IBM 120 G IDE -- problems

[Mark Terribile]

My thanks to all the people who replied to my
problem with the 120 GB drive.  The fix -- or
rather, workaround -- is to disable DMA on IDE
by setting hw.ata.ata_dma=0 in /boot/loader.conf .

This means that any I/O on that disk sucks the
processor right up into the drive.  This is OK,
but barely, because I intend to use this drive
infrequently but for large amounts of data.

I suspect that the problem is in the support for
the chipset.  The manual for the board isn't very
clear about the base IDE chipset; it lists

                 SiS 963 MuTIOL Media I/O
                 IT8705F I/O Control
                 Sil3112A SATA
                 IT8212F RAID

The third and fourth IDE channels are controlled via
the RAID system; even when it is configured to make
the drives directly visible, FreeBSD can't see them.

The board is a GigaByte GA-SINXP1394 (P4 Titan
Series).

Once again, it's running `well enough'; I have now
to put the partitions on it; thanks to all who wrote.

                              Mark Terribile


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