From:	"Charles Sandmann" <sandmann AT clio DOT rice DOT edu>
Newsgroups:	comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject:	Re: Symify crashes in Windows Dos box
Date:	Thu, 12 Jun 1997 23:59:30
Organization:	Aspen Technology, Inc.
Lines:	15
Message-ID:	<33a08d62.sandmann@clio.rice.edu>
References:	<199706122141 DOT OAA12314 AT adit DOT ap DOT net>
Reply-To:	sandmann AT clio DOT rice DOT edu
NNTP-Posting-Host:	spica.dmccorp.com
To:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com
DJ-Gateway:	from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp

> Good point. Maybe the best way to do it is add `fclex' somewhere in _exit
> (see src/libc/crt0/crt0.S, line 282). Since _exit gets called *anytime* the
> program exits (AFAIK), that should take care of it. 

The reason it isn't this way is this caused hard hangs on some Win 3.1 boxes
after floating point exceptions.  Like - POWER CYCLE - since there was no
handler to catch the hardware interrupt and Win 3.1 killed itself.

This was surfaced in the V2.0 beta, many things were tried, and all of them
made at least one system significantly worse off.  IT'S A WIN 3.1 BUG.
Get used to this crap when dealing with MS operating environments.
Having a second FP exception on some boxes was the lesser evil.  If patching
your local copy works for you, great, but it will cause someone else greater
grief.  Avoid mixing FPU exceptions and Win 3.1.  They are always fatal in
Win 3.0 - and they only got it 1/2 fixed in Win 3.1.  Upgrade time.

- Raw text -