RELENG_7 and HEAD: bge causes system hang
韓家標 Bill Hacker
askbill at conducive.net
Mon Nov 26 12:38:08 PST 2007
Robert Watson wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Nov 2007, Cristian KLEIN wrote:
>
*snip*
(this probbaly justifies a new thread ... but..)
>>
>> That is very unfortunate. Newer laptops don't come with a serial port
>> anymore. As far as I know, using USB-to-serial converters won't work.
>
> Many notebooks do, however, have firewire. I've not read the firewire
> code or used firewire for debugging, so I can't comment on how effective
> breaks are, but I can say that one of the neatest things about firewire
> is that you can inspect the kernel memory of a host remotely even when
> it's frozen solid, which is pretty cool. So if you have a notebook that
> is also without firewire, you may indeed be out of luck, but with
> firewire, you have a nice new option.
>
*snip*
>
> I think getting an MPSAFE syscons would be desirable, but it's a
> non-trivial piece of work, especially if you take into account that it's
> tangled up in the tty code. If you have firewire, that may be a useful
> option. However, I would agree with an assertion that notebooks are
> becoming less useful as a development platform because of the omission
> of a real serial port.
*snip*
A) Notebooks are at over 50% of new sales and climbing, so it isn't just as
devel platforms - but as sources of 'field reports' of tester / user encountered
problems that will become an ever-growing challenge.
Worse, unlike a conventional MB, one cannot just plug in a bus card and emulate
(or substitute for) the key subsystem involved, so at some point those laptops
need to be accomodated.
B) It isn't just laptops. Mac Mini-like, small-format packaging is taking
another chunk out of the field. These, too are legacy I/O challenged as well as
limited in bus sockets.
C) Even full-ATX size MB have long-since begun shedding (external) serial ports
as well as PS2 mouse & keyboard-ports, may not even ship with the cables or
connectors to attach to such 'legacy' serial connectors as reamin - usually
well-hidden somewhere on the MB.
D) Much as I like FW, I haven't seen any indication that it has a guarantee of
survival or universality any greater than once-common IRDA did.
Too many price-driven decisions favor 'good enough' and far more common USB 2.
Something will be needed soon/already to cover the general gap of missing SIO.
We probably *can* count on audio I/O not going away, so perhaps ASCII to fsk -
or even text to speech.
:-(
Bill
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