From owner-freebsd-hardware  Wed Dec 18  5:30:48 2002
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Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2002 06:30:12 -0700
To: Jason Thomson <jason.thomson@mintel.com>
From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>
Subject: Re: FreeBSD install fails on Dell PowerEdge 600SC server
Cc: hardware@FreeBSD.ORG
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At 03:40 AM 12/18/2002, Jason Thomson wrote:
  
>The FreeBSD ATA drivers won't handle the chipset on that Dell server.
>
>Three ways we got it to work:
>
>        1) In the BIOS set UDMA setting to NONE.  (This results in really bad
>performance).
>        2) Only put the disks as masters on each channel.  (You can only use
>channel 1,2 not 3).

It's cheap of Dell not to have made the hard drives masters on their own
channels, since this vastly improves performance.

Did you notice any problems (slowness, lack of reliability) when you did
this?

In any event, if the problem is that the driver can't handle slaves,
it may be a minor fix.

>        3) Buy a promise PCI controller.

Promise TX adapters have worked well for me. I don't know if the
client is willing to wait to have one shipped, though. Wouldn't
mind trying to fix the drivers if someone can give me some idea
of where to poke.

--Brett


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