Re: AW: RE: Mapping scattered pages into process address space

SoftICE, BoundsChecker and the like are not running on my production
environment either. Directly mapping hardware into user space is a MAJOR
security hole. That is why Window 9x is still around. I would differ with
you on graphics performance being the reason Windows is usable. I’ve had
more problems and incompatibilities caused by poor graphics implementations
than anything else. Do we all remember the infamous lockups caused by
Matrox video cards hogging the PCI bus to the point other devices timed out?
If you’re doing that level of graphics, get a graphics-oriented OS/HW setup,
like the older Silicon Graphics engines. If the system won’t stay up, it’s
not usable. Period.

Greg

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com]On Behalf Of Moreira, Alberto
Sent: Monday, August 06, 2001 9:27 AM
To: NT Developers Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] Re: AW: RE: Mapping scattered pages into process addr
ess space

Serious computer users, eh ? I thought I was one, but hey, what do I know.

First of all, going for graphics performance doesn’t necessarily make the
system any less stable. Second, if Windows is at all usable, a good portion
of it is due to the speed of the graphics subsystem. Third, most graphics
subsystems are on the AGP bus, which is, or should be, quite independent of
what happens in PCI space. Fourth, graphics isn’t about a device driver -
graphics performance is a vertically integrated endeavor, that involves ring
3 software, ring 0 software, and hardware. In fact, many of us would like to
see a direct app to hardware path, and a full migration of driver
functionality to the chip itself.

And I could easily turn the table on this one. What do I care about
Microsoft’s edicts if I’m into big time graphics ? If I don’t need that
extra graphics performance, that’s easy enough, I can get myself a legacy
video board, and presto, problem solved.

What we do have to get away from, IMHO, is the straightjacket imposed by the
current party-line way of writing drivers. And let me put it this way, if
you cringe at the relatively mild liberties graphics people take with the
system, I wonder what your reaction would be to what we do within SoftIce or
BoundsChecker, or even TrueTime ? Yet we don’t crash systems any more than
anybody else.

Alberto.

-----Original Message-----
From: Gregory G. Dyess [mailto:xxxxx@pdq.net]
Sent: Monday, August 06, 2001 10:00 AM
To: NT Developers Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] Re: AW: RE: Mapping scattered pages into process addr
ess spac e

If your requirements for graphics are so tight you should consider moving to
a dedicated special-purpose OS instead of making Windows less stable and
less compatible. I for one don’t need balls-to-the-wall graphics
performance and I would be willing to bet that 95+% of the Windows NT/2k
users feel the same. In order for NT/2k to be acceptable to most serious
users, it must be rock-solid stable. Rebooting all the time to clear a
lockup caused by lazy driver writers or to get that last 2% graphics
performance is unacceptable. It’s also annoying when you have an SMP
machine or a cPCI machine and it won’t run because some device driver writer
didn’t follow Microsoft’s edicts and failed to take into account multiple
PCI busses behind a PCI bridge or 64 bit PCI busses. It’s time we followed
the proper way of doing things and move this hairy razor-edge crap to Window
9x.

Sorry for the rant, but I do serious work where the computer must remain
stable and the attitude of “performance at all costs” won’t cut it anymore.

Greg


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I would go along with your suggestion, provided an override mechanism is in
place so that the user can disable the offending “feature” or force the
driver to behave correctly. Unfortunately, these options do not exist most
of the time and even if they do, they are not documented in any way. Users
should have the option to return ANY piece of hardware at any time that does
not adhere to the standards. This would make companies think twice before
putting out nonconforming/misbehaving hardware/drivers.

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com]On Behalf Of Everhart, Glenn
(FUSA)
Sent: Monday, August 06, 2001 3:17 PM
To: NT Developers Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] Re: AW: RE: Mapping scattered pages into process addr
essspace

Would it not make more sense to just document that a driver uses more high
IRQ time than standard, more mapping registers than standard, etc. etc.,
but allow such drivers to be loaded by a user after the sacrifice of a goat
or something :wink: with the understanding that such drivers may disable
other things in odd ways?

Forcing driver writers to use a global standard would in practice mean that
some unusual cases cannot be handled. If I want my fishfinder to run a
little
faster, perhaps I don’t care if some USB printer will fail completely. As
long
as I am told about a driver that is anti-social wrt other drivers, seems
like a choice I as a customer should be able to have.

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Viscarola [mailto:xxxxx@osr.com]
Sent: Monday, August 06, 2001 3:28 PM
To: NT Developers Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] Re: AW: RE: Mapping scattered pages into process addr
ess space

“Dan Partelly” wrote in message news:xxxxx@ntdev…
>
> What is interesting is things I heard about Win XP that it will “block”
> device drivers which causes more than “X” OS crashes , and also I heard
> there is
> a list with already “banned” device drivers.
>

As far as I know, XP has no facility to block a driver that crashes the
system more than x times… I haven’t seen any code that does that. That
doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, but this is the first I’ve heard of it.

As far as the list of “banned” device drivers, there’s a “bad” (not banned)
“drivers list” that’s put together for every upgrade scenario. This is
nothing more than the list of drivers that are known, by experience, not to
work after an upgrade of the system (from Win2K to XP, for example). During
upgrade of XP, the installation procedure warns you if you have such a
driver, and warns you of the driver being disabled after installation.

Peter
OSR


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