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List:       linux-ide-arrays
Subject:    Re: Warning for everybody building IDE arays
From:       Simon Matter <simon.matter () ch ! sauter-bc ! com>
Date:       2003-03-05 7:11:41
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"Peter L. Ashford" schrieb:
> 
> Simon,
> 
> > Corrupt IDE read operations with 1bit errors every ~5Gb were
> > discovered with the following hardware, independant whether (U)DMA was
> > enabled or disabled, when stressing multiple disks simultaneously:
> > Serverworks LE / Promise Ultra100TX2 (PDC20268)
> > VIA MVP3 / Promise Ultra100TX2 (PDC20268)
> > VIA MVP3 / VIA MVP3 integrated IDE
> >
> > No corruption exists with:
> > Intel 440BX / Promise Ultra100TX2 (PDC20268)
> > Intel 440BX / Intel 440BX integrated IDE
> 
> I've previously heard about problems with the VIA chipsets, and I strongly
> recommend against them in my paper on IDE file servers
> (http://www.accs.com/p_and_p/TeraByte).  The information on the
> Serverworks LE chipset is new to me.
> 
> The Intel chipsets all seem to work well, as does the Serverworks HE-SL,
> and the AMD-760 series chipsets.  This is not to say that other chipsets
> won't work; it is just a list of what has worked for me.
> 
> It should be noted that the problems with the VIA chipset also exist under
> Windoze, so I would expect the problem to be in the firmware or the

The VIA bug which was well known in the winDOS world was with newer
chipsets, the one designed for Athlon processor family. I'm not sure
wether I have hit the same problem here because I was said, disabling
'PCI delayed transactions' should solve it and in my case, it didn't
help. I have also installed three servers for a customer based on new
VIA chipsets and they worked and still work great. I don't recommend
them anyway.

Interesting to see four ServerWorks ServerSet LE III boards mentioned on
your page. Did you use them in combination with Promise cards or only
with 3ware? The box works great with the onboard U160 SCSI as well as
with the SCSI RAID controller, the only problem I had was the
combination with the Promise PDC20268.

Simon

> silicon.
> 
> Good luck.
>                                 Peter Ashford


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