buggy ATA controller: I can install 4.11, but not 5.3 !?!

[Doug White]

On Wed, 30 Mar 2005, Rob wrote:

> > So its said again ..
> >
> > Use a different ATA controller. Please. The RZ1000
> > series should not be
> > used under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES WHATSOEVER.
>
> I've got not really a choice here. This is a 10 year
> old Pentium-1 PC, which I would like to use. I'm not
> a hardware expert, but your advice would mean to
> throw this PC away? Or can I replace the ATA
> controller easily myself?

Any PCI ATA controller will work, and that machine probably has ISA slots
so you could use an ISA ATA controller if you were desperate.

I put my P90 out to pasture since once the 2GB disk dies in it I'll have
to use flash media to get a disk the onboard controller will support.  So
I replaced it with a small fanless Soekris :)

> I have already put this machine under moderate load
> and recompiled/installed a new world/kernel without
> any problems. Apparently 4.11 knows how to bypass
> the flaws of this buggy ATA controller. At least
> that's my impression.
> Would 5.3 or 5.4 do this as-good here?

AFAIK the RZ1000 bug was that it would corrupt data to the slave channel
if the primary channel was also active.  If you only have one device then
you may not be able to reproduce it.

Do you have verbose boot output from the non-working 5.x boot?

-- 
Doug White                    |  FreeBSD: The Power to Serve
dwhite at gumbysoft.com          |  www.FreeBSD.org