*BSD News Article 10960


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	id AA1081 ; Tue, 23 Feb 93 14:25:26 EST
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!decwrl!pacbell.com!UB.com!quack!dfox
From: dfox@quack.sac.ca.us (David Fox)
Subject: [386bsd] npx-0.1 causes lockup in npxprobe() - now what?
Message-ID: <fZaiZXG@quack.sac.ca.us>
Keywords: npx cyrix npxprobe ndp
Organization: The Duck Pond public unix: +1 408 249 9630, log in as 'guest'.
Date: 11 Feb 1993 08:38:16 UTC
Lines: 60


Hi *,

Sometime back, I complained (probably in e-mail) about spurious
npxintr() panics on my machine after doing relatively heavy work in
one or two terminal windows.   Specifically, I was running rayshade in
one terminal window, ghostscript was in another terminal window, sending
a document to the printer.  When done I was just at the command prompt
doing simple things like cleaning up temp files etc., and bang! - a
npxintr() panic.

Following the complaint, Amancio Hasty sent me someone's npx-0.1
patches, which I applied.  However, applying the patch to npx.c caused
the system to lock up hard during the boot routine, just before the
"npx0 at irq 13 on isa" confirmation message.

Subsequent postings (which I replied to by email) suggested I could
comment out the fp_divideby0() and/or the npxprobe() routine.  I tried
the first, didn't want to do the second, but did comment out a small
section where it was looking for irq16 (this applies only for 486s which
I don't have, it seems).

The result after doing this was very good stability in the numerics
department.  I couldn't make my earlier heavy NDP use crash the system.
However, a program 'fpetest' supplied with the patch crashed the system
hard (only reset button worked) and in subsequent checks things like 'od
-f ' on executable files caused the system also to crash hard.

It seems that the npxprobe() stuff needs to be intact if certain
programs like fpetest are going to work, so I can't exactly comment it
out.  Either that, or I haven't commented out the proper sections.

Also, I am starting to recompile the kernel with gcc-2.33.  Using the
patches recently posted in comp.unix.bsd, there's one for npx.c which
won't work with the npx-0.1 patched npx.c, mostly because the asm
instructions are in #define macros rather than coded in-line.  The npx.c
compiles fine with gcc-2.33, but the patch (whether in-line or in
macros) does look different for gcc-2.33 vs. gcc-1.39.  I'm wondering if
the asm macros need to be changed for gcc-2.33 in npx.c, essentially,
and I don't understand the syntax for encoding asm directly in gcc at
all, unfortunately.


------------------------------------------------------------------------
in real life: david fox            email: dfox@quack.sac.ca.us
5479 Castle Manor Drive,                  
San Jose, CA 95129                 "Thanks for letting me change some
USA                                 magnetic patterns on your HD" -me
408-253-7992                        
"You've just won an absolutely FREE trip to the Isles of Langerhans" -me
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
in real life: david fox            email: dfox@quack.sac.ca.us
5479 Castle Manor Drive,                  
San Jose, CA 95129                 "Thanks for letting me change some
USA                                 magnetic patterns on your HD" -me
408-253-7992                        
"You've just won an absolutely FREE trip to the Isles of Langerhans" -me
------------------------------------------------------------------------