While trying to get lm_sensors running on a Dell Optiplex GX1p, I played around with the io option. There are two options for the smbus, force=1, and force=1 io=some_address_here. force=1 is what is needed to get it to work, but before I tried that, I tried setting an io address. Now, whenever I boot off the Dell ICU PnP disk (allows you to set/play with interrupts/irqs, etc), it freezes/stops when it tries to detect the Crystal Audio ISA PNP sound board in the system. I have two of these machines, the other box which I have not played with lm_sensors on works fine and it detects the board and continues booting into dos (using dos bootdisk)... then to load the ICU Dell utility. However, mine just 'hangs' on the soundcard and does not continue. I ran the dell diagnostics disks, they said the sound card is fine, even though there was an unusual(?) pause while probing for it. The sound works OK/fine in Linux, no problems. Is it possible to have ruined the hardware or have there been any reports of problems such as these? Is there anyway to further diagnose the problem? I was using latest lm_sensors and lm_sensors 2.5.x while testing/trying to get temperature monitoring to work properly. Module Parameters ----------------- * force: int Forcibly enable the PIIX4. DANGEROUS! * force_addr: int Forcibly enable the PIIX4 at the given address. EXTREMELY DANGEROUS! On some computers (most notably, some Dells), the SMBus is disabled by default. If you use the insmod parameter 'force=1', the kernel module will try to enable it. THIS IS VERY DANGEROUS! If the BIOS did not set up a correct address for this module, you could get in big trouble (read: crashes, data corruption, etc.). Try this only as a last resort (try BIOS updates first, for example), and backup first! An even more dangerous option is 'force_addr=<IOPORT>'. This will not only enable the PIIX4 like 'force' foes, but it will also set a new base I/O port address. The SMBus parts of the PIIX4 needs a range of 8 of these addresses to function correctly. If these addresses are already reserved by some other device, you will get into big trouble! DON'T USE THIS IF YOU ARE NOT VERY SURE ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE DOING! Is there anyway to fix the problem, or is it permanently damaged (sound board issue with the dell boot disk).. Anyway to check what is normal or what is not? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
