just to let anyone know if you were following this i replaced the promise ata/133 card with a highpoint card and now strangly everything works fine. I also found various places on the internet that suggest promise actually limit there card and make 3 of them not work toether in an attempt to force you to buy there larger more expensive raid5 cards (8 channel). James > > > i did actually kind of get the card's working together but ran into > > > another problem. > > > > > > when i boot with ide=nodma and then turn on dma manually on all the other > > > cards / board chipset etc... they all function fine > > > > > > then i can only turn the dma up to ATA/100 if i set it to ata/133 it will > > > cause the errors. I assume this is something todo with the promise bois > > > not setting up the 3rd card at boot time. It only shows drive listing for > > > 2 of the 3 cards. > > > > There were very similar problems reported in the past and they were > > fixed by replacing power supply with a better one. > > I dont beleave the power supply to be a problem here. Since the problem > is local to just this 1 card. No matter where i place it on the pci bus > or swap it with the other promise cards the 3rd promise card on the bus > always fails. I have placed this also below / above a network card + scsi > card in the same machine. A volt meter on the power supply is giving > correct results. If the power supply was to be failing under load would > this not leed to more unpredictable lockups ? > > eg running both commands at the same time. > cat /dev/zero > /dev/hdi > cat /dev/zero > /dev/hdk > will not cause a lockup > > cat /dev/zero > /dev/hdm > cat /dev/zero > /dev/hdo > > will always cause a lockup with as soon as the disks start writing. > I have tried with all combinations of the disks / cables. > > running a single command cat /dev/zero > /dev/hdm will not cause a lockup > nor will the other command. Only when they are both running together will > it cause a problem. I can even run > cat /dev/zero > /dev/hdi > cat /dev/zero > /dev/hdk > cat /dev/zero > /dev/hdm > together without causing a lockup. > hdi and hdk are located on the 2nd promise card. hdm hdo are on the 3rd > card. > > > Also you shouldn't need to use "ide=nodma" and play with hdparm, > > driver should tune the best mode available. If this doesn't work then > > something needs fixing. > > > You can find out if BIOS/driver configures cards correctly by > > comparing PCI config space (lspci -xxx) for working/non-working > > controller. > > The output of the 3 cards matches except for the memory address. > > > James > > > > Unfortunatly this generated another problem. > > > When read from both drives at the same time it functions normally and > > > see resonable performance. When i attempt to write to both drives it will > > > cause the machine to lockup. > > > > > > James > > > > > > > > > > > > On Thu, 14 Oct 2004, Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz wrote: > > > > > > > On Thu, 14 Oct 2004 13:12:42 -0500, Ian Pilcher <i.pilcher@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > > > James Stevenson wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > i seem to have run into an annoying problem with a machine which has > > > > > > 3 promise ata/133 card the PDC20269 type. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > .... > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Does anyone have an explenation of why this can happen ? > > > > > > > > * check power supply > > > > * compare PCI config space of the "failing" controller to the one which > > > > is "working" (assuming that identical devices are connected to each), > > > > maybe firmware/driver forgets to setup some settings > > > > > > > > > Promise cards don't support more than two per machine. If you can get a > > > > > third card to work in PIO mode, consider it an added (but unsupported) > > > > > bonus. > > > > > > > > AFAIR people have been running 4-5 cards just fine > > -- -------------------------- Mobile: +44 07779080838 http://www.stev.org 11:20am up 18:18, 4 users, load average: 3.39, 1.38, 0.51 -- Kernelnewbies: Help each other learn about the Linux kernel. Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/kernelnewbies/ FAQ: http://kernelnewbies.org/faq/
