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Date:      Mon, 10 Feb 2003 10:48:02 -0500
From:      Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com>
To:        Jason Andresen <jandrese@mitre.org>
Cc:        Phil Reynolds <phil@tinsleyviaduct.com>, freebsd-stable@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: PCI oddity
Message-ID:  <3E47C9B2.70809@potentialtech.com>
References:  <3E47BD31.8020604@mitre.org> <20030210145831.GA17756@tinsleyviaduct.com> <3E47C3D5.6000904@mitre.org>

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Jason Andresen wrote:
> Phil Reynolds wrote:
> 
>> On Mon, Feb 10, 2003 at 09:54:41AM -0500, Jason Andresen wrote:
>>
>>> Hello,
>>>     I have an Abit BX6-II motherboard with 5 PCI slots.  Whenever
>>> I try to populate both of the bottom two slots, FreeBSD crash dumps
>>> on boot.  I have tried this with a variety of cards over the years,
>>> but I always have the same results.
>>>
>>> Is this a FreeBSD problem, a motherboard problem, or a problem with the
>>> PCI cards?
>>
>> A motherboard issue. It is normal for some slots to share bus 
>> mastering or
>> IRQs. RTFM, it tells you which ones do, and also which ones share with 
>> on-board
>> kit.
> 
> My manual doesn't tell me squat about the interrupts on the board.  My 
> guess what that the two slots share an IRQ, because PCI only has IIRC 4 
> IRQ lines to go around.  That's why I was worried it might be an issue 
> with FreeBSD being unable to support shared cards.

In my experience, that's how it's set up.  Can guarantee it with your board,
but that's typical.

> It is the bottom two PCI slots that give me problems though (one of 
> which is the shared PCI/ISA slot, but that doesn't seem to matter).

No, but usually those last two slots share an interrupt.

>>> Recently I realized that I really need 6 PCI cards in the box (5 ATA 
>>> controllers and 1 NIC).  Right now it's semi-crippled with just the 4 
>>> cards (3 ATA controllers with some drives on slaves and 1 NIC), and I 
>>> was thinking about upgrading to a Tyan Trinity 400.  Will I not be 
>>> able to populate this board beyond 4 cards?
>>
>> It all depends on what is happy to share interrupts etc.
> 
> Are there certain cards that are known to be good about sharing interrupts?

Oh yeah.  Make sure the card is designed to share interrupts or it won't
work worth a hoot.  Can't give you a list of what does and doesn't work
off the top of my head ... I know most Intel NICs share interrupts OK.

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com


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