On Jan 23, 2007, at 5:47 AM, Havard Eidnes wrote:
> OK, I reversed the test, and after getting a nudge to commit this
> from a co-developer, that's what I've just done.  Many thanks for
> finding the source of this problem and the fix!

   Actually, I don't even deserve that thanks.  I looked into this a  
little bit more yesterday.  The original addition of this "BIOS BUG  
WORKAROUND" claims to come from OpenBSD.  So, I looked at OpenBSD.   
They have more simplistic code than NetBSD does (which is,  
interestingly, slightly technically different), but similar.  The  
interesting thing is that a patch very much like yours was applied to  
their sources in January of 2005.  The note in their CVS tree for  
that commit is:

"Intel 82443BX DRAM address errata seems to be fixed in the latest  
revisions of the chipset.

Inspired from netbsd pr by scottr@NetBSD.org."

   So, I looked.  In December 2004, PR port-i386/28759 [critical/ 
medium] was opened, with a patch.  Never to be looked at again, I  
fear.  :-/

http://www.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/query-pr-single.pl?number=28759

   So, please thank Scott in addition to myself, and close port- 
i386/28759.

                                       - Chris