[plug] hdparm troubles

[Craig Ringer]

On Sat, 2004-07-17 at 17:47, Steve Boak wrote:

> > Have you tried a recent kernel? Perhaps the via IDE drivers have
> > improved for these boards. IIRC they're known to be a little eccentric
> > and have had Linux support issues in the past.
> 
> OK, how hard can it be to move up to 2.6 :-)

I'd try 2.4.recent first. Why upgrade a whole major series just to /see/
if there are some driver improvements that might help?

> > Do the boards have an IO-APIC? If yes, try booting with 'noapic' in case
> > it's braindead. 
> Don't know, but tried it anyway - no difference :-(

According to the below, your system is does not have or is not using an
IO-APIC, so 'noapic' would not have any effect.

>  14:      62866          XT-PIC  ide0

> Does XT-PIC mean anything significant?

Yes. It means your system is using the local APIC in the processor for
interrupt handling, not an IO-APIC. I lack the knowledge to properly
explain what the difference is, but AFAIK an IO-APIC provides a larger
interrupt space and more efficient interrupt handling.

> min:~# cat /proc/dma
>  4: cascade
> 
> How about cascaded dma? Is this important?

Isn't DMA 4 (cascade) the DMA number reserved for activating the high
range DMA addresses not supported in ancient hardware? I think it is
just a legacy quirk of the i386 architecture (and always there).

Well, I'm going to have to throw my hands up in the air. My next step
would definitely be to fetch an up-to-date 2.4 kernel, just to see if
there are any fixes/improvements that affect your problem.

--
Craig Ringer