On Thu, 16 May 2002, Stefan Bambach wrote: > - What is the FORCE_IDE_CONTROLLER_ON for ? > Do you ignore the pci configuration register ? So a > disable IDE channel in BIOS (normal Award, ...) is > ignored and activated anyway ? So all IDE channels will > be activated and usable from within linux ?
The problem is that Linux interprets "BIOS did not enable IDE controller" as meaning "BIOS DISABLED IDE CONTROLLER". This is a bad assumption. FORCE_IDE_CONTROLLER_ON is a way of making linux enable the controller. This is just a problem in controllers. How should linux interpret the enable bits. What we really need is a command line way to tell linux what to turn on. But the IDE command line parameters are a bit of a mess. > - What is the WAIT_HDA_SPINUP for ? This forces linux to wait for hda to spin up. Otherwise it decides that hda does not exist. Personally I think this is a mistake in IDE. Drive present should not be the same as drive spun up. Their mistake. > - Everyone using IDE drives have to apply the ide-patch and > wait 10-15 seconds until the drive is ready ? 10-15? it's more like 4. You should be able to say this: hda=0,0,0 and linux will force a wait on hda spin-up. But that seems to fail sometimes. > - Is there a IDE drive that does not have this long spin up > time ? don't know. > - Do I need the spinup patch, if I boot from DoC and only > whats to use the ide drive for data ? maybe. What do you mean, data? > - Does this IDE Problem mean, that I cannot use IDE drives, > if I want a usable system (music box) within 5 seconds ? You should boot linux from Flash, and have a user-mode program insmod the ide module. IDE needs repair in Linux. But it is close. ron
