Re: odd timer bug, similar to VIA 686a symptoms

[Vojtech Pavlik]

On Wed, May 29, 2002 at 11:40:40PM +1000, Neale Banks wrote:
> On Wed, 29 May 2002, Vojtech Pavlik wrote:
> 
> [...]
> > On Wed, May 29, 2002 at 01:46:27PM +0100, Alan Cox wrote:
> [...]
> > > Neptune chipsets at least had latching bugs on timer reads. What chipset
> > > is the laptop ?
> > 
> > This is unlikely to be the latching bug - note the values are near to
> > 65535 - that means the timer is reprogrammed to count from 0xffff down
> > instead from LATCH. That is because of the suspend I presume. What's
> > weird is that the VIA fix doesn't program it to the correct value, or
> > perhaps is that missing from the patch?
> 
> Yes, my version of your patch includes an option to disable the via686a
> fix (and this was in effect at the time - I'm still cringing in fear from
> nasty FS corruption that ensued after a "probable hardware bug: restoring
> chip configuration" message last October :-( - yes it may be unlikely
> that it's related, but I don't yet have any other suspects.  FWIW, the
> machine also locked up then).

It shouldn't be able to do anything like that ...

> Any suggestions smarter than backing up everything "important" and running
> the battery down with the VIA fix enabled?

Nope. ;)

-- 
Vojtech Pavlik
SuSE Labs