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DOS watchdog utility for Advantech?

Hi, I would like a DOS TSR utility that works with the watchdog on my PCM-5820. Has anyone written such a program? I know Advantech has watchdog drivers for Win2K & XP, but I didn't see anything for DOS or Win9x.

thanks, Jonathan

Reply to
Jonathan
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PCM-5820.

Hi Jonathan, First I'd ask what you expect such a utility to do. If it's just to accept the watchdog timer interrupt and kick the watchdog, then there's very little point in activating the watchdog, it isn't going to ensure that your code hasn't gone west, though it would ensure that you haven't clumsily left interrupts off or unluckily gone west through a disable interrupts instruction.

If it's anything what you'd normally use a watchdog for (i.e. to ensure that your code hasn't got stuck in some loop, gone off the deep end of the stack, jumped through an uninitialised pointer, etc., etc.,) then the TSR won't help much. You're better off adding some judiciously purpose built watchdogging code to your app.

Cheers,

-- Alf snipped-for-privacy@remove.the.obvious.ieee.org

Reply to
Unbeliever

What do you want it to do? A watchdog is pointless unless it's being kicked by your application code. Kicking the watchdog based on an interrupt in a TSR is sort of useless if you're trying to detect whether your application is running or not.

The interface for the watchdogs I've used for x86 machines consisted of two I/O ports. Under DOS they required exactly 1 line of code to enable or disable and 1 line of code to kick.

Why put it in a TSR?

--
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  .. One FISHWICH
                                  at               coming up!!
                               visi.com
Reply to
Grant Edwards

Point well taken about the purpose and use of the watchdog.

I have Win98 running on this machine, and it's been hanging randomly, as older Winblows versions do. I was just looking for the lazy man's way to at least get the box to reboot. Yes, I know addressing why it hangs is more appropriate, and I intend to investigate that as well.

Additional thoughts?

thanks, J>

Reply to
Jonathan

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