Date: Thu, 18 Feb 1999 00:37:27 -0700 From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> To: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au> Cc: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>, chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Walnut Creek, Where Are You? Message-ID: <4.1.19990218002102.04017230@mail.lariat.org> In-Reply-To: <199902180710.XAA03755@dingo.cdrom.com> References: <Your message of "Thu, 18 Feb 1999 00:06:47 MST." <4.1.19990217234718.0401de40@mail.lariat.org>
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At 11:10 PM 2/17/99 -0800, Mike Smith wrote: >> It has nothing to do with PCI. A probe for something else ENTIRELY >> could be mucking things up. > >Uh, no. Or at least, if it did, the machine would not be on the >market. What we do when it comes to probing is an order of magnitude >less offensive than what Microsoft and Linux do. Yep, but it could be just the wrong thing for that particular motherboard. I know, for example, that FreeBSD's usual boot sequence makes the Gateway Solo here in the lab -- a laptop with an internal PCI bus that's specified as entirely "Plug 'n Play" -- go utterly berserk. The laptop's on the market and works fine with Windows and Linux. There's just something in FreeBSD (I haven't bothered to figure out what) that causes it to go "Kaboom!" Probably a combination of quirky motherboard design and bad luck. >Thanks for "hardware newbie 101" Brett, but no, I know what isn't >happening, and what you're thinking of (port mirroring) has already been >dismissed. It could be much more subtle than that. I don't know the motherboard, so I don't know what it's doing with interrupts, DMA, onboard peripherals, etc. Your Ethernet controller could be starved for cycles; interrupts could be getting lost; the PHY could be weird or could die if there's no cable plugged in; who knows? Without hardware in front of me, I can only make educated guesses, but I do tend to make many MORE guesses than most people. And usually find the problem. --Brett To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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