[Soekris] NET4501 CF/IDE Controller Problem

[T Sharpe]

I've had a NET4501, comBIOS ver 1.23, with a 1GB
IBM/Toshiba Microdrive, running Debian Linux 3.0
(kernel 2.4.19) for about 2 years.  The system is
stable, except for getting the following log entry:

kernel: hda: irq timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy }
kernel: ide0: unexpected interrupt, status=0x80,
count=7
kernel: ide0: reset: success

In the past, after the system had run for months
without rebooting, I'd get long strings of these,
followed by messages of more severity and eventually
leading to things getting bad enough that the Unix
daemon I wrote would let the hardware watchdog timer
reboot the system, clearing the problem.  This would
all happen over the course of 15-40 minutes.  This
last happened after the system had been up for 374
days with no problems.

Since the last reboot, I'm seeing single "sets" of
these log messages several times per day.  The
messages indicate to me that the kermel is losing the
ability to talk to the drive and is reseting the IDE
interface to fix it.

Since there are no IDE cables to be bad, I must assume
the problem is either the Microdrive, the NET4501
interfacing hardwar, or the comBIOS.  I've not seen
anything like this mentioned in the soekris-tech
archives nor in the comBIOS changelogs.

Any ideas on how to tell what the problem is, short of
giving up and replacing parts until the problem goes
away?

Thanks!

Tim Sharpe
beaststwo at yahoo.com

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