[vortex] Problems with 3c59x

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On Sat, 14 Dec 2002, Bogdan Costescu wrote:

> > I don't understand this. Be more explicit and tell me what to do when the 
> > card hangs again.
> Just before that line there should have been one with a "status" value. 
> This value presumably has the lowest significant bit set, of a probable 
> form of 0xeXX1.

Got to http://linux.dej.ro/3c59x/kernel.txt to see the logs in that 
period.

> > Why the card loosing the interrupt? Is this a kernel bug, a driver bug or 
> > a mainboard bug?
> 
> It's not the card, it's the whole system. The card generates the signal, 
> but the interrupt routine from the driver is not called. The generation of 
> signal from the card is a state kept until explicitly cleared, so it can 
> be checked whenever other driver code is executed.
> So there is no driver bug; but between a kernel and mainboard bug, I can't 
> tell... There have been problems with some older kernel versions, that 
> were supposed to be fixed some time ago. Also being on the linux-smp list 
> I frequently got messages about problems with the SMP VIA chipset that 
> were solved by upgrading BIOS or changing the BIOS MPS level.

I have also VIA chipset. In precedent e-mail I told you what happens after 
BIOS upgrade and MPS changing. 

> The difference is in handling of interrupts: noapic disables the IO-APIC, 
> which makes interrupts function in XT-PIC mode which is the mode used 
> on uniprocessor machines. This will make interrupt requests only be 
> delivered to one CPU which will also be the only CPU servicing the 
> interrupt routines from drivers. In some cases this is a good thing as it 
> provides better cache locality, while for a system which receives very 
> many interrupts, it might degrade performance.

Hmm ... for the moment I will wait to see what happens.

Thank you/Multumesc ;),
Cosmin