iir + Tyan S2460 + SMP problems

[Douglas K. Rand]

Doug> We're having problems with FreeBSD 5.4, 6.0, and 6.1 and an ICP
Doug> Vortex GDT8546RZ 4 port SATA RAID

John-Mark> We've had very similar experiences on 4.7-R.  The box would
John-Mark> hang on one partition waiting for IO to come back, but
John-Mark> direct access to the disk, or accessing other partitions
John-Mark> would pass IO fine.

Interesting, the opposite of our problems. It works perfectly for us
on 4.x systems, but not in 5.4 and 6.x.

Doug> Any advice is welcome. Well, except for "dump the Tyan S2460
Doug> motherboards" maybe.

John-Mark> How about drop iir?

While not as expensive as switching motherboards, still a pain. We've
been very happy with our ICP cards. But your suggestion does have
merit, especially as recent PCI-X and PCI-E ICP cards have no FreeBSD
driver in sight.