relocation (ATA disk problem in G3 B&W)

[Aurelio Bay]

Thanks Tim,

BTW: sorry for the stupid "Subject" I used. Wrong cut and paste.


> >Hi,
> >
> >I have installed a new ATA disk Seagate ST340016A on a G3 B&W.
> >I experienced R/W errors.
> 
> You probably have the Revision 1 motherboard.  Its IDE controller is 
> buggy and will have problems if you install two drives; did you leave 
> the original drive installed?
No. Indeed there is no room to install a slave drive. 
The problem is due to the ultra DMA mode.

> 
> The Rev 1 B&W G3 board can also have problems with single drives if 
> the drive is one of the models it doesn't like to talk to.  I've 
> never heard of somebody using that particular Seagate before, so it 
> might be an example.
> 
> >Following the instructions from FWB,
> >I reconfigured from UltraDMA2 to Multiword DMA2 using HDT.
> 
> That will only affect MacOS.  Linux does not use MacOS disk drivers like
> FWB's.
Yes. This was to show that the machine works (on MacOS) when
the DMA mode is changed.  

> 
> >Then I installed YD 2.3 on a free portion of the same disk.
> >During boot, I get the following msgs:
> 
> (lots of CRC errors)
> 
> >Then the system comes up without any problmes (apparently).
> 
> I wouldn't trust it.  :)
> 
> >Any suggestion on how to reconfigure the system to get a correct
> >behaviour ?
> 
> You need to either get down to a single drive on the UDMA33 
> controller (in which case you can do UDMA if your drive is one of 
> those compatible with the B&W Rev 1 board), or force multiword DMA 
> mode 2 like you tried to do.
> 
> To force it on Linux, you need to do two things.  First, you need to 
> keep the Linux kernel from autotuning IDE speeds.  You can do this by 
> editing /etc/yaboot.conf, then running ybin to reinstall the boot 
> loader.  For each kernel image listed, you need to have an 'append' 
> line as follows:
> 
> image=/boot/vmlinux
>          label=linux
>          root=/dev/hda11
>          append="hda=noautotune hdb=noautotune"
> 
> If there's already an append= line, just add the noautotune 
> statements to what's there already.
> 
> After you do that and run ybin to install the boot loader, your 
> system will boot with PIO on hda and hdb.  Very slow.  To allow the 
> boot scripts to enable multiword DMA mode 2, edit 
> /etc/sysconfig/harddisks.  At the top, uncomment the line:
> 
> # USE_DMA=1
> 
> Now, go to the bottom of the file, and change
> 
> EXTRA_PARAMS=
> 
> to
> 
> EXTRA_PARAMS=-X34
> 
> (-X34 is MWDMA2 -- see the hdparm man page for all the possible 
> values you can put here)
> -- 
> 
Thanks, I'll try that.

Cheers,
 
     				Aurelio