Serial Boards

We are using a Lava-Serial DB9 board on our QNX computer and have assigned
interrupts 5 and 15 to it.
The interrupts are set by jumpers on the board. Its an ISA board and usually
works fine.

However, sometimes when we turn the power-off and reboot , it fails to
reboot. It stops at the line where we specify:

/bin/dev.ser 3e8, 5 2e8, 15

in the sysinit file.

I read someweher in the knowledge base that ISA cards could cause problems
when used with fast pentium computers. Is is it becasue of that?
OR
Just out of curiosity, could this card be asserting interrupts that it
shouldn’t?

I have no clues and would appreciate your suggestions.

Thanks,
Shashank

I hope someone can help.

Thank you,
Shashank


“Shashank” <sbalijepalli@precitech.com> wrote in message
news:ch788g$rkl$1@inn.qnx.com

We are using a Lava-Serial DB9 board on our QNX computer and have assigned
interrupts 5 and 15 to it.
The interrupts are set by jumpers on the board. Its an ISA board and
usually
works fine.

However, sometimes when we turn the power-off and reboot , it fails to
reboot. It stops at the line where we specify:

/bin/dev.ser 3e8, 5 2e8, 15

in the sysinit file.

I read someweher in the knowledge base that ISA cards could cause problems
when used with fast pentium computers. Is is it becasue of that?
OR
Just out of curiosity, could this card be asserting interrupts that it
shouldn’t?

I have no clues and would appreciate your suggestions.

Thanks,
Shashank






\

In your BIOS setup, you should check to make sure that no other devices have
been assigned these interrupts, and you should check the jumpers on other
ISA cards to make sure that you have no two using the same interrupt. In the
BIOS, turn off all motherboard devices, such as sound/audio, that you aren’t
using. You may even want to turn off auto assignment of PCI devices, and
assign the interrupts yourself, so that they don’t conflict with your ISA
card.

That all being said, I worked on a project a few years ago where we were
using an ISA card. Our systems were also occasionally freezing during
bootup. The problem turned out to be the ISA bus interface circuitry on the
card. The manufacturer, in Sweden, had to send a tech to the site, in the
far east, to modify all 160 of the cards. It was an expensive problem to
fix.

“Shashank” <sbalijepalli@precitech.com> wrote in message
news:ch7eiu$34r$1@inn.qnx.com

I hope someone can help.

Thank you,
Shashank


“Shashank” <> sbalijepalli@precitech.com> > wrote in message
news:ch788g$rkl$> 1@inn.qnx.com> …

We are using a Lava-Serial DB9 board on our QNX computer and have
assigned
interrupts 5 and 15 to it.
The interrupts are set by jumpers on the board. Its an ISA board and
usually
works fine.

However, sometimes when we turn the power-off and reboot , it fails to
reboot. It stops at the line where we specify:

/bin/dev.ser 3e8, 5 2e8, 15

in the sysinit file.

I read someweher in the knowledge base that ISA cards could cause
problems
when used with fast pentium computers. Is is it becasue of that?
OR
Just out of curiosity, could this card be asserting interrupts that it
shouldn’t?

I have no clues and would appreciate your suggestions.

Thanks,
Shashank








\

Shashank <sbalijepalli@precitech.com> wrote:

We are using a Lava-Serial DB9 board on our QNX computer and have assigned
interrupts 5 and 15 to it.
The interrupts are set by jumpers on the board. Its an ISA board and usually
works fine.

Have you gone into your BIOS and reserved those interrupts for ISA?

See, PCI BIOSes assign interrupts, if you are using an ISA device, the
PCI BIOS doesn’t know about this, and could assign that interrupt to
a PCI device as well, and this won’t work.

So, you need to make sure your BIOS won’t do this – usually there
is some entry such as “reserve for ISA” or “reserver for legacy hardware”
for the different interrupts. You need to mark 5 and 15 that way.

Might be something else --but that is one of the gotchas for using
ISA cards on a PCI machine.

-David

Please follow-up to newsgroup, rather than personal email.
David Gibbs
QNX Training Services
dagibbs@qnx.com

In article <ch7eiu$34r$1@inn.qnx.com>, sbalijepalli@precitech.com
says…

I hope someone can help.

Can you provide some more details, please. It would be great if you post
here output of ‘show_pci -vvv’, ‘sin irqs’, ‘sin info’. Do you actually
have comma and blank space between port address and irq in command
line where you start Dev.ser?

Eduard

Thank you,
Shashank


“Shashank” <> sbalijepalli@precitech.com> > wrote in message
news:ch788g$rkl$> 1@inn.qnx.com> …

We are using a Lava-Serial DB9 board on our QNX computer and have assigned
interrupts 5 and 15 to it.
The interrupts are set by jumpers on the board. Its an ISA board and
usually
works fine.

However, sometimes when we turn the power-off and reboot , it fails to
reboot. It stops at the line where we specify:

/bin/dev.ser 3e8, 5 2e8, 15

in the sysinit file.

I read someweher in the knowledge base that ISA cards could cause problems
when used with fast pentium computers. Is is it becasue of that?
OR
Just out of curiosity, could this card be asserting interrupts that it
shouldn’t?

I have no clues and would appreciate your suggestions.

Thanks,
Shashank









\

I’ve attached the output of “sin irqs”. We are using 3,45 as the serial
interrupts.
and
Dev.ser is started as follows in the sysint file

/bin/Dev.ser 3f8,4 2f8,3 3e8,5 &

Thanks for your reply,
Shashank


“ed1k” <ed1k@fake.address> wrote in message
news:MPG.1ba8323690079d1698969f@inn.qnx.com

In article <ch7eiu$34r$> 1@inn.qnx.com> >, > sbalijepalli@precitech.com
says…

I hope someone can help.

Can you provide some more details, please. It would be great if you post
here output of ‘show_pci -vvv’, ‘sin irqs’, ‘sin info’. Do you actually
have comma and blank space between port address and irq in command
line where you start Dev.ser?

Eduard


Thank you,
Shashank


“Shashank” <> sbalijepalli@precitech.com> > wrote in message
news:ch788g$rkl$> 1@inn.qnx.com> …

We are using a Lava-Serial DB9 board on our QNX computer and have
assigned
interrupts 5 and 15 to it.
The interrupts are set by jumpers on the board. Its an ISA board and
usually
works fine.

However, sometimes when we turn the power-off and reboot , it fails
to
reboot. It stops at the line where we specify:

/bin/dev.ser 3e8, 5 2e8, 15

in the sysinit file.

I read someweher in the knowledge base that ISA cards could cause
problems
when used with fast pentium computers. Is is it becasue of that?
OR
Just out of curiosity, could this card be asserting interrupts that it
shouldn’t?

I have no clues and would appreciate your suggestions.

Thanks,
Shashank










\

begin 666 irqs.txt
M25)1(" @4$E$("!04D]'4D%-(" @(" @(" @(" @(" @(" @("!#4SI)4" @
M(" @($13"B M,2 @(" Q-B @+R\Q+V)I;B]$978S,B @(" @(" @(" @(# P
M,#4Z,# U-S8P(# P,$0*(“TQ(” @(#(S(" O+S$O8FEN+T1E=C,R+F%N<VD@
M(" @(" @,# P-3HP,#5$0S @,# P1 H@+3$@(" @,S$@("\O,2]B:6XO1G-Y
M<RYF;&]P<'D@(" @(" P,# U.C P,C9&0R P,#!$“B M,2 @(” S-" @+R\Q
M+V)I;B].970@(" @(" @(" @(" @(# P,34Z,# T-CA$(# P,40*(“TQ(” @
M(#@S(" O+S$O8FEN+T1E=C,R+G-E<B @(" @(" @,# P-3HP,#(T1D,@,# P
M1 H@(# @(" @(#$@("]B;V]T+W-Y<R]0<F]C,S(@(" @(" @(" P,$8P.C P
M-$-",R P,$8X"B @," @(" S-" @+R\Q+V)I;B].970@(" @(" @(" @(" @
M(# P,34Z,# T-S,X(# P,40*(" P(" @(#@X(" O+S$O8FEN+TEN<‘5T(" @
M(" @(" @(" @,# P-3HP,30S,44@,# P1 H@(#$@(" @,C,@("\O,2]B:6XO
M1&5V,S(N86YS:2 @(" @(" P,# U.C P-CDP0R P,#!$“B @,R @(” X,R @
M+R\Q+V)I;B]$978S,BYS97(@(" @(" @(# P,#4Z,# Q-S=#(# P,$0*(" T
M(" @(#@S(" O+S$O8FEN+T1E=C,R+G-E<B @(" @(" @,# P-3HP,#$W030@
M,# P1 H@(#4@(" @.#,@("\O,2]B:6XO1&5V,S(N<V5R(" @(" @(" P,# U
M.C P,3=#0R P,#!$“B @-B @(” S,2 @+R\Q+V)I;B]&<WES+F9L;W!P>2 @
M(" @(# P,#4Z,# R-D4U(# P,$0*(" Y(" @.3(R(" O+S$OB]B:6XO8V]M
M;75T871I;VX@(" @,# P-3HP,$%#.# @,# P1 H@,3 @(" @,S0@("\O,2]B
M:6XO3F5T(" @(" @(" @(" @(" P,#$U.C P-34U1B P,#%$“B Q,B @(#$P
M,R @+R\Q+V)I;B]);G!U=” @(" @(" @(" @(# P,#4Z,#$T,S9&(# P,$0

M(#$S(" @(" Q(" O8F]O="]S>7,O4’)O8S,R(" @(" @(" @,#!&,#HP,#1#
M-S<@,#!&. H@,30@(" @(#4@("]B:6XO1G-Y<RYE:61E(" @(" @(" @(" P
0,# U.C P-#@V," P,#!$"@``
`
end

In article <chqc52$gio$1@inn.qnx.com>, sbalijepalli@precitech.com
says…

Thank you very much. Looks like there is no conflicts on interrupt
lines. Could you download tarball and post output of this small utility:

http://ed1k.qnx.org.ru/utils/picinfo/qnx4/picinfo.tgz

I assume you have built-in serial port 3f8,4 and Lava dual serial ISA
board with ports 2f8,3 and 3e8,5. Is it correct? (it’s sligtly different
from original irq 5 and 15). Also, can you tell us the exact version of
QNX and at least CPU speed or model of your PC. I’ll try to reproduce
the problem. How often does system hang? Once in hundred reboots or more
frequently?

Eduard.

I’ve attached the output of “sin irqs”. We are using 3,45 as the serial
interrupts.
and
Dev.ser is started as follows in the sysint file

/bin/Dev.ser 3f8,4 2f8,3 3e8,5 &

Thanks for your reply,
Shashank

Thanks for your reply.

The problem doesn’t occur with every Lava dual serial ISA board that we use.
We’ve been using these boards since more than a year and have noticed this
problem only about a month or so ago (i.e with newer boards). Have there
been any version changes? It seems like certain Lava boards dont age too
well. Bascially once the system hangs, the only way to get it running is to
take the board out and put it back in. Surprisingly, it starts working once
we do this. Maybe this provides you with a clue.

We are using Qnx4.1 with a pentium3 850 Mhz chip.

Shashank





“ed1k” <ed1k@fake.address> wrote in message
news:MPG.1baaf5b516e508959896a0@inn.qnx.com

In article <chqc52$gio$> 1@inn.qnx.com> >, > sbalijepalli@precitech.com
says…

Thank you very much. Looks like there is no conflicts on interrupt
lines. Could you download tarball and post output of this small utility:

http://ed1k.qnx.org.ru/utils/picinfo/qnx4/picinfo.tgz

I assume you have built-in serial port 3f8,4 and Lava dual serial ISA
board with ports 2f8,3 and 3e8,5. Is it correct? (it’s sligtly different
from original irq 5 and 15). Also, can you tell us the exact version of
QNX and at least CPU speed or model of your PC. I’ll try to reproduce
the problem. How often does system hang? Once in hundred reboots or more
frequently?

Eduard.

I’ve attached the output of “sin irqs”. We are using 3,45 as the serial
interrupts.
and
Dev.ser is started as follows in the sysint file

/bin/Dev.ser 3f8,4 2f8,3 3e8,5 &

Thanks for your reply,
Shashank

Hi Eduard,

I ran the file (picinfo) that you sent and have attached its output.

Thanks for your help
Shashank

“ed1k” <ed1k@fake.address> wrote in message
news:MPG.1baaf5b516e508959896a0@inn.qnx.com

In article <chqc52$gio$> 1@inn.qnx.com> >, > sbalijepalli@precitech.com
says…

Thank you very much. Looks like there is no conflicts on interrupt
lines. Could you download tarball and post output of this small utility:

http://ed1k.qnx.org.ru/utils/picinfo/qnx4/picinfo.tgz

I assume you have built-in serial port 3f8,4 and Lava dual serial ISA
board with ports 2f8,3 and 3e8,5. Is it correct? (it’s sligtly different
from original irq 5 and 15). Also, can you tell us the exact version of
QNX and at least CPU speed or model of your PC. I’ll try to reproduce
the problem. How often does system hang? Once in hundred reboots or more
frequently?

Eduard.

I’ve attached the output of “sin irqs”. We are using 3,45 as the serial
interrupts.
and
Dev.ser is started as follows in the sysint file

/bin/Dev.ser 3f8,4 2f8,3 3e8,5 &

Thanks for your reply,
Shashank

begin 666 pic_info.dat
M25)1(#,@+3X@161G92!T<FEG9V5D(&UO9&4@$E302DN"DE242 T(“T^($5D
M9V4@=’)I9V=E9”!M;V1E("A)4T$I+@I)4E$@-2 M/B!%9&=E('1R:6=G960@
M;6]D92 H25-!2X25)1(#8@+3X@161G92!T<FEG9V5D(&UO9&4@
$E302DN
M"DE242 W(“T^($5D9V4@=’)I9V=E9”!M;V1E(“A)4T$I+@I)4E$@.2 M/B!%
M9&=E(‘1R:6=G960@;6]D92 H25-!2X25)1,3 @+3X@3&5V96P@=’)I9V=E
M9”!M;V1E("A00TD@8V%P86)L92DN"DE243$Q(“T^($QE=F5L('1R:6=G960@
M;6]D92 H4$-)(&-A<&%B;&4I+@I)4E$Q,B M/B!%9&=E(‘1R:6=G960@;6]D
M92 H25-!2X25)1,3,@+3X@161G92!T<FEG9V5D(&UO9&4@*$E302DN"DE2
@43$U("T^($5D9V4@=’)I9V=E9”!M;V1E("A)4T$I+@H
end

In article <ci4vcb$h7b$1@inn.qnx.com>, sbalijepalli@precitech.com
says…

Thanks for your reply.

The problem doesn’t occur with every Lava dual serial ISA board that we use.
We’ve been using these boards since more than a year and have noticed this
problem only about a month or so ago (i.e with newer boards). Have there
been any version changes?

I don’t think there were any version changes of ISA board in last year
or two. If you can look at the board, please tell me PCB layout version

  • you can find white letters and digits printed on the board, something
    like
    P.N. MOKO LXX.X
    where XX.X is a version number.

It seems like certain Lava boards dont age too
well. Bascially once the system hangs, the only way to get it running is to
take the board out and put it back in. Surprisingly, it starts working once
we do this. Maybe this provides you with a clue.

So, just turning off computer isn’t enough? Are you saying you have to
turn off the PC, than remove the board, after that put it back and turn
on PC?

We are using Qnx4.1 with a pentium3 850 Mhz chip.

This was always a puzzle for me why people use ISA boards with pentium3.
We do have a lot of PCI cards to choose from.

Eduard.

Shashank

Hi Eduard,

The version number of the boards we use is 29.8.

On a boot failure, we’ve taken the board and the jumpers out and put them
back as they were before and it has restarted without any hassles. But I am
not too sure that it will repeat the same behavior everytime we do this.

Thanks,
Shashank







“ed1k” <ed1k@fake.address> wrote in message
news:MPG.1bb17adca09c156a9896a2@inn.qnx.com

In article <ci4vcb$h7b$> 1@inn.qnx.com> >, > sbalijepalli@precitech.com
says…

Thanks for your reply.

The problem doesn’t occur with every Lava dual serial ISA board that we
use.
We’ve been using these boards since more than a year and have noticed
this
problem only about a month or so ago (i.e with newer boards). Have there
been any version changes?

I don’t think there were any version changes of ISA board in last year
or two. If you can look at the board, please tell me PCB layout version

  • you can find white letters and digits printed on the board, something
    like
    P.N. MOKO LXX.X
    where XX.X is a version number.

It seems like certain Lava boards dont age too
well. Bascially once the system hangs, the only way to get it running is
to
take the board out and put it back in. Surprisingly, it starts working
once
we do this. Maybe this provides you with a clue.

So, just turning off computer isn’t enough? Are you saying you have to
turn off the PC, than remove the board, after that put it back and turn
on PC?


We are using Qnx4.1 with a pentium3 850 Mhz chip.

This was always a puzzle for me why people use ISA boards with pentium3.
We do have a lot of PCI cards to choose from.

Eduard.


Shashank

In article <ci9hbc$4j8$1@inn.qnx.com>, sbalijepalli@precitech.com
says…

The version number of the boards we use is 29.8.

And what is the UART chip (right above that text)? The only thing that
was changing during last year on this board it was chip makers, some of
them have gone, unfortunately. So, is it TI, XR, Epic?

Eduard.

Theres a square-shaped chip above the version number and the text on it
says:

IMP 16C552
CJ 68
0311MDC

I don’t see any TI,XR or Epic.

There’s another chip above this chip that says:
TIF336 FS
F74
Thanks,
Shashank



“ed1k” <ed1k@fake.address> wrote in message
news:MPG.1bb2e9ae41a51ed79896a3@inn.qnx.com

In article <ci9hbc$4j8$> 1@inn.qnx.com> >, > sbalijepalli@precitech.com
says…

The version number of the boards we use is 29.8.


And what is the UART chip (right above that text)? The only thing that
was changing during last year on this board it was chip makers, some of
them have gone, unfortunately. So, is it TI, XR, Epic?

Eduard.

In article <cic0hq$4do$1@inn.qnx.com>, sbalijepalli@precitech.com
says…

Theres a square-shaped chip above the version number and the text on it
says:

IMP 16C552
CJ 68
0311MDC

Thanks, that’s exactly what I wanted to know. I found a board from that
series (same PCB, same components), but I was not able to reproduce the
problem so far. Although I do not have QNX 4.1, but I think, if it is a
hardware problem, it should also happen with QNX 4.25 or QNX 6. It
sounds dumb, but I would like you to check and confirm that you don’t
have any other device in system that uses any of interrupts assigned to
Lava board. Please check all ISA extension boards as well as check BIOS
setup “Integrated peripherals” (or similar menu) settings. Also, please
reserve all ISA interrupts from being used by PCI devices as someone
already mentioned.

Eduard.

I have seen this behavior with PCI multiport Lava cards. It looks like
noise on the line (specifically when the card is
powered, or when you connect a serial cable to the card) can cause the chip
to go into a “interrupt storm” state (locking the machine). I have also seen
posts on the net which describe the same behavior under NetBSD and Windows
NT.

I have asked Lava’s technical support about this and they suggested getting
new cards with 1489A line receivers. The 1489A line receivers provide the
card with a higher hysteresis and as such prevent any interrupt storms.

Regards,

Joe

Shashank <sbalijepalli@precitech.com> wrote in message
news:ch788g$rkl$1@inn.qnx.com

We are using a Lava-Serial DB9 board on our QNX computer and have assigned
interrupts 5 and 15 to it.
The interrupts are set by jumpers on the board. Its an ISA board and
usually
works fine.

However, sometimes when we turn the power-off and reboot , it fails to
reboot. It stops at the line where we specify:

/bin/dev.ser 3e8, 5 2e8, 15

in the sysinit file.

I read someweher in the knowledge base that ISA cards could cause problems
when used with fast pentium computers. Is is it becasue of that?
OR
Just out of curiosity, could this card be asserting interrupts that it
shouldn’t?

I have no clues and would appreciate your suggestions.

Thanks,
Shashank






\