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Date:      Tue, 26 Nov 2002 12:17:59 -0500 (EST)
From:      Andrew Gallatin <gallatin@cs.duke.edu>
To:        "Michael Blood" <Michael@matraex.com>
Cc:        <freebsd-smp@freebsd.org>
Subject:   RE: Adaptec ultra320, FreeBSD 4.7, SMP hang at boot
Message-ID:  <15843.44231.732230.111573@grasshopper.cs.duke.edu>
In-Reply-To: <010e01c2955f$882c46b0$0200a8c0@boxwood>
References:  <142339311406.20021126142653@netasq.com> <010e01c2955f$882c46b0$0200a8c0@boxwood>

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Michael Blood writes:
 > This is the exact same problem that I had  (and still have ) a few weeks
 > ago on 4.5.  My calls with Adaptec place the problem with how the driver
 > handles the "apic"?  Any way they had no resolution other than to say.
 > "we have had some of the same problems with Linux but we have resolved
 > them by passing certain parameters to the kernel at boot up".  I don't
 > know what the parameters are only that they worked for linux.  From what
 > I understand there are no parameters that can be passed into the FreeBSD
 > kernel for the Adaptec driver.

The linux flag they are talking about is "-noapic"  This disables the
APIC (advanced programmable interrupt controller) typically used in
SMP environments in favor of using the good old 1980s PIC.
There are a number of broken BIOSes out there which don't work
correctly in APIC mode, but work with good old PIC.

FreeBSD does not currently have a way to use old-fashioned PIC
interupts in SMP mode.   I have no idea how much work this would be,
or if it would even be feasable.  But it sure could be handy.

Sometimes if you fight the BIOS really, really hard you'll be rewarded
with things starting to work.  By fighting the BIOS, I mean disabling
usb, disabling VGA interrupts, and hardcoding the interrupts of known
working devices to other things (which may still work).   At least
this worked for me a few months ago w/4.6 and a dual athlon.

Drew

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