Re: [PATCH] m68k/mac: Replace macide driver with generic platform driver

[Finn Thain]

On Mon, 26 Apr 2021, Michael Schmitz wrote:

> Am 25.04.2021 um 21:06 schrieb Finn Thain:
> > This was tested on my Quadra 630. I haven't tested it on my PowerBook 150
> > because I don't have a RAM adapter board for it.
> >
> > Apparently, the hardware I tested doesn't need macide_clear_irq() or
> > macide_test_irq() -- if it did, the generic driver would not have worked.
> > It's possible that those routines are needed for the PowerBook 150 but
> > we can cross that bridge if and when we come to it.
> >
> > BTW, macide_clear_irq() appears to suffer from a race condition. The write
> > to the interrupt flags register could easily have unintended side effects
> > as it may alter other flag bits. Fortunately, all of the other bits are
> > unused by Linux. Moreover, when tested on my Quadra 630, that assignment
> > (*ide_ifr &= ~0x20) was observed to have no effect on bit 5.
> 
> You are worried that the bit clear might not be done atomic?
> 

The edge-triggered interrupt flag bits are usually cleared by writing 1 to 
the flag bit. Under this scheme, writing a 0 to a flag bit has no effect.

The assignment statement here is trying to clear bit 5 by writing 0. But 
what about the other bits that we're writing 0 to? Some of them may also 
be flag bits, and they may have been asserted in between the load and 
store. AFAICS this scheme just can't work for edge-triggered interrupts.

So perhaps this is a level-triggered interrupt?

> Regarding the missing effect of clearing bit 5, I suspect this has never 
> before been tested rigorously (I don't remember ever using a Quadra 
> 630). 
> 
> The logic attempted to replicate what the MacOS IDE driver did. 

Fair enough. Maybe we have found a bug in the MacOS IDE driver.

> The Linux IDE driver has its own way to test and clear a port's 
> interrupt flag, so this extra code can quite probably go.
> 
> Thanks for cleaning this up!
> 
> Reviewed-by: Michael Schmitz <schmitzmic@xxxxxxxxx>
> 

Thanks for your review.