Re: Force ATA66

[Alejandro González Hernández - Imoq <imoq imoqland com>]

Thomas Dodd wrote:
> 
> Alejandro González Hernández - Imoq wrote:
> >
> > VP_IDE: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev 39
> > VP_IDE: chipset revision 16
> > VP_IDE: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
> > VP_IDE: VIA vt82c686a (rev 22) IDE UDMA66 controller on pci00:07.1
> > However, it also seems that the drive is used as ATA33:
> > hda: 78165360 sectors (40021 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=4865/255/63,
> > UDMA(33)
> >
> > I can use the "ide0=ata66" parameter in lilo to force it to UDMA(66),
> > however, I get so many warnings in dmesg when I do this (altough it
> > finally says UDMA(66)) that I'm afraid I could damage somehow my system.
> 
> Do you have the 80 conductor cable for DMA66 or the normal 40 wire
> cable?

The 80 conductor cable, of course. Those wires are so thin! :) On a side
note, it works under winbloz 2k with DMA66 enabled.

> Is the disk supposed to do DMA66?

It is, and it does.

> Is the disk black listed for some reason(look in the kernel source,
> the files in drivers/ide/ )

I did a fgrep in /usr/src/linux-2.4.3/drivers/ide and found that in
ide-dma.c file, there are some WDC drives in the blacklist:

struct drive_list_entry drive_blacklist [] = {
 
        { "WDC AC11000H"        ,       "ALL"           },
        { "WDC AC22100H"        ,       "ALL"           },
        { "WDC AC32500H"        ,       "ALL"           },
        { "WDC AC33100H"        ,       "ALL"           },
        { "WDC AC31600H"        ,       "ALL"           },
        { "WDC AC32100H"        ,       "24.09P07"      },
        { "WDC AC23200L"        ,       "21.10N21"      },

but none of them is mine, hda: WDC WD400BB-60BNA1, ATA DISK drive


> > Do you think I should use the "ide0=ata66" parameter to force it, or
> > just leave it as ata33? It's my home system, anyway.
> 
> There are some problems with some of the VIA chips and IDE.
> Not sure which ones though, I have an AMD chipset.

Yeah, I've heard about it... I probably should (and Trond will tell me:
YOU MUST) do a bios upgrade... I just have never done one, and I'm
afraid to ruin my MB, hehe.

> I'd stick with DMA33 and ask on the kernel list/ or Alan Cox
> about the DMA66 settings.  Include both the motherboard
> model/version, BIOS version, chipset, and disk model,
> and of course the kernel version.

Thanks, I will. Performance is not an issue, this is a PII-800, 256 RAM
and it's working pretty well, but, hey! I could probably gain a little
more disk access speed ;).

Alex.