Re: [PATCH] Cleanup port 0x80 use (was: Re: IO delay ...)

From: Linus Torvalds (torvalds@transmeta.com)
Date: Fri Mar 15 2002 - 16:33:45 EST


In article <a6tm95$c55$1@cesium.transmeta.com>,
H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com> wrote:
>
>The ISA bus doesn't time out; a cycle on the ISA bus just happens, and
>the fact that noone is there to listen doesn't seem to matter.

The ISA bus doesn't time out, but the PCI access before it gets
forwarded to the ISA bus _does_, if the ISA bus is decoded using
nagative decoding.

This is why it's important that there not be a motherboard PCI device
that can decode the port - because if there is, the access is
potentially a much faster PCI-only decode.

Note that this really only matters on low-end machines anyway, as the
whole "inb_p()" thing tends to be used only for old ISA devices. If you
have a new machine that is all PCI, I doubt that port 80h access matters
not at all.

(Another way of saying it: if you have a machine with a PCI POST card,
none of this will matter)

                        Linus
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