From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Mar 14 17:04:35 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EA08C106566B for ; Fri, 14 Mar 2008 17:04:35 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from tundra@tundraware.com) Received: from ozzie.tundraware.com (ozzie.tundraware.com [75.145.138.73]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9E8B28FC18 for ; Fri, 14 Mar 2008 17:04:35 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from tundra@tundraware.com) Received: from [192.168.0.2] (viper.tundraware.com [192.168.0.2]) (authenticated bits=0) by ozzie.tundraware.com (8.14.2/8.14.2) with ESMTP id m2EH4Vwn017192 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-DSS-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO) for ; Fri, 14 Mar 2008 12:04:31 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from tundra@tundraware.com) Message-ID: <47DAB01E.6000403@tundraware.com> Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2008 12:04:30 -0500 From: Tim Daneliuk Organization: TundraWare Inc. User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.12 (Windows/20080213) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: FreeBSD Mailing List References: <47DA2131.9030006@tundraware.com> In-Reply-To: <47DA2131.9030006@tundraware.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-tundraware.com-MailScanner-Information: Please contact the ISP for more information X-tundraware.com-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-tundraware.com-MailScanner-From: tundra@tundraware.com X-Spam-Status: No Subject: Re: 6.3 And VIA 8237S Controller - Also USB Drive Problem X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: tundra@tundraware.com List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2008 17:04:36 -0000 Tim Daneliuk wrote: > I just bought a new MSI P4M900M2 mobo. It works just fine with both > Windoze and SUSE Linux. When I tried booting 6.2 on it, it refused to > set the drive (ad0 - I tried several different drives) into the > higher speed UDMA modes. So, I downloaded 6.3, and it *seemed* to > be fine. The drives come up as UDMA 100 or UDMA 133. > > But ... under long disk operations - say untaring a 2G tarball > stored on a USB drive - I start to see this: > > ad0: WARNING WRITE_DMA UDMA ICRC ERROR > I have resolved this and thought I'd share with the class in case anyone else runs into the problem. It occurred to me that this chipset has been around long enough that it was very likely not a driver problem. I went back and replaced the IDE cable with another one known to be good and, voila', problem solved. What's weird about this is that the "bad" cable is a more-or-less new low profile round IDE cable I got from Tiger Direct a while back. It is the 20" variety which may be contributing noise to the problem. Weirder still is that neither Linux nor Windows seemed to have problems with it, though I did not test as thoroughly with those OSs. I'd guess that the FBSD driver is perhaps trying to squeeze the last bit of optimization out of the controller and thus drives the IDE bus to its limits, hence the problem shows up there. Either that, or I just didn't pound on the machine hard enough with Linux especially to see the problem. I should have guessed "cable problem" right away, but given the relative newness of the cable, that seemed unlikely. In a related note: I also discovered that the FreeBSD install CD Fixit environment does flakey things when you try to untar a large file from a USB drive plugged in through an external hub. Plugging the drive directly into one of the mobo ports made that problem go away. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tim Daneliuk tundra@tundraware.com PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/