Re: help on wd server

First, thanks for your advices to all who replied.

Andy Valencia said:

>> while (inportb(WD_PORT+WD_STATUS) & WDS_BUSY)
>> ;
>>
>> and see if that helps your system. More efficient might be:
>>
>> if (...)
>> return;
>> which assumes that another interrupt will arrive for the true completion of
>> the I/O.

Dave Hudson said:

>> You may find it worth adding:
>>
>> __msleep(10);
>>
>> just before the failing ASSERT.

Last night, I tried inserting the following line
right before calling wd_start().

  if (inportb(WD_PORT+WD_STATUS) & WDS_BUSY)
    syslog("something");

After syslog displayed "something" four times or so,
VSTa booted and printed "login:" !

It may be the case that the above line produced the
delay that hd controller needs.

I don't know how HD controller works (the technical
reference for the notebook doesn't tell me the basics
of programming a device), but I will go with Andy's
suggestion that waits until BUSY is low, and see
if it works every time.
(BTW, I tried undef'ing AUTOHEAD, without success.)

As a matter of fact, there's more to the story.
VSTa boots now, but keyboard just freezes!
I think (I hope) this is unrelated to wd-server,
since NetBSD-0.[89] boot failed with the same symptom.
I'm going to add the code to initialize the keyboard,
and see if it solves the symptom.

Or, maybe I should just forget about the notebook, and
start writing a keyboard mapping program on my 486 box.
(CapsLock next to 'A' is killing me :-< )

Gavin Nicol said:

>> What kind of machine is your notebook? Dave would know better than
>> me, about the HW, but I belive that some IDE drives might generate
>> spurious interrupts when queried about size etc.

It's called PS55NOTE, manufactured by Japan IBM three or
four years ago. I think it's an ancestor of ThinkPad series.

>>
>> BTW. I have a PC9801 port of VSTa 1.1, or 1.2 (I forget which)...

Hmm, interesting. but I've never bought a PC9801 personally.
I wish someone with a 98 could keep the port up to date
for the time when VSTa becomes widespread.
(assuming, of course, that 98 series won't die out :-)

Well, thanks again folks.

---
Masato Kataoka
kataoka@dbg.bs1.fc.nec.co.jp