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Date:      Thu, 2 Nov 2000 17:15:34 +0100 (CET)
From:      Soren Schmidt <sos@freebsd.dk>
To:        tlambert@primenet.com (Terry Lambert)
Cc:        stolz@I2.Informatik.RWTH-Aachen.DE (Volker Stolz), freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Broken PCI-IDE RZ1000 & ata
Message-ID:  <200011021615.RAA75987@freebsd.dk>
In-Reply-To: <200011021542.IAA08485@usr09.primenet.com> from Terry Lambert at "Nov 2, 2000 03:42:05 pm"

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It seems Terry Lambert wrote:
> > > The RZ1000 PCI-IDE controller found on at least one Intel board is
> > > severely broken and requires a workaround which is available for
> > > Linux (at least it turned up in the config for 2.4.0, though the board
> > > should be a couple of years old, it's for regular Pentium-I).
> > > 
> > > Could anyone comment on this to get it working with FreeBSD?
> > > sysinstalls gets write-errors after a couple of kilobytes, and
> > > when running an already installed system, mount/fsck bomb with
> > > sig 11, after that you find yourself in single-user mode with
> > > every command (including 'reboot'!) yielding a SIGILL.
> > 
> > Well, that chip is so broken by design, no software workaround can
> > help its misery, a hardware fix exists, but cant (easily) be 
> > retrofitted. Forget about it, buy a new Promise or whatever if
> > you really need that board, a software only fix is _not_ possible,
> > no matter what linux might tell you....
> 
> The fix was to retry the call if an interrupt occurred
> during DMA.  This is a very old bug.
> 
> The old ATA driver in FreeBSD had this fix.
> 
> Are you sure that you aren't just not setting the right flags
> on the device?  This workaround used to be on by default in
> GENERIC.
> 
> Alternately, it's possible that the "new, improved" ATA driver
> code is mearely "new".

Terry, that chip is broken, the fix you mention only fixes part of
its trouble, it still corrupts your data without you knowing
until you hit a binary that went bad or what have you. Granted
the possibility is low, but it _does happen_. So instead of
supplying a partial fix and lullabying users into believing its
safe to use, the "new and improved" ATA driver states the fact
that this chip is broken and can corrupt your data, end of story.

-Søren


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