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Re: BM-ide & I430VX



On Wed, 29 Jul 1998, Schlomo Schapiro wrote:

> * When the kernel loads and detects the triton chipset, during partition
> check there is an error about set_multmode failing.

Did I mention that you have to use the same geometry for Linux and
whatever else you have there and turn 'AUTO' off in the BIOS ?
 
> * hdparm -T gives a speed of 35 MB/s, I really can't get how since my
> interface isn't supposed to know UDMA and PIO4 is supposed to do only 16
> MB/s.

Tsk, tks. CPU to buffer perhaps, or is the drive cheating you ?
 
> * what are DMA modes 0,1 & 2 ? It seems that my interface knows DMA, just
> not UDMA/33 (especially since the kernel recognices my interface as
> Triton I/II with BM-DMA controllers. Unter W95 I also use the BM driver,
> or at least one that claims to be ...)

DMA is DMA. PIO is PIO. DMA and PIO fight with each other for best IO
performance on EIDE. 
 
> * my old HD (IBM-DCAA 3430) on the 2nd ide is VERY slow (only 2.5 MB/s
> with hdparm -t), while it was about 5 MB/s on the 1st ide. triton.c writes
> that the chipset has only one dma-pipeline for both ide and should do
> proper sharing between them.

No. Read the Intel data sheets for the Triton chipset's EIDE bridge. Only
IDE0 is on the PCI bus.
 
> Any comments, info etc. are very much appreciated since I really don't
> understand what is going on here.

Visit the computer/disk performance sites on the web and do some
background reading. The issues that you seek clarified are described in
detail there. You will also find setting hints for your particular
combination and some benchmarks (not necessarily for Linux).
 
> An other thing: I copied my old system to the new disk with cp -a (after
> booting from a floppy-based linux). it seems to work (I had no problem
> using X and to compile a kernel), but I just want to be sure that this is
> the right way. I can't use dd since Linux gets more space on the new disk.

cp -a is fine as long as you also used the other options as required
(links, device files, -mount etc). Beware of doing this with sub-mounted
volumes and partitions. There will be no error but a 4-disk system copied
like this can exceed the capacity of ANY disk used as target.
 
Peter