From owner-freebsd-stable Wed Apr 5 0:24:14 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from zibbi.mikom.csir.co.za (zibbi.mikom.csir.co.za [146.64.24.58]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9D8BB37BE03 for ; Wed, 5 Apr 2000 00:24:04 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jhay@zibbi.mikom.csir.co.za) Received: (from jhay@localhost) by zibbi.mikom.csir.co.za (8.9.3/8.9.3) id JAA92076; Wed, 5 Apr 2000 09:23:23 +0200 (SAT) (envelope-from jhay) From: John Hay Message-Id: <200004050723.JAA92076@zibbi.mikom.csir.co.za> Subject: Re: How stable is the ATA code? In-Reply-To: <20000405014201.C41981@Fedaykin.here> from "lioux@uol.com.br" at "Apr 5, 2000 01:42:01 am" To: lioux@uol.com.br Date: Wed, 5 Apr 2000 09:23:23 +0200 (SAT) Cc: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL54 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > I heard some rumors about some instability on the new ATA code combined with DMA mode. > Is this founded? Can I safely build the latest stable and have a peaceful sleep? From my experience the new ata driver isn't unstable. Where it works it generally works well. I have 2 machines where I have no problems with it. But like the rest of the PC world, there is no one true standard for things. So there are some chipsets or maybe versions of chipsets or maybe chipset and motherboard combinations where it has problems. In my case a no-name brand motherboard with a VIA 82C586 chipset. But these problems normally show up during instalation or just thereafter. If you didn't have problems during installation or just after that, you should be ok. > Disabling DMA is not acceptable. I am running stable not current. :-) Hehehe. I think you can only demand these things if you pay for the development of the driver. :-) Something that I would really like to see is a way to disable DMA from the boot loader or some other place where it could be done early enough so that the install floppy can work. Maybe make hw.atamodes settable from the boot loader? I don't know how easy it will be, because I think the other sysctls that can be set from there only set a value, but setting hw.atamodes actually calls a function and I don't know if that can be done from the boot loader. Maybe an option in sysinstall? John -- John Hay -- John.Hay@mikom.csir.co.za To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message