Re: vt8233a southbridge

[Paul Gear]

David wrote:

...

VP_IDE: VIA vt8233a (rev 00) IDE UDMA133 controller on pci00:11.1
ide0: BM-DMA at 0xfc00-0xfc07, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:pio
ide1: BM-DMA at 0xfc08-0xfc0f, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:DMA
hda: MAXTOR 6L080J4, ATA DISK drive
hdc: MAXTOR 6L080J4, ATA DISK drive
hdd: LITEON DVD-ROM LTD163D, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
Partition check:
hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 hda4 < hda5 >
hdc:hdc: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hdc: dma_intr: error=0x84 { DriveStatusError BadCRC }
...
ide1: reset: success

The dma_intr errors and the ide reset repeat several times during the boot. After it's booted, all seems well (except that the DVD drive on hdd drags the UDMA133 HD on hdc down to 24 Mb/s instead of 40 Mb/s like hda).

Does it work okay if you unplug the DVD drive? Have you tried replacing or re-positioning the ATA cable?

I'll try some of these after i've finished my assignment for college...  ;-)

Are both drives using DMA?

Yes.  If i turn it off with hdparm they run much more slowly:

[root@enoch root]# hdparm -d 0 /dev/hdc

/dev/hdc:
setting using_dma to 0 (off)
using_dma    =  0 (off)
[root@enoch root]# hdparm -t /dev/hdc

/dev/hdc:
Timing buffered disk reads:  64 MB in  9.36 seconds =  6.84 MB/sec
[root@enoch root]# hdparm -d 1 /dev/hdc

/dev/hdc:
setting using_dma to 1 (on)
using_dma    =  1 (on)
[root@enoch root]# hdparm -t /dev/hdc

/dev/hdc:
Timing buffered disk reads:  64 MB in  2.36 seconds = 27.10 MB/sec

My DVD and CD-writer (sharing the same channel) both use DMA okay.

Have you shared a bus between a DVD & a hard drive? I think in the long term i'll have to buy a separate IDE controller for the DVD.

Machines running the unpatched 2.4.18-14 kernel start segfaulting after
24-48hrs of uptime.

This sounds like a problem with your hardware.

My uptime says:
12:43pm up 16:22, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.03, 0.01

We'll see what happens in a day or two. :-) I've seen no signs of anything looking like motherboard instability yet, but i've been rebooting fairly regularly back to Windows, since i can't get sound working & thus can't play DVDs.

Do you get random applications segfaulting?

No.

(I'm assuming this is what Peter was describing, which is almost certainly a hardware-related problem)

Yes - bad memory will often do that.

I had some major stability problems at first with my A7V333, until I worked around the BIOS bugs. No problems since. :)

What BIOS does the A7V333 use? What were the symptoms of your stability problems?

Paul