PC Speaker ocassionally hangs on an FIC VA-503+ under 2.4.[567]

PC Speaker ocassionally hangs on an FIC VA-503+ under 2.4.[567]

[Anthony Barbachan]

Hi,

    I have noticed the following problem on a system which I installed on a
FIC VA-503+ motherboard with a 450 Mhz K6-2 CPU.  This problem is consistent
and is present in kernels from 2.4.5 - 2.4.7.  The problem is that
occasionally the PC speaker will hang when making a beep.  When the hang
occurs the beep stays on, the screen blanks out, and all processing on the
system appears to hang.  After a few moments the system appears to unhang
itself, the screen returns, and everything returns to normal.  While it is
not consistent, as not all beeps from the PC speaker causes the hanging, but
it is frequent enough to make working on the console almost unbearable.  The
hanging behavior can be easily reproduced if I do anything to cause multiple
system beeps; such as pressing tab a few times on an empty bash prompt which
causes a beep to occur from the auto command completion feature as it warns
you that multiple possible substitutions exist for your command completion
request.

    Is this a known bug?

    If so is there a fix for it?

    If it is not know how can I help in resolving this?  (No oops exists so
nothing to send from there)

Re: PC Speaker ocassionally hangs on an FIC VA-503+ under 2.4.[567]

[Nate Eldredge]

>     I have noticed the following problem on a system which I installed
> on a FIC VA-503+ motherboard with a 450 Mhz K6-2 CPU. This problem is
> consistent and is present in kernels from 2.4.5 - 2.4.7. The problem
> is that occasionally the PC speaker will hang when making a beep. When
> the hang occurs the beep stays on, the screen blanks out, and all
> processing on the system appears to hang. After a few moments the
> system appears to unhang itself, the screen returns, and everything
> returns to normal.

Yes, I've also seen this.  Same motherboard, CPU is a K6-3 450 MHz.  I
think I was running early 2.4.  I tried several things to fix it; I forget
exactly what they were but none of them worked.  (I also remember seeing
dropped keystrokes while playing DOS games that used the PC speaker.)  The
final fix was to disable beeping in software (setterm -blength 0 on the
console and some xset command in X.)

Definitely a hardware problem, anyway.

-- 
Nate Eldredge
neldredge@hmc.edu

Re: PC Speaker ocassionally hangs on an FIC VA-503+ under 2.4.[567]

[Nate Eldredge]

I lied slightly.  It's not quite the same motherboard.  I have a FIC
PA2013 which is the ATX version of the same board.  And on mine when the
speaker beeped it would sometimes go into what looked like suspend mode
(flashing light on the front) and would not awaken until another key was
pressed.

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001, Nate Eldredge wrote:

> >     I have noticed the following problem on a system which I installed
> > on a FIC VA-503+ motherboard with a 450 Mhz K6-2 CPU. This problem is
> > consistent and is present in kernels from 2.4.5 - 2.4.7. The problem
> > is that occasionally the PC speaker will hang when making a beep. When
> > the hang occurs the beep stays on, the screen blanks out, and all
> > processing on the system appears to hang. After a few moments the
> > system appears to unhang itself, the screen returns, and everything
> > returns to normal.
> 
> Yes, I've also seen this.  Same motherboard, CPU is a K6-3 450 MHz.  I
> think I was running early 2.4.  I tried several things to fix it; I forget
> exactly what they were but none of them worked.  (I also remember seeing
> dropped keystrokes while playing DOS games that used the PC speaker.)  The
> final fix was to disable beeping in software (setterm -blength 0 on the
> console and some xset command in X.)
> 
> Definitely a hardware problem, anyway.
> 
> -- 
> Nate Eldredge
> neldredge@hmc.edu
> 
> 

-- 

Nate Eldredge
neldredge@hmc.edu