Topic: hdparm on promise controller

[Bob]

Hi,

I posed a question on installing a Promise ATA 100 controller on this forum a few days ago. Now I have tried turning dma on through hdparm. It seems that dma is only used on my system drive (2GB) and not on my data drive (40GB) that is connected to the Promise controller. Here's a fraction of dmesg that I think is useful:

PIIX4: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev 39
PIIX4: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
    ide0: BM-DMA at 0xf000-0xf007, BIOS settings: hda:pio, hdb:pio
    ide1: BM-DMA at 0xf008-0xf00f, BIOS settings: hdc:pio, hdd:pio
keyboard: Timeout - AT keyboard not present?
keyboard: Timeout - AT keyboard not present?
hda: ST32122A, ATA DISK drive
hde: Maxtor 4D040H2, ATA DISK drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide2 at 0xc400-0xc407,0xc802 on irq 10
hda: ST32122A, 2014MB w/128kB Cache, CHS=4092/16/63
hde: Maxtor 4D040H2, 39083MB w/2048kB Cache, CHS=4982/255/63
FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077

ide2 is the Promise controller. Is it possible to specifically start dma on ide2 somehow?

[Cliff]

I just installed 5.6 useing a Promise 133TX.  I was unable to boot from CD when attached to the Promise so I moved it to the onboard controller and the system installed and restored flawlessly.  I also can not enable dma.

There is a bios update which claims to enable cdrom boot and Linux patch on the Promise website but I have not tried it yet.  

http://www.promise.com/support/download/download2_eng.asp?productId=87&category=All&os=100

Please let me know of any progress.

[Terry Brummell]

You may want to take a look at this thread on the devinfo list:

http://www.mail-archive.com/devinfo@lists.e-smith.org/msg10433.html

in particular to what Gorden Rowell says:
"NOTE: We are removing all configuration of hdparm in 5.6 If you wish to
enable it, have a look at /etc/sysconfig/harddisks (the hdparm command
will still be there, we just won't do anything with it by default)."

Not sure if this helps or not, but worth a look see.

Terry