D'Arcy J.M. Cain writes:

> Thus spake Todd Whitesel
> > Hardware can get "soft-wedged" such that a flip-off-flip-on power-cycle
> > does not reset everything that needs to be reset.
> 
> Also, while hardware is getting more resilient, it's probably not all
> that good to do a flipoffflipon type reset.  I still give it a good
> 3 or 4 seconds myself.
> 
> Mind you my first computer (Altair) would actually blow boards if you
> didn't leave it off for 20 or 30 seconds (Actually I never turned it
> back on until the fan came to a complete stop which took about that long)
> so 3 or 4 almost feels like a flipoffflipon to me.  :-)

This is all awfully pessimistic :)

Generally boards reset everything that "needs" to be reset at
power-up.  If the board was getting wedged to the point that power
cycles wouldn't fix it, it probably means that the driver is missing
setting some register or other to the correct value.

It isn't a bug in the hardware to not always come up in exactly the
same state, its quite reasonable for the driver to do "some" of the
resetting....

That said, I usually wait a few seconds too :) (or until the drives
stop spinning, whichever happens last).

Cheers,

Dave