Automatic Rebooting PC on a Hang/Freez Condition

[mr_amitkulkarni]

Hello Friends,

Objective : I'm working on a trivial solution for an issue like if my
server/pc hangs at any moment it should reboot automatically.

proposed Solution : I'll be using an external watchDog circuit[ckt].
This ckt will be interfaced on LPT1's pin 16/14[as of my use] . There
will be software 'C' program which will continually send 01010.. on the
pin on LPT1 . Now ckt is made with a logic that it will observe the
square wave ie 010101...on that pin. If there is square wave that means
my PC is not in a hang/freeze possition.
Now consider the phenomena that due to any reason PC crashes/hangs than
the program prefarable binary generated from 'C' program will stop
fuctioning. So it will either give continuous 1111.. or 0000.. . Now
ckt will sense that there is no square wave / Pulse .. so it will give
the reset pulse to PC which will reboot the machine .

SINCE I'M VERY MUCH INTRESTED TO IMPLEMENT ASAP THIS. ANY COMMENTS FOR
ABOVE WILL BE HELPFULL TO ME.

THANX FOR YOUR TIME AND INTREST.
AMIT KULKARNI
MUMBAI,
INDIA
mr_amitkulkarni(at)hotmail.com

 

[Joona I Palaste]

(e-mail address removed) scribbled the following:

Hello Friends,

Objective : I'm working on a trivial solution for an issue like if my
server/pc hangs at any moment it should reboot automatically.

Can't be done in ISO standard C. Please ask in a newsgroup dedicated to
your own implementation.

 

[Dan Pop]

Hello Friends,

Objective : I'm working on a trivial solution for an issue like if my
server/pc hangs at any moment it should reboot automatically.

proposed Solution : I'll be using an external watchDog circuit[ckt].
This ckt will be interfaced on LPT1's pin 16/14[as of my use] . There
will be software 'C' program which will continually send 01010.. on the
pin on LPT1 . Now ckt is made with a logic that it will observe the
square wave ie 010101...on that pin. If there is square wave that means
my PC is not in a hang/freeze possition.
Now consider the phenomena that due to any reason PC crashes/hangs than
the program prefarable binary generated from 'C' program will stop
fuctioning. So it will either give continuous 1111.. or 0000.. . Now
ckt will sense that there is no square wave / Pulse .. so it will give
the reset pulse to PC which will reboot the machine .

SINCE I'M VERY MUCH INTRESTED TO IMPLEMENT ASAP THIS. ANY COMMENTS FOR
ABOVE WILL BE HELPFULL TO ME.

Unless this is a toy project of yours, be aware that watchdog cards for
PCs already exist.

If it is a toy project of yours, go on, but there is no standard way of
controlling the parallel port of a PC from a C program. It's probably
easier to generate a square wave on a serial port, if you configure it
for 8 data bits and 1 stop bit and send a continuous stream of 0x55
characters, but you can't do this in standard C, either.

Dan