I have an odd machine which doesn't work right in the brave new APIC world (for example, VESA mode can draw windows and menus but not paint the cursor...?).
Anyway, last year I figured out that adding "*nomp=" to plan9.ini would work around whatever it was. I just pulled, and was surprised to see the world revert to a sad state. Eventually I noticed the kernel chatting about the LAPIC during boot and investigated. Now archmp.c:identify() doesn't only check for the existence of a *nomp line but also feeds the right hand side to strtol(). It appears that if there is no right hand side, strtol() returns 0 and the effect is as if there were no *nomp line--which is a little counterintuitive. Looking around it seems like *nomce is like *nomp, but *noetherprobe, *nousbprobe, *nobios, *pcibios, *nopcirouting, *norealmode, etc., all are the "old way" (presence is all that matters, not the right hand side). Isn't there an argument for all of these working the same way? Dave Eckhardt
