Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Gordon Uchenick <[email protected]> · Wed, 26 Mar 1997 17:05:13 -0500

> I'd like to add a "reboot" button for each IOC on one of my 
> lower-level, system EPICS displays.  My first thought was to have
> the button initiate processing of a subroutine record that simply 
> calls reboot().

Just talking about rebooting the IOC, calling reboot() is usually not
sufficient. That routine just jumps to the bootstrap code in the boot
proms. You really want to be a bit more aggressive than that. What
I have found to be more useful is to disable interrupts, turn on the
hardware watchdog timer, and then sit in a loop never servicing it.
If you configure it correctly, when the watchdog "barks" it not only
will make the CPU reboot but will also send out a reset signal on the
VME bus. This is desirable in most cases, especially if you are
rebooting because an I/O board got "stuck".

I have code that does this for the MVME162. Most other Motorola
boards are very similar. Let me know if you are interested.

HTH,
Gordon Uchenick
[email protected]

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System