Update on Dells with 5.1.0pre7

[Greg Wickham]

On 27-Aug-1998, at around 11:36, "Robert G. Brown" wrote:

] Dear List Humans,
] 
] I've spent the last couple of weeks after I got back from vacation
] testing and installing our Dell poweredge boxes with the new pre7
] revision, and have the following observations:
] 
] a) If I try to boot up a Dell system that has never been booted before
] with a boot floppy/kernel containing the pre7 aic7xxx driver, it hangs
] right after the timeout that occurs after downloading the sequencer
] and during the attached disk probe.  The hang is the usual loop of
] annoying Parity errors etc.  This is highly reproducible.

I have found the same.

] b) If I boot one of the Dell systems and let Windows NT (preinstalled
] on the hard drive) get through its initial pre-installation routine,
] during which it (presumably) installs its own aic7xxx drivers and the
] like, and THEN boot from the SAME boot floppy, it boots "perfectly"
] except for the single timeout during the attached device probe
] previously reported on the list.  Thereafter, it appears to work
] reasonably well -- I have now installed a dozen or so of the dual P2's
] with 7890U2W and 7860 U onboard adapters without (yet, knock on wood)
] any problems.

I'm using a gigabyte tx-3 m/b with the 2940U2w card. I have found very
similar to you. From experimenting it seems that if I do *NOT* have
an IDE drive in the system it will fail cold boot linux with the
parity error problem. If I boot '95/NT and then warm boot linux
all is fine. However, to make my life much easier I left an IDE drive
in the system.

Apart from this glaring problem all seems ok. Am running 2.1.118 with
pre7 and have had no errors at all. Even the 'make -j' stress test of
the linux kernel resulted in no problems. (Running a tagged queue depth
of 16). (I should point out that it never finished making the kernel.
After an 90 mins of the HDD pounding away I kind of figured it was 
going to take all night - but this is a memory/swap issue)

] /* Other text snipped */
]
]    rgb
] 
] Robert G. Brown	                       http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/
] Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305
] Durham, N.C. 27708-0305
] Phone: 1-919-660-2567  Fax: 919-660-2525     email:rgb at phy.duke.edu
] 
] 
] 
] 
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   -Greg

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Lecturer                                              Greg Wickham  
School of Computing and Mathematics ______________________________
Deakin University                   Voice: (+61 3) 5227 1381
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Australia                    WWW: http://www.cm.deakin.edu.au/~gjw
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