[OpenBIOS] Latest SPARC64 & Milax update

Mark Cave-Ayland mark.cave-ayland at siriusit.co.uk
Wed Jan 6 10:33:26 CET 2010


Tarl Neustaedter wrote:

> On 2010-1-5 3:53 PM, Igor Kovalenko wrote:
>> [...]
>> On the firmware side, interesting thing is you cannot
>> disarm alarm. What if instance is then closed?
>>    
> 
> That's bad. "xt 0 alarm" should disarm the alarm - and close should too. 
> Why doesn't it?
> 
> In the case of console, you won't have a problem under normal operation, 
> but other devices which use alarms might indeed cause problems.
> 
> You'll have a problem with the console if you use the "input", "output" 
> or "io" methods to switch the input or output console devices.

I'm assuming that Igor is referring to the Qemu timer model here, since 
the OpenBIOS alarm word is currently defined as "2 drop" ;)

In terms of the console, OpenBIOS currently doesn't use alarm interrupts 
there either - it just sits in a busy-wait loop checking an I/O port or 
similar to determine when a new character is incoming.


ATB,

Mark.

-- 
Mark Cave-Ayland - Senior Technical Architect
PostgreSQL - PostGIS
Sirius Corporation plc - control through freedom
http://www.siriusit.co.uk
t: +44 870 608 0063

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