Keyboard lockups with non-SMP pre-2.1.37-[3456]

Luca Lizzeri (ll@niche.it)
Fri, 9 May 1997 11:40:03 +0200


As previously reported on the list, hitting some special keys will cause
the keyboard to start malfunctioning.

As long as NumLock or CapsLock are not touched, everything works fine (even
console switching). As soon as one of these is touched (maybe others, I have
not experimented over-long) the keyboard will lock up for some seconds, and
from then on, console switching will work, with the same time lag before
accepting keypresses. After having had 4-5 of these lockups, the keyboard
driver becomes very confused (I was in vi at the time, not the very best place
for blind keypressing :)

Luca

P.S. I could not experiment with pre-2.1.37-2, it wouldn't compile as
non-SMP. I expect the problem would be present, as the changes in vt.c and
tty_io.c were already there (not that I'm implying I'm sure the problem
is in those changes :)
P.P.S If i compile as SMP, it barfs in calibrate_APIC_clock on my Cyrix 6x86
P166+ (if necessary, I will repeat the experiment and hand transcribe
the Oops). Yes I know that Cyrix 6x86s are not exactly smp-capable, just
wondering if a more graceful fallback is possible or desirable.