-=> Quoting hugo landsman to Mike Bilow <=-

 MB> No.  Only 16-bit segments may have IOPL privilege.

 hl> Physical device driver
     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 hl> Something new?

Nope.  The above restriction only applies to application programs. 
Physical device drivers by their very nature, and the fact that they're
running at ring 0, can do IO without restrictions.  

The IOPL flag for a PDD tells the kernel that those segments should not be
discarded after the dd's init routine is finsihed.  The first two segments
are kept in memory by default so they don't need the IOPL flag.

John

--- GEcho 1.00