From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Sep 12 14:33:38 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id OAA11207 for questions-outgoing; Fri, 12 Sep 1997 14:33:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mercury.ukc.ac.uk (mercury.ukc.ac.uk [129.12.21.10]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id OAA11202; Fri, 12 Sep 1997 14:33:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from kestrel.ukc.ac.uk by mercury.ukc.ac.uk with SMTP (PP); Fri, 12 Sep 1997 22:33:29 +0100 Received: from localhost by kestrel.ukc.ac.uk (5.x/UKC-2.14) id AA04565; Fri, 12 Sep 1997 22:33:28 +0100 Date: Fri, 12 Sep 1997 22:33:27 +0100 (BST) From: "K.J.Koster" Reply-To: "K.J.Koster" To: hackers@freebsd.org Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Do *you* have problems with floppies? In-Reply-To: <199709122056.NAA24445@usr08.primenet.com> Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > > The correct way for a multitasking OS to deal with this is *NOT* to > drop into a buzz loop and to cease being a multitasking OS for the > duration of the loop, as you are suggesting. > I agree with you that busy-looping on a device is not the correct way to go about I/O, and I understand why FreeBSD does not busy-loop. However, we are not talking about SCSI or IDE drivers, we are talking about a lowly floppy driver. This discussion is about people finding their floppies trashed by their OS. Hardly `the correct way'. If I look at how I use my floppy drive, I'm usually sitting and waiting for it to finish anyway, so if my CPU is clocking idle time or system time makes no difference for me, personally. I have cheap hardware, and for that I am happy to pay the performance penalty, as I do every day. I'm quite happy to pay the performance penalty for a busy-looping floppy driver, if that means I can write floppies without having to worry whether I can read the disk later or not. FreeBSD has special options for people with broken keyboard resets, broken APM and broken PCMCIA cards. Why not add another one for unfifo'd floppy controllers? Groetjes, Kees Jan PS. I just realized I have written my demo code for my job applications using mtools... Oops :) You guys are giving me a headache. ---------------------------------------------------------------v-- Kees Jan Koster tel: UK-1227-453157 e-mail: kjk1@ukc.ac.uk 15 St. Michaels Road, Canterbury, Kent, United Kingdom ------------------------------------------------------------------ from trials come errors... from errors come legends...