB expansion board fitted onto the motherboard ?

Cheers,
Radiance

It's actually a 4MB base model. I haven't had a chance to open it up and look in it -- I bought it "as is" on eBay (the person who sold it didn't know about the double-speed upgrades, and thought it was broken) and was able to "fix" it. 😀 Now if I can do long file names, it'll be a nice little machine for sneak-writing some stories.

If you can get long filenames working, let me know about it please, I'm interested in knowing how too 😀

Radiance

Check out my new HP 100/200LX Palmtop YouTube Channel! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCVChzZ62a-c4MdJWyRwdCQ

Reply 96 of 114, by STrRedWolf

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Okay, newbie question with double-speed.

I'm trying to use another telecom program, completely outside of the native software because... it looks like it's not quite compatible with the terminal capabilities that Linux has (even with vt100). And I'm having associated problems:

  • RBComm sits there and does nothing, even though I have the ports set right.
  • Bananacom recognizes even an ESP32-based modem... but freezes right afterwards and requires a hard reset (CONTROL-SHIFT-ON).

Any ideas? I'm about to double-check with my 100LX, which is stock.

Reply 97 of 114, by radiance32

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STrRedWolf wrote on 2022-01-14, 12:55:
Okay, newbie question with double-speed. […]
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Okay, newbie question with double-speed.

I'm trying to use another telecom program, completely outside of the native software because... it looks like it's not quite compatible with the terminal capabilities that Linux has (even with vt100). And I'm having associated problems:

  • RBComm sits there and does nothing, even though I have the ports set right.
  • Bananacom recognizes even an ESP32-based modem... but freezes right afterwards and requires a hard reset (CONTROL-SHIFT-ON).

Any ideas? I'm about to double-check with my 100LX, which is stock.

Are you running the clkup32.sys ?
What kind of doublespeed crystal do you have ? the 32MHz one or the 31.64 MHz crystal ?
Try it on your stock system and see if it behaves the same...

I don't know a lot about it, but the doublespeed options make your UART baud rate setting appear 2x as fast,
that's why the clkup32.sys corrects this, and there might be an incompatibility there...
You should try it on a non-doublespeed system to make sure...

Terrence

Check out my new HP 100/200LX Palmtop YouTube Channel! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCVChzZ62a-c4MdJWyRwdCQ

Reply 98 of 114, by STrRedWolf

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radiance32 wrote on 2022-01-15, 03:58:
Are you running the clkup32.sys ? What kind of doublespeed crystal do you have ? the 32MHz one or the 31.64 MHz crystal ? Try it […]
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Are you running the clkup32.sys ?
What kind of doublespeed crystal do you have ? the 32MHz one or the 31.64 MHz crystal ?
Try it on your stock system and see if it behaves the same...

I don't know a lot about it, but the doublespeed options make your UART baud rate setting appear 2x as fast,
that's why the clkup32.sys corrects this, and there might be an incompatibility there...
You should try it on a non-doublespeed system to make sure...

I was using the dspeed.com driver, so let me open things up here... I got the 31.64 MHz crystal (the exact doubled). The RAM upgrade is a Times PC8MB according to the board.

So I'll swap to the clkup31.sys driver then, see if that helps.

Reply 99 of 114, by STrRedWolf

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A few updates.

Testing with CLKUP31.SYS and on the stock HP 100LX resulted in... the same issues. Bananacom freezes up, and RBComm works but it doesn't have a good terminal emulation.

Guess I'll have to use Kermit then. 😉 I did get in touch with Bananacom's author, who's on Reddit, to see about getting the latest version or the source code.

That said... my HP200LX has seen better days. The standoffs inside holding the bottom shell to the top shell have broken off, so I'm repairing them by 3D printing new standoffs and supergluing them (hint: the screws are M2 screws with hex ends, or a Torx T6). To be honest, I should of made a small jig to hold the backplate in place and screwed the standoffs through that for a better fit.

Hmmm... should look into more broken HP palmtops...