The HyperNews Linux KHG Discussion Pages

## sti() called too late.

  Forum: The Linux Kernel Hackers' Guide
  Re: sti() called too late. (Erik Thiele)
  Keywords: cli() IRQ rtc realtime timer lost
  Date: Fri, 24 Jan 1997 19:07:40 GMT
  From: Gadi Oxman <gadio@netvision.net.il>

    Unfortunately, some combinations of chipsets, IDE
    interfaces and drives will not work reliably when
    interrupts are allowed to occur while we are servicing
    a disk interrupt.

    The IDE driver can optionally unmask interrupts during
    the data transfer, by using "hdparm -u1 /dev/hdx".

    This is a typical problem; on the one hand, we want to
    achieve the best possible performance, but once we do
    this, we might find out that we are no longer compatible
    with marginal hardware which could have worked if only
    we didn't try to push it so hard.

    Gadi Oxman
    gadio@netvision.net.il