SMP system not running SMP

[Pete French]

> We haven't heard from anyone using boards with this hardware in SMP.

Soren has a board like mine runnign SMP - but he is (preseumably, given
it's him!) using IDE drives with it.

> I don't know how many amd64 users are trying for SMP, but it's interesting
> that no one seems to be doing it successfully with Adaptec controllers
> (possibly qualified to "on motherboards with this chipset").

I am thinking it's the chipset myself - I can get the same problem
with my HP controller there instead of my Adaptec. I am going to scour ebay
for some other brand of SCSI controller and see if that does the same.

> Yup.  But I oughta try the experiment of disabling EVERY ACPI feature that
> I can.

I'd put money on it not helping I'm afraid, but you are right that it's worth
a try.

> What's bugging me is that, despite people having told me you can't have SMP
> without ACPI, I thought I did the NetBSD test back when I had ACPI disabled

I think what people are sayng is that ACPI is part of the spec for the 64
bit platform. So you *shouldn't* do a 64 bit OS with ACPI disabled, and it's
hardly surprising if you run into problems if you do. Under 32 bit (which is
what I have reverted to trying) then ACPI is not part of the platform spec
and is thus not needed for SMP (as SMP on 32 bit predates ACPI).

So if you ran 32 bit NetBSD then it should work with or withough ACPI. If
you run it as 64 bit's then it is well within it's right to fail if ACPI
is disabled. On the other hand it might just share the 32 bit code and
still work.

That's my understanding - can someone correct me if the above is wrong ?

-pete.

PS: Anyone in the Angel-London-UK area willing to lend me a non Adaptec
SCSI card for an evening ?