5.3 ata / atapicam issues (update)

[Rob]

> Hope this helps someone. I'm not at all sure
> where/what the problem is but
> I'll be happy to run on the embedded controller for
> the time being. (while
> PIO 4 != DMA 133, reliability/functionality is
king!)   

Neither have I an idea what going on here, but
after having upgraded a few PCs from 4.10 to 5.3,
I empirically deduced following conclusions:

1) The problems is since 5.3, not with any 4.X.

2) Such problems occur when the media (harddisk in my
  case) are capable of doing a higher speed than the
  motherboard. For example, harddisk can do maximum
  UDMA100, but motherboard can maximum handle UDMA66.
  In such cases I need  hw.ata.ata_dma="0"  in
  loader.conf, which slows down the speed to PIO4.

Without the hw.ata.ata_dma="0", I get various
results, which can be 'kernel panic at bootup after
installation' on one PC, to 'odd crashing of X for
no good reason' on another PC.

When the maximum speeds of harddisk and motherboard
match, there's no problem, eventhough they may both
operate at a lower than maximum speed.

Something really uggly has entered the code of 5.3,
with respect to disk speed matching, I believe.

Regards,
Rob.


		
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