Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 10:54:39 +0200 From: Willie Viljoen <will@unfoldings.net> To: Len Conrad <LConrad@Go2France.com>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: can't get to ATA133 (Addendum to previous post) Message-ID: <200302271054.39505.will@unfoldings.net> In-Reply-To: <200302271043.05919.will@unfoldings.net> References: <5.2.0.9.0.20030226165710.028ad2f0@mail.go2france.com> <5.2.0.9.0.20030227022946.07db1e40@mail.go2france.com> <200302271043.05919.will@unfoldings.net>
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On Thursday 27 February 2003 10:43, someone, possibly Willie Viljoen, typed: > On Thursday 27 February 2003 10:31, someone, possibly Len Conrad, typed: > > >The ata driver is quite strict on standards implementation. It could > > > be that the promise cables may not comply as strictly with the > > > standard as it would prefer. Try getting 80-conductor cables from a > > > third party. Generally speaking, buying your own cables is better > > > than using the ones that came with the controller anyway, as those > > > are usually el-cheapos, even with the most expensive controllers. > > > > One unreported point we later verified was in the TX2000 on-board setup > > util, "Show Drive Status" shows both drives as mode "U6" (is ATA133). > > Won't matter to ata(4), if it doesn't like your cables, it will force > your drives down to UDMA2 at boot time. It could be that the cables still > have abit more noise than the driver is willing to tolerate. A new set of > cables won't cost you more than $5 each, try replacing the cables first. > The 80-conductor cables that came with my sister's motherboard and with > my offboard ATA controller (CMD 649 variant) were both 80-conductor > cables by the manufacturors' claims, but ata(4) was not interested. There are two things you might want to look at. First it trying to set the modes manually after boot. This is not recommended, and I would not do it unless on a read only file system, if setting the higher mode fails, or fails partially, you might be in for a world of trouble. To do this, you can try: atacontrol mode ata4 udma6 --- atacontrol mode ata6 udma6 --- Also, you might want to look at the length of the cables. According to the Ultra-ATA (UDMA) standards, an 80-conductor cable must be no longer than 30cm, or about 12". Cables of longer length begin to build up too much noise, even for the double-conductor design to combat. While Promise's BIOS and their own drivers (as seen on Windows) might tolerate these noise levels, I'm very sure ata(4) will not. Will -- Willie Viljoen Freelance IT Consultant 214 Paul Kruger Avenue, Universitas Bloemfontein 9321 South Africa +27 51 522 15 60 +27 51 522 44 36 (after hours) +27 82 404 03 27 (mobile) will@unfoldings.net To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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