Re: lockups

Hoi,

> Hoi, [dutch by any chance? :)]

;) kind-of : European, originating from the Netherlands, that's what
I start my presentations with right now (excusing my
approximate french ..) 

> > > While -CURRENT at least boots (an older -CURRENT that I first tried to
> > > install hung after determining the TSC), it still is unusable over the
> > > network because the built-in xl0 keeps getting watchdog timeout's (it's
> > > at irq20).
> > 
> > I worked around this problem by assiging a free irq in the BIOS
> > (MB A7N266, not a A7N8, dunno if the A7N8 BIOS gives you
> > this possibility)
> 
> Unfortunately, no. Disabling device apic in my custom kernel works though
> (because no devices get IRQs > 16 most probably).

with or without APIC i got all devices at shared IRQ 5; 
that choke the xl driver (workaround : disabling 905B features)
and gave me some minor problems with the ahc/sym driver (SCB
timeout and then system locked for some 30 seconds).
Assigning irq 10 to one an 11 to the other : like a charm.

> > > Disabling the APIC in the BIOS works around the problem (ACPI still
> > > enabled), but unfortunately Windows won't boot in that case :/
> > 
> > xl0 is rock-solid since with APIC and ACPI enabled
> 
> My guess is that the problem lies somewhere in the IRQ > 16 part of the
> equation.

beyond my competences, anyway, a A7N266 does not allow me to
assigen IRQ > 15
 
> > NB-II, for Windows I use Samba and whatever I find a PC thrown on the street;
> > but then, I dont like computer games ...
> 
> But I do! :) 

no hard feelings, I like foot (and Grolsch (tiens, long time since
I didn't see that word on a freebsd mailing list ;) )

> I see your point, and I knew beforehand that buying into nvidia
> stuff wasn't a smart thing to do when you want to run FreeBSD. So I wouldn't
> even have bought an nForce mainboard in the first place, if it weren't for my
> friend offering me this (used for 4 months) mainboard for 55 EUR, which is
> about half the new price and still lots cheaper than a new non-nForce one...

I bought a A7V8X for 69E (vat included) in France; against all expectations
rock-stable and rapid  with a couple of months old -current
(though I do not have an A7[^V]8.* to compare with for
scientific computations)

++, Arno