Hi, Kirk! That sheds some light. I will probably end up downloading a diag diskette for Western Digital drives and see whether they detect DMA capabilities. OK, if it turns out that I was fooled by Windows during all this time, do you know of any parameter which I could use to tell Linux to fall to PIO mode right away? Best, Victor ----- Original Message ----- From: "Kirk Wood" <cpt.kirk@xxxxxxxxx> To: <speakup at braille.uwo.ca> Sent: Saturday, June 02, 2001 11:53 PM Subject: Re: A more complete log about my disk access errors > First, understand why Windows 2000 doesn't complain about the DMA. If the > drive times out twice (ever) then it no longer uses DMA ever. So it won't > complain. It won't tell you. In fact, win winclows 98 they burried any > indication that this had happened. It happens more often them many people > realize. > > Having said that, if you didn't have DMA support compiled into the kernel > you wouldn't get the errors. Yes, it must be compiled in if it is to be > used. (DMA falls back to PIO in case of failure and PIO always remains > available.) > > As for fixing this, it is either the motherboard or the drive. I know that > doesn't help. You might check to see that DMA is turned on in the > BIOS. (Linux will try anyway, winblows just acts like it is using DMA and > doesn't really.) Otherwise try another DMA drive and see if the problem > resolves. > > ======= > Kirk Wood > Cpt.Kirk at 1tree.net > > Nothing is hard if you know the answer or are used to doing it. > > > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup >
