amd64/73369: on-board firewire unreliable with Asus K8V SE motherboard and AMD64 FreeBSD 5.3

[Simson L. Garfinkel]

>Number:         73369
>Category:       amd64
>Synopsis:       on-board firewire unreliable with Asus K8V SE motherboard and AMD64 FreeBSD 5.3
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       serious
>Priority:       low
>Responsible:    freebsd-amd64
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Mon Nov 01 03:10:10 GMT 2004
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Simson L. Garfinkel
>Release:        5.3
>Organization:
MIT
>Environment:
FreeBSD r3.nitroba.com 5.3-RC1 FreeBSD 5.3-RC1 #0: Sat Oct 30 13:05:38 EDT 2004     simsong at r3.nitroba.com:/usr/src/sys/amd64/compile/R3  amd64

>Description:
I don't know if this is worth fixing or not, but it is certainly worth documenting.

I hav e abrand new AMD64 machine with a K8V SE motherboard. It's an amazing motherboard with an 800 Mhz system bus, 5 pci slots, a wifi slot, 2 Ultra ATA 133 connectors, 2 serial ATA connectors, 8 USB 2.0 ports, built-in gigabit, and 2 Firewire ports.

I have a bunch of firewire drives. WHen I attach the drives to the motherboard, it gets the bus reset but it usually doesn't create the /dev entries for the drives.

I try resetting the bus with the fwcontrol command. That doesn't work either. Here is what is printed on the console:

fwohci0: Initiate bus reset
fwohci0: BUS reset
fwohci0: node_id=0xc800ffc1, gen=2, CYCLEMASTER mode
firewire0: 2 nodes, maxhop <= 1, cable IRM = 1 (me)
firewire0: bus manager 1 (me)
fwohci0: txd err= 3 miss Ack err
firewire0: bus_explore node=0 addr=0x400 resp=22 retry=1
fwohci0: txd err= 3 miss Ack err
firewire0: bus_explore node=0 addr=0x400 resp=22 retry=2
fwohci0: txd err= 3 miss Ack err
firewire0: bus_explore node=0 addr=0x400 resp=22 retry=3
fwohci0: txd err= 3 miss Ack err
firewire0: bus_explore node=0 addr=0x400 resp=22 retry=4
firewire0: bus_explore failed for 1 nodes
fwohci0: Initiate bus reset
fwohci0: BUS reset
fwohci0: node_id=0xc800ffc1, gen=3, CYCLEMASTER mode
firewire0: 2 nodes, maxhop <= 1, cable IRM = 1 (me)
firewire0: bus manager 1 (me)
fwohci0: txd err= 3 miss Ack err
firewire0: bus_explore node=0 addr=0x400 resp=22 retry=1
fwohci0: txd err= 3 miss Ack err
firewire0: bus_explore node=0 addr=0x400 resp=22 retry=2
fwohci0: txd err= 3 miss Ack err
firewire0: bus_explore node=0 addr=0x400 resp=22 retry=3
fwohci0: txd err= 3 miss Ack err
firewire0: bus_explore node=0 addr=0x400 resp=22 retry=4
firewire0: bus_explore failed for 1 nodes
[simsong at r3 ~] 306 % 


I plug in a standard Firewire card and it works just fine.      
>How-To-Repeat:
Buy this motherboard. Or don't.
>Fix:
Don't use the on-board firewire.      
>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: