Subject: Weird bogon in X
To: None <port-hp300@NetBSD.ORG>
From: Charles M. Hannum <mycroft@ai.mit.edu>
List: port-hp300
Date: 03/21/1995 15:06:25
Is someone still maintaining the hp300 port of X?

I just stumbled on an almost hilariously funny bug in the hp300
version of xdm.

The symptom of this bug is that, after xdm is started (even if it's
later killed), an open of /dev/tty00 (first port on a dcm) hangs the
machine.  More specifically, it causes a loop in dcmparam().

The problem is that the code in xdm to generate cookies checksums the
first 16MB of /dev/mem.  This does not work on a hp300.  The RAM lives
at the top of the physical address space, not the bottom.  The dcm
happens to live within that 16MB, and reading its registers corrupts
its state.

The dcm driver should also have some logic to reset the port on first
open and to kill infinite loops, though.