sil-3112a and s-ata hd (asus a7n8x-delx)

[philip_sigke]

hi all,
i've got asus a7n8x-delx with sil-3112 and new seagate hd (st3120026as). after installation the hd was without dma and the result of that was very poor:

hdparm -T -t /dev/hde
/dev/hde:
Timing buffer-cache reads: 128 MB in 0.31 seconds =412.90 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 46.62 seconds = 1.37 MB/sec

but after hdparm -c1 -d1 /dev/hde i've got 'segmentation fault', in log i can see:

kernel: blk: queue c03cb340, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
kernel: hde: dma_timer_expiry: dma status == 0x21
kernel: hde: timeout waiting for DMA
kernel: hde: timeout waiting for DMA
kernel: hde: status error: status=0x58 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest }
kernel:
kernel: hde: drive not ready for command
kernel: hde: status timeout: status=0xd8 { Busy }
kernel:
kernel: ide2: reset phy, status=0x00000113, siimage_reset
kernel: hde: drive not ready for command
which continue in something like
journal-601, buffer write faild
kernel bug at prints.c:334!
invalid operand: and so on...(it actually show more on tty10 but it's not in log)

and i can just press 'reset' button ;-)

well, i'd be realy glad of suggestions of where to look and what to change to fix it.
thanks
philip

[leibold]

Several things:

Most importantly, you can't just enable DMA without specifying which DMA mode you want to use. Therefore the '-d 1' has to be always accompanied by an appropriate '-X mode' option. For UDMA the mode value to use is 64 + UDMA# (for older multiword DMA the constant is 32). Some people report success with hdparm -c1 -d1 -X69 for 32-bit UDMA mode 5, but I'm following a more conservative recommendation to avoid the SATA data corruption issues:

I'm reducing the transfer size to 15KB: echo "max_kb_per_request:15" > /proc/ide/hde/settings and use hdparm -d1 -X66 for UDMA mode 2. Since I don't know if -c1 or -c3 are save, I leave data transfers to be 16-bit.

If you want to see the maximum performance possible you could even try -X70 for UDMA mode 6, but I have no idea whether it will work.

[philip_sigke]

thanks for your answer!

Originally posted by leibold
Several things:

<Most importantly, you can't just enable DMA without specifying which DMA mode you want to use. Therefore the '-d 1' has to be always accompanied by an appropriate '-X mode' option. For UDMA the mode value to use is 64 + UDMA# (for older multiword DMA the constant is 32). >
you're right, i didn't write it correctly

< Some people report success with hdparm -c1 -d1 -X69 for 32-bit UDMA mode 5, but I'm following a more conservative recommendation to avoid the SATA data corruption issues:>
i know about that but i'm not the lucky one

<I'm reducing the transfer size to 15KB: echo "max_kb_per_request:15" > /proc/ide/hde/settings and use hdparm -d1 -X66 for UDMA mode 2. Since I don't know if -c1 or -c3 are save, I leave data transfers to be 16-bit.>
i found this today and i get just 22mb/sec :-( that would be better with pata hd
i've to admit that i'm quite unhappy with this mobo (actually with nvidia and they support for linux). i'd say that we all have to work and i've been spending alredy days just with this mobo. it's like ten years back with this kind of support

<If you want to see the maximum performance possible you could even try -X70 for UDMA mode 6, but I have no idea whether it will work.>
thank you for you help! really.
philip