Messages in this thread | | | From | "Ulrich Windl" <> | Date | Wed, 10 Apr 1996 11:07:35 +0100 | Subject | Re: hardware problems |
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On 9 Apr 96 at 18:52, Albert Cahalan wrote:
> >> Almost every report of this sort of thing has come down to faulty boards > >> or I/O. Almost - thats not every. Can you try and pin down things that make > >> a difference - eg disabling the PCI optimisation and 4Mb pages. Also if you > >> have a B stepping 100MHz pentium we need to know that. > > Linux should detect and report the B stepping 100MHZ pentium. > Do it in bright blinking letters followed by a 1 second pause.
As this seems to be easy, it should be done. If there's something about AMD CPUs it should be done, too.
> > scream() anyone?
What about writing the message with the faulty command (rep movsb?) 20 times in the video memory and then doing a "clean" panic?
> > > While hardware problems are not specifically the fault of the linux > > kernel, people that run other OSes on the same hardware without problems > > will continue to lay blame on Linux as the culprit. Since Linux's > > acceptance has as much to do with perception as technical merit, these > > perceptions have risk. [Not to mention that some pride is at stake, who > > wants to be outdone by the engineers at Microsoft, even if only in an > > area as mundane as robustness?] > > > > It's great that Linux can and does excel at extracting lots of > > performance out of our "lowly" Intel boxes, but it seems that this has > > some price to it. Perhaps, a concerted effort to figure out how flakey > > hardware misbehaves, and some technique for working around these issues > > should be considered, if such work is not already underway. > > Config option: ASSUME_QUALITY_HARDWARE > > The Makefile links hardware.h to quality_hw.h or broken_hw.h. > These files have #defines for a variety of hardware options. > When you run 'make config', it only asks for one or the other. > This gives the newbie an easy way to create a reliable kernel, > and puts all the options in one file for experts who want to > customize for a particular machine. > > I'm afraid the default should be reliable operation, using a link > to broken_hw.h. There are too many pieces of junk out there. > Maybe even assume i386 if broken_hw.h is selected. 386 can be broken, too (was it multiply or divide?)
Ulrich ------------ Ulrich Windl Klinikum der Universitaet Regensburg Rechenzentrum DV-med Franz-Josef-Strauss-Allee 11 Tel: +49 941 944-5879 D-93053 Regensburg FAX: +49 941 944-5882 Just imagine my mail address were <Ulrich.Windl@rz.uni.r.de>...
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