Well, I can't speak for the consequences of noapic (I've wondered as
much myself), but I know that there's been a problem with SMP 2.4
kernels (even the 2.4 test kernels) and USB running on VIA chipsets for
a while now. I'm told by the linux-usb maintainers that it's a problem
with the PCI IRQ routing for the VIA chipsets, but I've been unable to
get anyone who knows about this to do anything (and I've been asking for
a while). Alas, since this stuff is beyond me, I just accept the fact
that it'll probably always be broke.
pete
On Mon, 12 Mar 2001, David DeGeorge wrote:
> I am running 2.4.2 as obtained from redhat, but I have experienced the same
> problems with a kernel compiled from the 2.4.2 sources at kernel.org.
> I am experiencing troubles with enabling MPS 1.4 and USB. I have an ABIT VP6
> motherboard with two stock 733MHz PIIIs.
> If I set MPS1.1 in the bios then my IOmega Photoshow usb zip drive works, the
> usb interrupt appears on irq 9 and after a day or two I experience a hard
> (sysreq doesn't work) lock. It seems usb related since doing usb things i.e.
> mounting the drive sometimes cause the lock.
> If I set MPS1.4 in the bios then the usb interrupt appears on irq 19, whose
> count is alway zero, and the zip drive doesn't get registered. If give the
> noapic command line then things appear to work, irq=9,don't know about the
> hard locks, but booting seems much slower. Of course I can provide much more
> information but I wonder is this a common problem and what are the
> consequences of the noapic command?
> David
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