Re: [MiNT] MiNT, CT60 and power off

[Xavier Joubert <xavier.joubert@free.fr>]

Hi all !


Sorry to send this twice, Konrad. I forgot to update "to:" field again...


Selon Konrad Kokoszkiewicz <draco@obta.uw.edu.pl>:
> So if there is a problem, it seems rather related to the hardware, than to
> MiNT. Did it occur once, or you experience it all the time, by the way?

I think this problem is hardware, too.

Here is my theory :

There is one big difference between rebooting, or shuting down ARAnyM and 
powering off the CT60 : the internal hard disk is powered off too. If its write 
cache is enabled, it is powered off before it has a chance to write to the disk 
what sync did some milliseconds before...

I already explained this here some days ago... But it looks like there were too 
many post in this list at that time.

The problem should not appear if the disk drive is powered by another PSU (SCSI 
disk, internal IDE connected to another PSU than the Falcon/CT60 (??),...).

The solution is to issue a command to instruct all disk drives to write their 
cache, and then wait for a confirmation before powering off. I don't know the 
technical details for this though. This should be done in the sync code, in 
fact, and not in the poweroff one.

Another (bad) solution would be to add a small wait (5 seconds ?) before 
powering off and hope that this will allow each disk to sync its cache. We can 
consider that the time we take to move our hand to the power switch is enough : 
the problem did not appear before...


I hope this helps.


Best regards,


Xavier