On Tue, 23 Jan 1996, Matthew B. Wood wrote:

> > I was wondering if anybody can shed some light on this problem. We 
> > currently have a pentium PCI/I-P54TP4 with the asus bios running Netbsd 1.0. 
> > It appears that the system is unable to perform a soft reboot. We have
> > upgraded our bios to release 111, but the problem is still there. 
> > 
> > Has anybody encountered/corrected the above reboot problem. Is this a 
> > problem that perhaps is  fixed in Netbsd 1.1 ? 
> > ==============================================================================
> > George E. Navas   		navas@bayarea.net
> > Voice: (408)447-8690  		Fax:(408)447-8691 	http://www.bayarea.net
> 
> I had similar trouble with NetBSD 1.0.  I thought, too, that it was my 
> hardware/firmware.  I posted to the i386 list and a few responses came 
> back where people had pointed out the different routines NetBSD uses to 
> force a reboot.  After making a recommended mod and rebuilding the 
> kernel, I still had no success.
> 
> What did work, though, was going to 1.0current and subsequently 1.1.  I 
> had made no hardware upgrades or changes, and was using a fairly old 
> 486dx33 motherboard (Magitronic) and AMI BIOS.  After the upgrade to 
> 1.0current (this was late last summer), my soft reboots worked fine every 
> time and I could rely on my machine to reboot from remote.
> 
> I know it may seem like a real pain to upgrade, but I wholeheartedly
> recommend it.  MANY things are fixed in the new release, some of which 
> are significant.  Be sure to grab the patch file that accompanies the 1.1 
> release in case they haven't built it into the binary tar packages--if 
> anything for your future kernel rebuilds.
> 
>   .....

I have seen this problem, as well.  That was one of my BIG reasons for 
upgrading to 1.1.  However, the problem is still there in the new 
version.  I have a similar system, a 486DX/33 with AMI BIOS.  From the 
research that a friend and I have done, the code in reboot() does not reset 
the IDE hard disk controller properly. (I get a HDD controller failure 
once NetBSD reboots)  After hitting the reset button, everything is back 
to normal again.  

If someone wants to look into this, I can give some specs from my PC, and 
I'm willing to try some things to get this worked out.  

Thanks,
- Brian