[Soekris] FreeBSD CF DMA problem

[Jeff Quast]

Hi John,

On 8/27/06, John Murphy <sub02 at freeode.co.uk> wrote:
> My net4801 is into its 3rd year running FreeBSD on a standard HD 24/7.
> Can't expect it to last forever though.  So I'm trying to get a CF
> working without much luck so far.  It's a Kingston 1GB 50x 'elite pro'

I had a little trouble myself upgrading to a 1gb cf from a 256mb cf in
openbsd. The logical and physical C/H/S were equal on the 256
kingston. The logical is vastly different on the 1gb ...horay for
1980's compatibility in the x86 architecture :(

> Pri Sla  CF300  (LBA Xlt 999-32-63  1007 Mbyte)
> [...]
> ad1: 983MB <CF300 Ver1.27> at ata0-slave UDMA33
> ad1: TIMEOUT - READ_DMA retrying (1 retry left) LBA=0
> ad1: TIMEOUT - READ_DMA retrying (0 retries left) LBA=0
> ad1: FAILURE - READ_DMA timed out LBA=0
> ad1: TIMEOUT - READ_DMA retrying (1 retry left) LBA=1
> ad1: TIMEOUT - READ_DMA retrying (0 retries left) LBA=1
> ad1: FAILURE - READ_DMA timed out LBA=1
> ad1: TIMEOUT - READ_DMA retrying (1 retry left) LBA=0
> ad1: TIMEOUT - READ_DMA retrying (0 retries left) LBA=0
> ad1: FAILURE - READ_DMA timed out LBA=0
>
> That's with hw.ata.ata_dma="0" in /boot/loader.conf
> and sysctl hw.ata.ata_dma shows hw.ata.ata_dma: 0
>
> Is there anything else I can try to force a PIO mode?

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=atacontrol&sektion=8&apropos=0&manpath=FreeBSD+6.0-RELEASE

Try using:

atacontrol mode ad1 PIO4

and 3, 2, 1...

For others reading, openbsd and netbsd have similar userland apps
named 'atactl'. This is akin to the software 'hdparm' commonly used in
linux, without the bells and whistles. Just a simple direct interface
to the kernel ata/ide stuff. Theres a similar scsi(8), but vastly more
difficult to use...

> I'm still using comBIOS ver. 1.24 but I didn't see anything in
> the changelog to indicate that upgrading would help.

Its not too much trouble to upgrade comBIOS. Its always good to make
everything current before identifying a problem with combios.

> (FreeBSD-6.0 by the way.  6.1 will be going on the CF hopefully)

or freebsd

I think atacontrol will solve your issue. Let us know!