GSOctal 232 reboot problem

["Woods, PD (Paul)" <P.D.Woods@dl.ac.uk>]

Hi,

I am trying to interface a PLC to EPICS using the DF1 serial comms protocol
with a GreenSpring GSOctal RS232 IP module on a Hytec HY8002 carrier board.
Everything seems to work fine until I need to reboot the IOC. If I use a
soft reboot (ie 'reboot' command or CTRL-X from a terminal) VxWorks will
fail during bootup with a workQPanic and attempt a reboot and I'm stuck in a
loop. However a hardware reset reboots normally and the IOC then runs
happily.

Our current theory is that something (the GSOctal card?) is not reset
correctly with a soft reboot and as the PLC continues to transmit after the
comms are lost, the GSOctal card continues to send interrupts. As soon as
the drivers are loaded, but before they are initialised, an interrupt is
sent, causing VxWorks to workQPanic and reboot.

I am about to do some hardware checking of the reset line to confirm this,
but has anyone else seen this problem? do you have an explanation for it and
is there a solution/workaround?

Regards

Paul Woods
Diamond Project UK