Re: spurious 8259A interrupt

[Gabriel Paubert]

On Wed, Mar 24, 2004 at 03:28:00PM +0000, Jamie Lokier wrote:
> Richard B. Johnson wrote:
> > It isn't CPU-specific. It's motherboard glitch specific. If there
> > is ground-bounce on the motherboard or excessive induced
> > coupling, the CPU may occasionally get hit with a logic-level
> > that it "thinks" is an interrupt, even though no controller
> > actually generated it.
> 
> That doesn't seem plausible on an otherwise reliable computer.
> 
> Why would interrupt lines suffer ground-bounce logic glitches yet all
> the data, address and control lines be fine?

Two reasons at least:
- the data/address lines are always driven by a buffer when there
a transfer is taking place, while the interrupt lines are permanently
monitored but most of the time only held by passive pull-ups of a
much higher impedance.

- board designers know that the timing of data and addresses are
critical and take care during the layout. Interrupt lines come last
and are routed where there is room left, after all these are low
frequency signals...

	Regards,
	Gabriel
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