Re: [Etherboot-developers] Windows 98 slow booting

[Michael B. <mb...@fe...>]

On Thu, 17 Oct 2002, Ken Yap wrote:
> >We call gateA20_unset() on some exit paths but not all.  The proper
> >solution would probably be to have a static inline void eb_exit(int) that
> >calls gateA20_unset() (and maybe some other last-minute tidy-ups) before
> >doing an exit().  All existing calls to exit() should then be replaced
> >with calls to eb_exit().  However, I'm not sure that I completely
> >understand all the places where exit() is currently used in Etherboot, so
> >I'm not confident in doing this.  For example, in main.c we have:
> >                case 255:
> >                        exit(0);
> >                        state = -1;
> >                        break;
> >i.e. code following an exit(), which is puzzling me.
> >Thoughts?
> From a glance at the code, that looks like the correct solution for 5.0.
> All the occurences of exit are in main, except for one in bootmenu.c
> which I'll do for completeness.  Have you tried it and does it work? If
> so I'll make the changes later today.

I tried temporarily adding gateA20_unset to one exit path and it worked
(in the sense that Windows then booted normally).  I haven't made any
changes to the code - be my guest.

I should have this test machine available for another few days if anyone
wants to come up with a solution for 5.1, but it'll have to go back to its
owner at some point.  I don't have any other machines that exhibit this
problem.

Michael Brown
http://www.fensystems.co.uk