There's a fallback to PIT if TSC is not present but it doesn't work properly. It prevents boot from floppy on isapc and 486 cpu [1][2].
SeaBIOS configures PIT in Mode 2. PIT counter is decremented in the mode but timer_adjust_bits() thinks that the counter overflows and increases 32-bit tick counter on each detected "overflow". Invalid overflow detection results in 55ms time advance (1 / 18.2Hz) on each read from PIT counter. So all timers expire much faster and 5-second floppy timeout expires in 83 real microseconds (or just a bit longer).
It can be fixed by making the counter recieved from PIT an increasing value so it can be passed to timer_adjust_bits(): 0, 1, 2 and up to 65535 and then the counter is re-loaded with 0.
1. https://bugs.launchpad.net/seabios/+bug/1840719 2. https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2019-08/msg03924.html
Fixes: eac11944019 ("Unify pmtimer_read() and pittimer_read() code.") Reported-by: Philippe Mathieu-Daudé philmd@redhat.com Signed-off-by: Roman Bolshakov r.bolshakov@yadro.com --- Changes since v1: - Simplified change of counter direction (Kevin)
src/hw/timer.c | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
diff --git a/src/hw/timer.c b/src/hw/timer.c index 56bb289..b6f102e 100644 --- a/src/hw/timer.c +++ b/src/hw/timer.c @@ -180,7 +180,7 @@ timer_read(void) // Read from PIT. outb(PM_SEL_READBACK | PM_READ_VALUE | PM_READ_COUNTER0, PORT_PIT_MODE); u16 v = inb(PORT_PIT_COUNTER0) | (inb(PORT_PIT_COUNTER0) << 8); - return timer_adjust_bits(v, 0xffff); + return timer_adjust_bits(-v, 0xffff); }
// Return the TSC value that is 'msecs' time in the future.