Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 10:27:10 -0000 From: "Steve Coles" <scoles@tripos.com> To: "Herbert" <h.j.s@gmx.at>, "FreeBSD-Stable" <freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: Epox 8KTA2 Message-ID: <017101c07fa6$e2a4e550$9e9814ac@wolf.tripos.com> In-Reply-To: <20010116005820.A797@freebsd2.rocks>
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This is my experience with Promise controllers (a torrid time indeed): Both the Promise Controllers you mention are recognised by FreeBSD. The Ultra-100 is reliable and compatible with all of my MOBOs - I have a selection of low-mid-range ( PCChips, GigaByte ), and ATA-66 and ATA-100 disks, using FreeBSD and WinNt. The FastTrak-100 has ~never~ been reliable across MOBOs and Disks - on NT and FreeBSD. I have tried flashing the BIOS ( most recent and dummy-bios ), different channel combinations, different drive combinations, different MOBOs... My experience with this controller is that if you use two fast disks at the same time, then one of them will time-out ( FreeBSD and WinNT )or there will be massive file-system corruption ( WinNT ). Only one MOBO, running with a bus-speed of 66Mhz worked reliably with multiple writers to a hardware/software stripe. The problem normally manifests itself as one of the disks attached to the controller just timing-out, this happens on WinNT and FreeBSD - only FreeBSD recovers more gracefully. WinNT appears to not reset the drive and just waits. Typical example: Last night I had a 32Mb AMD K2 450 ( wow !) machine with the Fastrak-100, with 3 disks. Using just the first (boot) disk (ATA-33) it had been building-world happily for weeks using CTM deltas of src-4, no problems, ad4 and ad5 were recognised but just not used. Then I switched /usr/src to /dev/ad4s1e and /usr/obj to /dev/ad5s1e - the FastTrak controlled drives As soon as I tried to do something using both ATA-100 disks I got read/write timeouts on one or the other disk. These timeouts were followed by spontaneous reboots. So I reloaded the machine from the 12-1-2001 stable snapshot and now there are just kernel panics. I couldn't even unpack the source ( I use CTM ) into /use/src without a panic. The panic was in a variety of functions, but most functions were named ffs_*. (Sorry for the level of detail, I have a 30-second memory) If it is a driver problem then I would like to help out, but I don't know whether it is the driver or controller, or MOBO. I'm tempted just to save the grey hairs and buy a new Mobo / ditch the FastTrak. I'm just fed up with this controller, so I would welcome ~any~ positive experiences using this controller with -STABLE and >1 ATA-100 disks so that I can reduce some of the variables and get a working configuration using this controller. Steve > -----Original Message----- > From: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG > [mailto:owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Herbert > Sent: 15 January 2001 23:58 > To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG > Subject: Epox 8KTA2 > > > Hello! > > I have replaced a MSI K7T Pro2 mainboard with an Epox 8KTA72 today and > now I have problems running my FreeBSD-4.2 STABLE system. > The drives fall back from UDMA66 into PIO4 mode and the system is very > unstable. XWindow, netscape and other apps crash randomly and when I try > to compile the system or a kernel my kernel panics. :( > I testet this system under m$ win me I have no such problems? > > Is this only a problem with the ata controller? Or do you think I should > also check some other parts of my computer? What if I buy a promise ata > 100 controller? Will this solve my problems? There is a cheap one > available from promise (not the fastrak 100) ... is this one also > supported under FreeBSD 4.2 STABLE? Or only the Fastrak 100? > > My cdrom drive seems to run fine in UDMA33 mode ... strange, isn't it? > Hope anybody on the list can help me! Thanks a lot! > > Regards! > Herbert J. Skuhra > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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