On Tuesday 09 January 2001 19:34, you wrote:
> Hi. I'm still wondering about the exact syntax for making Mandrake use
> ATA66 with my setup. In /etc/lilo.conf, I tried:
>
> idebus=66
>
> and
>
> "idebus=66"
>
> I get no error messages at bootup, just the same message about a 33mhz bus
> being assumed.
>
> With either of the above commands in place in lilo.conf, I can issue a (as
> su) /sbin/lilo -v command, and it always tells me there is a syntax error
> at the line I added.
>
> Any ideas, or can anyone please tell me the correct syntax and place in
> lilo.conf to put this line?
>
> Thanks much! ;-)
The assumption is for PIO, not DMA. The way to test if you have a fast ATA
bus is to do this
hdparm -t /dev/hde #or wherever you have the controller/drive
That will provide a speed test. Figures of 25Mb/s or more indicate very
likely that you have ide running at 66
Or
hdparm -i /dev/hde
will spit out several lines of data, the last line will have an asterisk
beside the mode your drive is running in. udma4 is 66; 3 is 44; 2 is 33; 5
is 100, and so on.
man hdparm will tell you how to tune your drive. Note though that with
modern controllers hdparm -X is not particularly dangerous. The way to tune
with it is to start conservative and run hdparm -t after each new setting...
when the next higher setting returns a data rate little better than the one
below it--go back one step. naturally you want hdparm -d1 for any DMA
capable drive.
Be advised that the kernel has a database (dma_blacklist and dma_whitelist)
which allow or disallow DMA settings, based on the empirical performance of
some drives, which tries to keep you out of serious data corruption troubles.
Unfortunately this database lags new models by the time it takes to gather
empirical data.
Civileme
