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List:       freebsd-stable
Subject:    Re: How to make ATA-100 work under stable ?
From:       Erik Trulsson <ertr1013 () student ! uu ! se>
Date:       2003-01-31 11:41:49
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On Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 10:34:56AM +0000, Pete French wrote:
> So, for the first time in my life I find myself going out and buying
> an ATA drive (no space for a SCSI controller). Since I've more or
> less ignored these drives until now I'm not finding it and easy (or
> pleasent) experience. But have finally got to the point when its installed,
> running 4.7-STABLE without complaining about implausible disc geometries
> and generally seems O.K.
> 
> What I *cant* seem to do is to make it run at UDMA100 speed - it always
> seems to do UDMA66. Whats the magic incantation under -STABLE to make it
> work ? I did try 'atacontrol mode ata0 udma100' but that just
> tells me that its not supported by the hardware.
> 
> The hardware in question is a Seagate BarracudaATA IV - I've run the Seagate
> utility to set the drive to report itself as UDMA100  capable, I have installed
> the 80 way ribbon connector and I have (as a last resort) flashed the
> BIOS on the motherboard. The board itself is a Microstar dual PIII board,
> and the drive controller appears to be called a "Promise" something
> or other.
> 
> I have noticed that the BIOS on the controller says it is searching
> for ATA-100 drives, but does not find any. On the other hand I assume that
> BSD is not using the BIOS, so I am not sure if thats relevent.
> 
> Any ideas ? Is there soome kernel option for UDMA 100 that I am missing ?
> 
> -pcf. [this is the first and last time I venture out of SCSI-land!]


There is no magic incantation of kernel option for this.  The only
thing that might work is using 'atacontrol mode' but since you have
already tried that it seems not not to be the solution.
(And making sure you have an 80-way cable, but you already have that.)

My first guess would be that your disk controller simply does not
support UDMA100 but only UDMA66 and slower.  There are many slightly
older diskcontrollers that can't handle UDMA100 (mostly because the
controller was made before UDMA100 had been introduced.)
Similarily I have a drive that won't work in UDMA100 but only in
UDMA66, but that is beacuse the drive simply does not support UDMA100.


The bad news is that you probably won't be able to get the drive to
work in UDMA100 mode without getting a new controller.
The good news is that there really isn't that much of a difference
between UDMA66 and UDMA100.  Either mode can transfer data faster than
the drive can deliver it.



-- 
<Insert your favourite quote here.>
Erik Trulsson
ertr1013@student.uu.se

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