Question regarding Intel ICH7 motherboard and integrated RAID

[Howard Goldstein]

Karl Denninger wrote:
> Hi folks;
> 
> I have a new Intel ICH7 board here that has Quad-core support.
> 
> It works well EXCEPT....
> 
> It has an on-board RAID controller with some internal buffer memory.

There's a known issue with an interrupt storm when the ICH7R is
configured for AHCI or RAID, and a pr was filed back in July(don't have
the number, search for interrupt storm on atapci1+).  The suspicion was
that some peripheral no one has identified yet is hammering the apic and
we can't mask it.

The workaround is to set the BIOS for IDE mode.  It's a bit of a drag
because SATA-II mode isn't reached when in IDE mode, only in AHCI (and
RAID?) mode.  If you don't panic when you set it for IDE mode then
you've probably run into the same problem.

On the plus side FreeBSD on the Q6600 *rocks* and our geom stuff does
the RAIDdy stuff nicely for a software solution.  I sympathize with you
as I spent most of the day yesterday trying to work this same problem.