WDMA mode won't enable? Old machine...

[Mark Cullen]

Nathan Kinkade wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 19, 2004 at 10:18:18PM +0100, Mark Cullen wrote:
> 
>>I have a rather old machine acting as a home server. According to dmesg 
>>it has a:
>>
>>--
>>atapci0: <Intel PIIX WDMA2 controller> port 
>>0xffa0-0xffaf,0x376,0x170-0x177,0x3f6,0x1f0-0x1f7 at device 7.1 on pci0
>>--
>>
>>However, both hard disks attached are running in PIO mode.
>>
>>--
>>ad0: 4103MB <ST34321A> [8894/15/63] at ata0-master BIOSPIO
>>ad2: 6194MB <IBM-DADA-26480> [13424/15/63] at ata1-master BIOSPIO
>>--
>>
>>I tried running the following, but as you can see the end result is that 
>>they are still running BIOSPIO.
>>
>>--
>>(root|bone)/home/mrboo# atacontrol mode 0 WDMA2 WDMA2
>>Master = BIOSPIO
>>Slave  = BIOSPIO
>>--
>>
>>Any suggestions as to how I might enable some sort of DMA on these 
>>drives? Since the machine is rather slow (133MHz) and it's currently 
>>using polled IO I am sure it will likely benefit me, even if it isn't 
>>quite UDMA :)
> 
> 
> You should check out the following sysctl variables:

Good call!

> 
> hw.ata.ata_dma
> hw.ata.atapi_dma
> 
> These are readonly at runtime, so need to be set at boot in the file
> /boot/loader.conf.  You can add the them like so:

Unfortuantly...

(mrboo|bone)/home/mrboo$ sysctl hw.ata.
hw.ata.ata_dma: 1
hw.ata.wc: 0
hw.ata.atapi_dma: 0

ATAPI is just CD drives isn't it? Mainly? If that's the case 0 is ok for 
that one, as it doesn't have a CD drive anymore.

> 
> hw.ata.ata_dma=1
> hw.ata.atapi_dma=1
> 
> Also, as I understand it, 80 conductor ribbon cables were only
> recommended at UDMA modes <=2, but perhaps you might consider using one
> just to be safe.

Well I can't use a newer cable on one of the drives as it is a laptop 
drive, using one of those 'special' laptop cable things :-)

Thanks, but any other ideas as to why it won't enable? I don't seem to 
get any messages out of it, just doesn't want to do anything by the 
looks of it!

> 
> Nathan


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