Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 27 Feb 2007 21:42:16 -0500 | From | Bill Davidsen <> | Subject | Re: bug in kernel 2.6.21-rc1-git1: conventional floppy drive cannot be mounted without hanging up the whole system |
| |
Linus Torvalds wrote: > > On Mon, 26 Feb 2007, Rene Herman wrote: >> Other than these two, ECP parallel ports are the other remaining users. >> Now, even though on a machine that still has a parallel port it might usually >> indeed be set to ECP in its BIOS; having anything attached to the port also >> use it as such seems quite seldom. > > Well, if it's some kind of cache coherency problem (the same way much more > modern CPU's have cache coherency issues with DMA during C3 sleep), then > it's entirely possible that the normal ECP parallel port behaviour would > never show it, since most people tend to use it for output only (yeah, I > realize you can use it bidirectionally, but at least on old hardware it > tends to be "talk AT printer" rather than "talk WITH printer".
The bidirectional use is/was PL/IP, aka "laplink" connections. Yes, I still have a machine I installed that way, and it will run 2.2.19 forever before I try it again. ;-) > > I frankly forget what hardware platforms had problems with the DMA thing, > and what the exact behaviour even was (I think there was some possibility > of corrupt data on the floppy). We also used to have the "nohlt" flag to > turn off hlt entirely, and that was due to some other legacy issues, iirc. > > I seriously doubt we will ever see anybody who has this problem ever > again, but on the other hand, I also seriously doubt that most modern > machines even *have* a floppy drive any more, so I'd rather not even > change it. It's just not worth even a miniscule risk..
Thank you. > > Linus
-- Bill Davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com> "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from the machinations of the wicked." - from Slashdot - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
| |