>> As I posted earlier, you could safely enable interrupts during IDE I/O
>> for ISA/VLB users too if LILO/LOADLIN had a parameter to override the
>> new default of ENABLED, accommodating anyone who needs the present
>> default of disabled.
>
>Not safe enough. About 50% of *all* VLB systems have this problem,
>though it likely occurs only during simultaneous floppy disk usage.
Fifty percent? How do you derive that number?
If truly 50% of all VLB systems have that problem, then when VLB was
prevalent FreeBSD would never have attained widespread use without
disabling interrupts during IDE disk I/O as LInux does. But FreeBSD
did attain widespread use and they did not disable interrupts.
It all sounds like fearful Linux mythology to me.
John