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Date:      Wed, 7 May 1997 16:27:29 -0500 (CDT)
From:      "Mark W. Krentel" <krentel@cs.rice.edu>
To:        freebsd-stable@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: frozen virtual terminals on Dell system
Message-ID:  <199705072127.QAA04248@cs.rice.edu>

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> FreeBSD 2.1.X has an annoying habit of occasionally loosing keyboard
> interrupts. In addition, the conflicting access to the keyboard
> controller by the console driver and the PS/2 mouse driver is not
> handled well.  All this leads to keyboard lock up or frozen mouse
> movement.

That's interesting.  I once had a keyboard lock up after disconnecting
it for 1 day to use on another machine.  Machine is a PPro 200 on 
Intel Venus VS440FX board (apparently with Intel's own BIOS) running 
2.1.7.  We borrowed the keyboard for > 24 hours, and on reconnecting, 
all keystrokes were ignored. 

We ended up rebooting, which worked and also kicked off the screen
saver.  There was nothing in the logs to indicate trouble, but just
before it rebooted, I saw a SIGPIPE messge on the console (couldn't
see it before because of screen saver).

At the time, I dismissed it as something quirky in the Intel Venus
board.  As a test, I tried disconnecting the keyboard on another 
machine (regular Pentium on ASUS/Award board running 2.2.1-release).
No problems. 

These Intel boards are stable and reliable, but give you almost
nothing you can configure.  No options for ignoring errors from
keyboards, video cards, etc, nothing for setting memory timings.
Intel knows what's best for you.  I have no complaints, it's an 
excellent, reliable board, but if you want to tinker with the
memory timings, try ASUS.

So, was I right to blame the board, or was it freebsd 2.1.7?
More importantly, what should I try short of rebooting?

--Mark Krentel



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