Can anyone explain this?

[Adam K Kirchhoff]

On Sun, 16 Nov 2003, Matthew Dillon wrote:

> :I have a dual P3 VIA motherboard (from Gigabyte) that I'm currently
> :running multiple operating systems from: Slackware 9.1, NetBSD -CURRENT,
> :DragonFlyBSD, BeOS, Windows XP, and Syllable.
> :
> :Of those six, any time I reboot from DragonFlyBSD, I get the following
> :message from the computer when it POSTs.
> :
> :"CMOS/GPNV Checksum Bad"
> :
> :When I first noticed this pattern, I chalked it up to coincidence, and
> :just reset the CMOS to it's default values with F2 and kept going.
> :However, I'm beginning to doubt this is a coicidence any more.  I have
> :spent all weekend rebooting between operating systems, with different
> :hardware configuration nearly every time, and this *only* happens when I
> :reboot from DragonFly.
> :
> :Does this make any sense?  Could the OS be screwing up my CMOS?
> :
> :Adam
>
>     Yes, it is screwing up the CMOS.

Woohoo, I'm not crazy! :-)

>     Several people have reported this,
>     but so far nobody has been able to track it down.  I don't have a
>     system that does this so I haven't been able to track it down either.
>
>     Would you like to try to track it down?  It involves throwing an endless
>     loop into the low level boot code to lock the machine up and then hitting
>     reset, then moving the loop to zero in on which part of our codebase is
>     corrupting the CMOS.

My programming skills (especially when it comes to operating systems) if
fairly limited.  If I get a chance this week, though, I might take a look
and see if there's anything I can do.

Adam