Re: [RFC PATCH v2 07/14] m68k: atari: Convert to clocksource API

[Finn Thain <fthain@telegraphics.com.au>]

On Sat, 24 Nov 2018, Michael Schmitz wrote:

> 
> Am 20.11.2018 um 23:02 schrieb Andreas Schwab:
> > On Nov 20 2018, Linus Walleij <linus.walleij@linaro.org> wrote:
> > 
> > > Yes you already see the same as I see: this chip MK68901 has no less 
> > > than four timers. I bet the kernel is just using one of them, out of 
> > > habit.
> > 
> > Note that not all timers can be used freely.  Some of them are 
> > hardwired to generate the clock for the serial interfaces.
> 
> Timer A is used by the DMA sound driver - no workaround possible there.
> 
> Timer B is used by the framebuffer driver, but it's used only once to 
> reprogram the screen base address at driver init. This one could 
> potentially be used after framebuffer init to improve the clocksource 
> accuracy.
> 

I don't think it would make a good clocksource as MFP timers are all 8 
bits wide. It could be used as a clock event device in the course of a 
GENERIC_CLOCKEVENTS conversion (discussed elsewhere in this thread), 
though the longest timed interrupt inverval would be only 21 ms.

-- 

> Timer D is already used to generate timer interrupts used to poll the 
> ROM port network card / USB adapters. This timer is initialized early in 
> the boot process, which prevents using the MFP UART as serial console 
> (something that I hadn't properly considered before). I'll send a patch 
> for that. I'll also consider using timer B or timer C interrupts instead 
> to poll ROM port hardware.
> 
> There are no serial drivers anymore that could use the MFP UART 
> hardware, so that point is somewhat moot at present.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> 	Michael
> 
> > Andreas.
> > 
>