[snip : about move to expert list]
Ok, but I'm not subscribed...

> > [A world of difference, but from this I can infer that the Tyan is giving
> > you the hasles????]
> I thought I made that explicit earlier. The Tyan is the MVP3, the
> problem child that started the thread.
Well, I jumped in when you boldly claimed Mdk 9.0 had PS/2 mouse issues,
(me) not paying attention to the details earlier...
Ok, before you try to answer the questions while reading this, you should
test things in the order as outlined at the end of this message.

> > > # of SCSI HD's        1       2   !!!!
> > > Boot                  hda     sdb !!!!
> !!!!? Your point? The Tyan MVP3 is booting and running hda.
If the MP3's were on SCSI and SCSI was the culprit you would have found
out much earlier if you booted from SCSI, but you don't...that's all...

> The AOpen TX is booting RHL7.3 from sdb8, but mdk8.2 from hda7, mdk7.1
> from sdc10, and Corel 1.2 from sdc9. sdb and sdc are the same physical
> disk, 0,3,0. Whether it is sdb or sdc depends on whether SCSI 0,2,0 is
> enabled during powerup.
[Edited]
> > !!!!?????The MP3's don't happen to be on a SCSI disk, do they???!!!!
> Mdk9/Tyan = MP3's on hda. RHL/AOpen probably = on SCSI somewhere. RHL
> doesn't provide HPFS support in the stock kernel, and since HPFS is
> where they were, I had to shut down RHL and boot mdk 8.2 to copy some
> someplace. When I quit for that day I deleted the copies.
So, on both machines, hda has HPFS? How stable is the MVP3 machine when
you don't touch MP3's, i.e. what happens when you copy a large file, f.i.?
(My new line of thinking : since you boot fine and can even get into KDE,
it is probably something specific about the load generated by reading the
MP3s (disk I/O-->filesystem/IDE/PCI), decoding them (CPU/mem subsys) or
the generated audio stream (SOUND/ISA). I'm leaving the direct SCSI
route.)
  I'm reading the HPFS docs in kernel-doc and it is scary stuff (rather
careless programmer) at the end (i.e. Bugs section) and the last entry
(2.05 fixes) of the Changelog mentions quite a few crash fixes...how many
more are still waiting?
Therefore, what happens when you put the Tyan hda in the AOpen and try to
listen to the MP3s on that machine? Does it also crash? What are the
versions of the HPFS modules on the AOpen box?

[snip]
> Might this be because RHL is running off SCSI and 9.0 doesn't hasn't
> accessed any SCSI files? The only SCSI HD in the Tyan (mdk 9.0) machine
That's a possibility I also thought about but didn't ask because of the
time lag. If I could just sit behind your computer...(I wouldn't make a
great help desk techie :-) I am too stubborn to give up, though.

> > > PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 00:08.0
> > > IRQ routing conflict for 00:08.0, have irq 10, want irq 11
> > !!!And again, did you read over this message???
> Yup! Before disabling the VGA IRQ assignment in the BIOS, I went into
> the BIOS and reversed the IRQ assignments between the VGA card and the
> SCSI, resulting in the following:
>       PCI: Found IRQ 10 for device 00:08.0
>       IRQ routing conflict for 00:08.0, have irq 11, want irq 10
> This SCSI seems always to want the grass from the other side of the
> fence. Since the BIOS change failed to remove the routing conflict
> message from dmesg, I put things back like they were before proceeding.
Ok, but did you try to switch back to Auto altogether? Maybe your SCSI
doesn't like to be ordered to use a specific IRQ# but rather wants to
negotiate it with the PCI IRQ router ;-)

> OTOH, I'd love to know how to deal with the following later message:
>       sym0:2:0: tagged command queuing enabled, command queue depth 16.
>
> Most of my SCSI disks, including the one on 0,2,0, have a maxiumum queue
> depth support of 8. I'm sure this creates voodoo errors, and I'd like to
> limit the depth accordingly.
I would think the SCSI subsystem (i.e. the firmware and hw) takes care of
this. If the mismatch causes communication problems (such as
timeouts) between the hostadapter and the device, I'm sure you get
additional error messages. I looked in the HOWTO's and the kernel-doc's
on scsi and not much is said about this (tagged queuing is mentioned but
nothing about setting up the queues). Anyway, this is unrelated to your
"real" problem (the "MP3 on hda" lockup)...

> > Errr, do I need to say more?????
> I think so, but lets settle the SCSI issue before proceeding with ISA
> sound.
Ok :-)

> > > Is this possibly a resolvable DMA problem? After all, OS/2 plays
> > > MP3's on this box without locking up.
> > Well, OS/2 ignores the BIOS IRQ assignments and reprograms the IRQ
> > router in case the MP3's happen to be on a SCSI device.
          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
[snip(ped too much)]
Moot as the MP3's reside on hda...

[snip]
> > Summary : SCSI card doesn't get the IRQ it wants.
> Regardless of anything I've ever done so far. To me more likely that
> means the sym53c8xx module is fubar -> According to Symbios docs I read
Mmm, it is one of the oldest modules in the kernel (at least the
framework is)...
[snip]

> > TO DO : do the testing on the problem machine. If you get it to work but
> > are experiencing random lockup (but long enough after boot), try replacing
> > hardware ONE by ONE from the other (AOpen) machine.
> No need to steal from the other machine. I have identical spares on the
> shelf. 8^)
Whatever, you got the point...

> > Try the following setup strategy :
> >   * Change modules.conf to include all the top-level aliases
> "top-level" means what?
generic vs. specific driver aliases
(I put examples in my message : eth0, scsi_hostadapter, ...)

> "alias" in the context of modules.conf means what? Why use them at all?
It helps associating the driver modules with the generic devices. (I
already explained why, or rather mused about it.)

Although the MP3-lockup is not directly related to the SCSI dmesg
messages, it is not ruled out yet as indirect cause...

In summary, an almost exhaustive poll :
   MP3 related :
   -------------
   How far does the MP3 player get into the process of trying to play your
    MP3's (I need strace -f <MP3 player> output for that; please, open
    MP3 as soon as possible after starting the trace to limit trace noise)?
/-->  What happens when you copy large files from/on the IDE disk?
|-->  What happens when you play large wav files?
\-->  What happens when you convert the MP3's to another format?
 -------> in this order!!!
   What happens when you put the IDE disk in the AOpen machine?
   What is the version of the HPFS module for all the distribs on the
    AOpen machine?

   IRQ# related :
   --------------
   So, again, what happens when you switch off IRQ# assignments to slots
    in the BIOS and turn on Auto?
   What happens if you gradually reassign exhaustively one by one?
   What is the output of lspci -vv in all cases? What is /proc/interrupts?
   (What about giving me the complete /var/log/dmesg's and let me judge
    the relevance of messages? :-)
   Find out if the MVP3 needs a BIOS upgrade (VIA and IDE don't match :-)!
     On second thought, why does OS/2 play the MP3s fine then?
     (This one is a rethoric question :-)

Guy


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