From owner-freebsd-current Thu Jan 21 23:33:26 1999 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id XAA03467 for freebsd-current-outgoing; Thu, 21 Jan 1999 23:33:26 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from freebsd.dk (freebsd.dk [212.242.42.178]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id XAA03461 for ; Thu, 21 Jan 1999 23:33:23 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from sos@freebsd.dk) Received: (from sos@localhost) by freebsd.dk (8.9.1/8.9.1) id IAA18616; Fri, 22 Jan 1999 08:33:04 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from sos) From: Søren Schmidt Message-Id: <199901220733.IAA18616@freebsd.dk> Subject: Re: Promise FastTrack PCI IDE controller In-Reply-To: <19990122120633.A13400@rf900.physics.usyd.edu.au> from David Dawes at "Jan 22, 1999 12: 6:33 pm" To: dawes@rf900.physics.usyd.edu.au (David Dawes) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1999 08:33:04 +0100 (CET) Cc: current@FreeBSD.ORG X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL43 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG It seems David Dawes wrote: > > >> >I also run the card without its BIOS, as that tends to get in the way. > >> >I think the FastTrack is just an Ultra/33 with another BIOS chip on it. > >> > >> I'll try pulling the BIOS tomorrow. We didn't get this card for it's > >> RAID features anyway. > > > >That helped me in a lot if situations, but performance wont be as good > >as we seem not to initialize the chip(s)... > > When I remove the BIOS it works OK. The initialisation is different > though. Yep I know, the chipset on the Promise is not initialized to what the drives support then, its working in a slow (but always working though) mode. I did plan to change this, and even got the docs for the chips but it has sunken pretty low on the TODO list lately... > The performance isn't as good, as you say. For one of these disks on > the PIIX4 I get about 12 MByte/s for a large (1GB) sequential read from > the raw device. I only get about 4 MByte/s for one of the same disks > on the Promise controller. I presume that's because it isn't initialised > to the fastest DMA mode? > > The performance is adequate for our needs though, so removing the BIOS > is a workable solution. Or you could try to get ahold of a BIOS from an Ultra/33 controller, that does work in most situations... - Søren To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message