My ide1 is back!!!

[Kerry Hoath]

How long has this setup worked for?
Dma is most probably beeing enabled by default. If this
setup has been stable; and stable for
some time and the cdrom has been used for periods
of time (say over 5 minutes
or more) then the hardware supports dma.
Some computer people will  try to tell you to disable DMA
in order to "fix" the problem. If the
setup was working for a while; then DMA is unlikely to
be the problem but it is considered sacrificial
goat blood and usually means the person is 
completely stumped and is trying things to make the problem go away.
Disabling dma on a cdrw isn't a good idea especially if you are
burning at speeds >12x.
On my Duron 750 768mb ram with 7200 rpm quantum drive;
disabling DMA on the writer results in the burnproof beeing activated
since I get a lot of buffer underruns due to the fact that the writer
buffer is emptying constantly.
Enabling dma allows the writer to burn easily and the fifo on cdrecord
only empties to 90% of capacity which is safe
and expected.
Disabling DMA can greatly increase the cpu over head of using certain IDE
devices and with burners this can result in buffer underruns.
If the setup was stable; and even if disabling DMA fixes the problem;
watch out because you might have just pushed
the problem under the rug.
If this kernel was in use for a while and was stable; then
you could be dealing with hardware failure if nothing
else has changed; although the upgrade to SID
makes the diagnois tricky. Too often
hardware failure can and does cause these problems;
under Windows the DMA just g ets disabled silently Linux tells
you it happens.

Regards, Kerry.
On Tue, May 28, 2002 at 03:36:07PM -0500, Cheryl Homiak wrote:
> Yep, I still have a problem.
> It happened again, as I was going into dosemu.
> So I guess this will have to be looked at after all.
> Just called my computer person. I suspect it's either the cdrom (hdd) or
> something with the ide itself, as hdc functions in other environments
> (zipspeak, DOS, using a debian rescue disk), also still opens and closes and
> makes sounds like it's loading when I boot.
> the person working on my computer wants to know whether DMA is being used or
> trying to be used and wants me to try not using it; this would be in my kernel
> compile, wouldn't it?
> Thanks.
> 
> 
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-- 
Kerry Hoath:  kerry at gotss.net kerry at gotss.eu.org or  kerry at gotss.spice.net.au
ICQ: 8226547 msn: kerry at gotss.net Yahoo: kerryhoath at yahoo.com.au