Sata controller headache

[Søren Schmidt]

Rich Wales wrote:
> Earlier, I wrote in -current:
>
>   
>> I've been seeing the same kinds of errors [as Paul Bliss was having]
>> with a Promise SATA300 TX4 controller and a pair of Seagate 300GB
>> SATA drives.  Apparently, people have been having similar problems
>> with SATA drives on Promise controllers for quite some time now, in
>> both FreeBSD and Linux systems.  Lots of reports and requests for
>> help, but no one so far has admitted to having a clue as to what is
>> causing it.
>>     
>
> I wanted to let people know that I managed to fix (or, at least, work
> around) my problem by adjusting the BIOS settings for my (old "Slot A"
> Athlon system) motherboard.  Specifically, I disabled PCI master burst
> mode, and although this slowed down disk I/O significantly, it made
> the instabilities w/r/t the Promise card go away completely.
>
> I'm not sure whether the fundamental problem is flaky PCI bus design
> in some motherboards, or overly picky bus expectations by Promise, but
> this experience suggests to me that people who are having timeouts and
> hanging errors with Promise SATA controllers might want to try playing
> with the PCI-related BIOS settings on their motherboards and see if
> that gives them relief.  If anyone is having trouble with a Promise
> card in a recent-design motherboard with normal BIOS settings, of
> course, that would strongly point to Promise as the guilty party.
>   
As I told you (in private mail) some of the Promise chips does get close 
to the edges of the PCI spec, but usually its only a problem on 
motherboards that haunted as well with bugs in that area.
> Whether anything can be done to relieve this problem in the device
> driver is a question I'm not in a position to answer.
>   
Thats a bridge I'd rather not cross in this life :)

-Søren