From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Aug 4 16:23:12 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from cantva.canterbury.ac.nz (cantva.canterbury.ac.nz [132.181.30.3]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E6F3037B5E3 for ; Fri, 4 Aug 2000 16:23:02 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from rbm49@student.canterbury.ac.nz) Received: from CONVERSION-DAEMON.its.canterbury.ac.nz by its.canterbury.ac.nz (PMDF V6.0-24 #39167) id <01JSLXYOK0XS94K08W@its.canterbury.ac.nz> for freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org; Sat, 05 Aug 2000 11:22:53 +1200 (NEW ZEALAND STANDARD TIME) Received: from rbm49.tacacs.canterbury.ac.nz (rbm49.tacacs.canterbury.ac.nz [172.31.164.87]) by its.canterbury.ac.nz (PMDF V6.0-24 #45723) with ESMTP id <01JSLXYNZIFC96XM6Z@its.canterbury.ac.nz> for freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org; Sat, 05 Aug 2000 11:22:54 +1200 (NEW ZEALAND STANDARD TIME) Date: Sat, 05 Aug 2000 11:21:31 +1200 (NZST) From: "Mahoney, Richard B." Subject: CMD 640 ATA controller !WARNING! X-Sender: rbm49@muggins.co.nz To: freebsd-questions Reply-To: Richard Mahoney Message-id: MIME-version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Pine 4.21 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Dear Readers I've recently replaced 3.4 Release with 4.0 Release on my elderly DEC Venturis 5133. FreeBSD runs Emacs and Tex faster and more reliably than was ever possible under the other OS. There is only one problem. Under 3.4 the boot messages complained that my CMD 640 ATA controller was rubbish. For all that, 3.4 made concessions for substandard hardware. It seemed to include a workaround and my CD-ROM worked. I'm unhappy to say that this doesn't seem to be the case with 4.0. When I boot under 4.0 I get: atapci0: irq 14 at device 8.0 on pci0 atapci0: Busmastering DMA not supported and later on: ad0: 4126MB [8944/15/63] at ata0-master using BIOSPIO ad1: 1625MB [3303/16/63] at ata0-slave using BIOSPIO acd0: CDROM at ata1-master using BIOSPIO The upshot of all this is that if I am foolish enough to try to use my CD the system will hang. With 4.0 I'd hoped to be able to liberate myself from the other OS for ever. Now it seems I'm going to have to keep a DOS partition merely for accessing the CD. My question is: Is there a workaround for this crappy controller which can be used under 4.0 Release. I've been told that the contoller is stuck to the motherboard and can't be replaced. And for all that, apart from this problem, I'm rather attached to the old machine. -- Regards Richard Mahoney To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message