DMA errors

Mike Jeays Mike.Jeays at rogers.com
Mon Oct 31 05:00:26 PST 2005


On Mon, 2005-10-31 at 02:11, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: Mike Jeays [mailto:Mike.Jeays at rogers.com]
> >Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2005 8:04 PM
> >To: Ted Mittelstaedt
> >Cc: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> >Subject: RE: DMA errors
> >
> >
> >On Sat, 2005-10-29 at 19:48, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
> >> Try a different disk drive.
> >>
> >> What motherboard is in use here?
> >>
> >> Ted
> >>
> >> >-----Original Message-----
> >> >From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> >> >[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Mike Jeays
> >> >Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2005 4:28 PM
> >> >To: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> >> >Subject: DMA errors
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >I have a 40GB Maxtor D740X-6L disk, and have been unable to
> >install 5.4
> >> >or 6.0 on it.  I get errors:
> >> >
> >> >ad0: FAILURE WRITE_DMA STATUS=51 <READY,DSC,ERROR> error=84 (IRC,
> >> >ABORTED) LBA=..
> >> >
> >> >as soon as I try to commmit the changes in sysinstall.
> >> >
> >> >I have checked that the IDE cable is the 80-wire type, and cleaned up
> >> >the connections and so on.
> >> >
> >> >I tried installing Ubuntu on this disk, and everything went
> >perfectly.
> >> >(Those guys have done a really great job, by the way).
> >> >
> >> >Is there some configuration trick I have missed?
> >> >
> >> >_______________________________________________
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> >> >
> >> >--
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> >> >10/28/2005
> >> >
> >
> >It works on at least one other disk, a Western Digital 80GB.  The
> >motherboard is as Asus P4S533.
> >
> 
> Well I hate to be flippant, but there you have it, problem solved.
> 
> I have been doing PC work professionally for over 10 years and
> unprofessionally for at least 10-15 years before that, and ever
> since the IDE interface was invented I've had to deal with
> incompatibilties between the controller and the hard disk.  Back
> in the days that the IDE controller chip was on a paddle card I
> used to have a box of them and when running into a problem like
> your doing, I would swap the cards until I got a good combo.  This
> was all ISA stuff of course.  Once the PCI came out and they
> started putting the controller on motherboard, they only way around
> these problems is to play musical chairs with the disk drives.
> 
> And all this was long before FreeBSD, let alone Linux, was even
> a gleam in someone's eye.
> 
> Your 40GB Maxtor has some moronic timing incompatibility with the
> IDE chipset that the FreeBSD driver in 5.4/6.0 happens to tickle,
> there's nothing you can do about it.  Use your 80GB disk for the
> FreeBSD system or go find some other brand of motherboard for your
> 40GB disk, and things will work fine.
> 
> Ted
> 
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Thanks for the advice, and that is probably what I will do.  

However, before I bought the 80GB disk, I used to run 4.6 on the Maxtor
40GB, with no problems.  Furthernore, this disk and MB will still run
Ubuntu and Fedora, so it seems that later FreeBSD releases are more
sensitive, or drive the hardware a bit harder.



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