From owner-freebsd-hardware Mon Jan 24 6:59: 0 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Received: from polaris.we.lc.ehu.es (polaris.we.lc.ehu.es [158.227.6.43]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 029DD15073 for ; Mon, 24 Jan 2000 06:58:24 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jose@we.lc.ehu.es) Received: from we.lc.ehu.es (v-ger [158.227.6.179]) by polaris.we.lc.ehu.es (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id PAA08522 for ; Mon, 24 Jan 2000 15:58:11 +0100 (MET) Message-ID: <388C6882.F0F83BD0@we.lc.ehu.es> Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 15:58:11 +0100 From: "Jose M. Alcaide" Organization: Universidad del =?iso-8859-1?Q?Pa=EDs?= Vasco - Dpto. de Electricidad y =?iso-8859-1?Q?Electr=F3nica?= X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (X11; U; FreeBSD 3.4-RELEASE i386) X-Accept-Language: es-ES, es, en-US, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.org Subject: RTC (stat clock) does not generate interrupts ?!?! Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Hello, I have a bizarre problem with my new computer: a Dell Inspiron 3700 laptop. I am posting to -hardware instead of -mobile because this problem is related to the RTC (statistical clock), and I need a larger audience :-) This is the problem: under some circumstances, the RTC does not generate interrupts (IRQ 8) after the system is started or rebooted. These circumstances are: 1. The system is rebooted, while being powered by AC or battery. 2. The system is turned off and on, while being powered by AC. And this is astonishing: when I turn the laptop off, disconnect it from AC, wait a couple of seconds, reconnect to AC, and turn it on again, the RTC _does_ work. I used "vmstat -i" to see when IRQ 8 is being generated by the RTC. However, in order to have a direct proof, I modified the rtcintr() handler in sys/i386/isa/clock.c for displaying a message every 128 interrupts (one second). Using this little trick I confirmed that "vmstat -i" is not lying. And there is another interesting fact: if I suspend the system when the RTC is not working, after resuming the RTC works! I suspect that the cause is that i8254_restore() is called from apm_default_resume() in sys/i386/apm/apm.c. I suspect a BIOS bug, but anyway I would love to have any explanation for this strange phenomenom. I am willing to try any modifications to sys/i386/isa/clock.c, but I do not know anything about i8254 programming, so I would be very very thankful for any idea or advice. TIA, -- JMA ----------------------------------------------------------------------- José Mª Alcaide | mailto:jose@we.lc.ehu.es Universidad del País Vasco | mailto:jmas@FreeBSD.org Dpto. de Electricidad y Electrónica | http://www.we.lc.ehu.es/~jose Facultad de Ciencias - Campus de Lejona | Tel.: +34-946012479 48940 Lejona (Vizcaya) - SPAIN | Fax: +34-946013071 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- "Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers" -- Leonard Brandwein To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message