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From: veit@mururoa.gmd.de (Holger Veit)
Subject: Re: Will this work (two IDE drives, DOS and *BSD)?
Message-ID: <1993Aug25.145829.28088@gmd.de>
Sender: veit@mururoa (Holger Veit)
Nntp-Posting-Host: mururoa
Organization: GMD - German National Research Center for Computer Science
References: <CC73xF.8n0@rex.uokhsc.edu> <1993Aug23.164125.1497@fcom.cc.utah.edu> <DERAADT.93Aug24170735@newt.fsa.ca>
Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1993 14:58:29 GMT
Lines: 37
In article <DERAADT.93Aug24170735@newt.fsa.ca>, deraadt@fsa.ca (Theo de Raadt) writes:
[...]
|>
|> My 66MHz EISA machine exhibits the same behaviour. I only get about 500msec
|> to hit my first key (after which, yes, I can type at any speed I want). The
|> reason for this problem is because the boot code spinwaits, somewhat like this:
|>
|> for(i=0; i<50000; i++) {
|> gateA20();
|> check key();
|> gateA20();
|> }
|>
|> It's not that our machines are especially fast. It is because our
|> machines come with extremely fast hardware implimentations of the
|> FAST-A20 gate hack (one of the most disgusting things in the PC
|> architecture, which all machines from the AT and up have.)
Perhaps you should disable FAST-A20 (in the BIOS setup) or disable fast
gateA20 in the boot loader, and return to the old fashioned
method via the kbd controller (which should still work with
common PCs except IBM PS/2). Real (i.e. protected mode)
operating systems will run with A20 on all the time, once it is
switched with any method, and MSD-OOZE himem/emm386 should have
facilities to find the best switch method as well (even if it is
yet another undocumented driver option). I run my PC with FAST-A20
off from the BIOS without negative effects (*BSD and OS/2).
|> This space not left unintentionally unblank. deraadt@fsa.ca
--
Dr. Holger Veit | INTERNET: Holger.Veit@gmd.de
| | / GMD-SET German National Research | Phone: (+49) 2241 14 2448
|__| / Center for Computer Science | Fax: (+49) 2241 14 2342
| | / P.O. Box 13 16 | Had a nightmare yesterday:
| |/ Schloss Birlinghoven | My system started up with
53731 St. Augustin, Germany | ... Booting vmunix.el ...