Date: Tue, 14 Dec 1999 07:40:37 +0800 From: Peter Wemm <peter@netplex.com.au> To: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> Cc: Mike Smith <msmith@FreeBSD.ORG>, Greg Childers <gchil0@pop.uky.edu>, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@critter.freebsd.dk>, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: HEADSUP: wd driver will be retired! Message-ID: <19991213234037.36B341CA0@overcee.netplex.com.au> In-Reply-To: Message from Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> of "Sat, 11 Dec 1999 13:03:39 CST." <19991211130339.N760@mojave.worldwide.lemis.com>
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Greg Lehey wrote: > On Friday, 10 December 1999 at 23:32:27 -0800, Mike Smith wrote: > > [missing attribution to Greg Childers <gchil0@pop.uky.edu>] > >> Except that ATA currently does not work on my system. So I assume I'm not > >> the only one. > > > > Actually, to quote from your original message: > > > >> According to technical product summary, the primary IDE interface, on > >> which both my drives reside, is a PCTech RZ1000 on the PCI local bus. > > > > Nobody in their right mind uses the RZ1000 chipset for IDE. It's one of > > the classic "broken" parts (along with several of the CMD64x family) that > > you just don't use. > > > > You're probably not the only one out there with one of these controllers, > > but there aren't anywhere near that many of them still circulating after > > the massive problems that were encountered with that part _many_ years > > ago. > > OK, and I think I can agree that we don't need to carry support for > this chip over into ata. > > But what does Greg do? He has this hardware. He can do one of four > things: > > 1. Throw it away and get something better. > 2. Carry on running 3.X forever. > 3. Get pissed off with FreeBSD and go elsewhere. > 4. Use the wd driver which has been left in 4.x for exactly this kind > of problem. > > Why make life difficult for him? The RZ1000 is *dangerous*! We are doing no favours by making it run.. :-/ IMHO It is better to loose the user by not playing ball than to corrupt their data or run unreliably and make them hate us for it. http://www.faqs.org/faqs/pc-hardware-faq/enhanced-IDE/part1/ ==== 3.3. Are those rumors about buggy interfaces true? Very true, unfortunately. This FAQ doesn't really deal with specific interfaces, but two very popular interface chips have been shown to contain bugs too serious to ignore: o the CMD640x, a dual-channel PCI to EIDE interface used on many mainboards (Intel!) and interface boards, has a number of dangerous bugs you need to be aware of. o The PC-Tech RZ-1000, used on AT&T, Dell, Gateway and Intel boards, also has two data-corrupting bugs. See also <http://www.intel.com/procs/support/rz1000/index.htm>. In both cases, the corruption occurs only in specific software environments and is very subtle; you can go on working for months without suspecting anything more than buggy software. The damage can be immense. For all the details, look at Roedy Green's (roedy@bix.com) "PCI EIDE controller flaws" FAQ included with his EIDE test <ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/diskutil/eidete19.zip>; program which will test your system for the bugs. BE WARNED that you're playing Russian roulette with your data if you continue working on an affected machine without taking notice of this problem. ==== Have a look at the intel information. It explains about having to mask interrupts during a data transfer, and how dangerous mixing floppy and IDE access is with that chip. Cheers, -Peter To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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