From: Declan Moriarty (declan.moriarty at domain ntlworld.ie)
Date: Fri 19 Apr 2002 - 13:52:22 IST
Was it James Cooper who wrote on Friday 19 April 2002 11:38:
> When my system boots up i get a few 'hda irq timeout' followed by
> a 'reset success' message. I also notice a high-pitched noise coming
> from the machine (ie not the speakers) just before i get the timeout
> message. Is the disk fit for the knackers yard, or is there some
> misconfiguration responsible?
>
Probably a cheapo disk, lousy chipset or some such. Nothing's scrap, unless
this has started real sudden, you haven't built a kernel, and you know you
didn't have it before.
What's going on is that the kernel is negotiationg poorly with the default
DMA option, and dropping back to another mode (e.g. PIO 4). Look in your
kernel config for the "Use dma by default" option. I'll bet it's set. There
is a workaround now that mentions those errors and says "If you get these
errors, select this option".
Some disks (e.g. Seagate ST 343xx) seem to use a nonstandard lingo or
protocol and the kernel just doesn't want to know. You can amuse yourself
with hdparm fiddling with it. You are not likely to fix the problem, but you
can kill the error messages.
-- Regards, Declan Moriarty Applied Researches - Ireland's Foremost Electronic Hardware Genius A Slightly Serious(TM) Company Experience is like a comb, that Life gives you - AFTER all your hair has fallen out!
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