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catching spurious interrupts

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buenos

buenos

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Hi

Is there a DOS application that I could use to catch spurious interrupts?
We have a new motherboard under bringup with new BIOS, and getting spurious interrupts. The problems is that we dont know where its coming from (system hangs with message referring to interrupt). Once the source is identified, we could disable it in the BIOS source code.
So what I need is a DOS program that registers all IRQ inputs on the PIC/APIC, waits and then displays on the screen some info about all arrived interrupts, like which pin on the PIC/APIC got the IRQ...
 

I think I understand the problem, but I'm not persuaded that using DOS will help. As I understand DOS, it is an Operating System, and like all OSes, one of its duties is to isolate all interrupts from the user and from applications, so the interrupts would not be exposed to a DOS programme. (Please correct me if I'm missing something here about DOS).

Can you just write a simple Assembler (or machine code) programme which enables interrupts and for each interrupt it fetches the ID of the interrupt and outputs it somewhere where you can access it?

By the way, have you simply tried disabling some of the obvious interrupts (such as the RTC timer, ports, display, power supply)?

Its at times like this that you really need machine code!
 

hi.

since im a hardware guy, i dont really write any assembly/c code. i have designed the motherboard.
the problem is to start developing an application and debugging it takes time. I wanted some readily available program.

I have seen a DOS program before counting interrupts on a certain SERIRQ slot. so it should be possible, just lets say count them on all sources.

The other problem is often if we have spurious interrupts, then it happens so frequently that we are not able to install windows (like a half an hour to install it), so we really need to debug most HW/BIOS problems from DOS. (no install, boots instantly, doesnt use a lot of HW in the background...)
 

In the X86 terminology, spurious interrupts are those that don't last long enough to make the interrupt controller place an interrupt vector. So it's just their nature, that the source can't be identified by software means. In this case, you would use a logic analyzer (or at least a digital oszilloscope with intelligent trigger) for this purpose.
 

what i ment is an interrupt from unknown source.
 

what i ment is an interrupt from unknown source
Click to expand...
O.K. I remember, there have been TSR (terminate and stay resident) DOS applications that hooked up to various hardware and software interrupts and gathered informations about them. The shell could be activated by a hotkey. But I don't remember the names, it's more than 20 years that I used this stuff.
 

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