Re: [PARPORT] Re: 2.2.1 crash

David Campbell (campbell@torque.net)
Tue, 2 Mar 1999 10:08:23 +0800


Date sent: Mon, 1 Mar 1999 18:26:02 -0500 (EST)
From: Marc Heckmann <pfeif@step.polymtl.ca>
To: David Monniaux <monniaux@clipper.ens.fr>
Copies to: linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu, linux-
parport@torque.net
Subject: [PARPORT] Re: 2.2.1 crash

> On Mon, 1 Mar 1999, David Monniaux wrote:
>
> >
> > The system totally hung, even SAK couldn't tell it to stop. It was
> > apparently trying to do something with the ZIP, since the orange light on
> > the ZIP was flashing in a repeating pattern. Ejecting the ZIP cartridge
> > didn't help. I was forced to power-cycle the machine (then manual fsck).

Sounds like an EPP-32 problem, try the EPP-16 option. I thought I set
EPP-16 as default, must check.

> There have been on alot of reports of systems freezes (2.2.1) with ZIP
> drives. I have experienced myself. What type of filesystem was on the
> disk, cause there have been a lot of crash reports with vfat as well.

Care to add some more details guy? This is not very helpful as there
are two different drivers for the parallel port ZIP drive. Also were
you trying to access something else on the parallel port (eg:
printer)?

Is the "system freeze" a repeatable problem? There was a problem with
486 machines sometime ago which I cured, it was CPU speed dependent
(affects SPP and PS/2 mode parallel ports the worst, use EPP where
possible) so it is a little hard to spot on a very fast machine. I
had to rip some hand tunned asm code out due to egcs "-Wall warnings".

There is a bug still on my pending list with respect to the mid-level
driver could not allocate kernel memory causing an OOPS, this is on
the back burner as the problem is very difficult to replicate.

The output from the "dmesg" command contains a lot of useful info,
certainly helps in the debugging of a problem.

Finally, send ZIP drive problems to myself or linux-parport@torque.net
I do not follow the linux-kernel mailing list due to mail volume
restrictions.

David Campbell
=======================================================
campbell@torque.net
Check http://www.torque.net/parport for all Linux parallel port solutions.
(also check http://www.torque.net/parport/archive/current/)
Current project list:
a) Catch up on the ZIP Plus backlog (drive back from waranty)
b) Maintain Linux ZIP drivers (need to update docs)
c) sleep
d) real life

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