Mail Archives: djgpp/1999/01/28/05:06:04
On Thu, 28 Jan 1999, suryani lim wrote:
> The program also uses milisecond timing routine from PCTimer14 (Chih-Hao
> Tsai).
>
> My question is : is it possible for a program to cause physical error
> on the harddisk (at least as detected by scan disk) ?
It's possible, if the program has bugs in handling hardware
interrupts. The problem is that some CPU exceptions, like GPF, Stack
Fault, etc. have the same numbers as low-level interrupts generated by
IRQs connected to disk and other devices, so a bug that causes an
exception in protected mode can cause spurious low-level disk
operations to be performed. Btw, HP machines are known for their
non-standard IRQ usage; that might be the reason that other systems
don't see the problem.
Does this problem happen with other DJGPP programs, like the compiler?
If not, you need to look for a bug in your program. In particular,
either PCTimer14 could be the culprit (try running the test program
from the package, without any add-on code), or the code you have added
to it.
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