Gentle persons: I've been away from home and mostly away from the keyboard as well.
I returned to find the string of recent messages from/to Don Stanley regarding the failure of his Intel D510MO board to work in the Enhanced Parallel Port (EPP) mode. To quote a friend from Leeds, I was gobsmacked. I had run a quick series of tests on this board before I built it into a non-CNC project and I thought it worked fine. I pulled the board out of service and have now replicated Don's experience. The on-board BIOS Utility (selected via F2 during boot) allows me to change the peripheral settings to disable the parallel port or to enable it in output-only, bi-directional, epp, or ecp modes, and retains the selection between boots, so I naively thought everything was fine. It turns out the BIOS isn't fine. Yes, the BIOS can disable the port, but no matter what enabled setting is selected, Linux, once booted, reports the port is actually running in PC Standard Parallel Port (PCSPP) mode. Using Google, I found a relevant report on pubsub.com dated April 2010: ---begin pubsub report--- "I would like to report an ACPI/PNP Bios problem which prevents the correct detection of all parallel port parameters. I've patched the latest BIOS (MOPNV10J.86A.0175) onto the system, but still neither Linux nor Windows are able to detect the correct parallel port setting and will only operate in compatibility, unidirectional PCSPP mode. This is very unfortunate, because some hardware (purposely-built stuff and some old scanner/streamer too) still rely on this type of interface. The reason for this screwup is pretty simple to spot. The BIOS does not generate the necessary ACPI/PNP0401 entry, once the parallel port mode is set to ECP. Instead, it continues to report a simple PNP0400 device. This in turn will force the operating system to operate parallel port interface in "1980 mode". ---end pubsub report--- Since my D510MO came with BIOS version MOPNV10J.86A.0175.2010.0308.0620 already installed, I tried flashing it to what is now the latest BIOS version available on the Intel website, MOPNV10.J.86A.0311.2010.0802.2346. No joy. The bios continues to misreport the parallel port setting to the system. This is not a fatal problem for me because several computers ago I bought a no-name PCI card with an EPP/ECP parallel port on it (not based on a netmos 9805!) that I can press into service. However, I apologize to Don and others for my repeated endorsement on this mail list of this board. I should have reported exactly what I had done with the board so that he and others could see what functions I had failed to test. Don didn't deserve to be put through the ringer on this. I suppose I could try to argue lamely that the predecessor board from Intel, the D945GCLF2, didn't have this problem, but honestly, I just didn't think, or at least not fast enough. Remember what the Gipper said, "trust but verify." Regards, Kent ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Download new Adobe(R) Flash(R) Builder(TM) 4 The new Adobe(R) Flex(R) 4 and Flash(R) Builder(TM) 4 (formerly Flex(R) Builder(TM)) enable the development of rich applications that run across multiple browsers and platforms. Download your free trials today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
