Re: Suggestions regarding a PCI-X card.
On Tue, 14 Feb 2012 17:13:34 -0800, Dan Serban wrote:
> On Tue, 14 Feb 2012 16:26:32 +0000 (UTC) Camaleón <noelamac@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Mmm, I don't know how reliable it can be that information :-?
>>
>> ("+" means the flag is enabled and "-" means it is disabled)
>>
>> Regardless lspci output, I would ensure the BIOS POST data displays the
>> right bus frequency for that specific PCI-X slot (remember that some
>> motherboards allow to configure the frequency to lower values for PCI
>> cards -usually "auto/PCI33/66/PCI-X/66/100/133MHz").
>>
> Thanks for the response, I have gone through the BIOS extensively and I
> have checked every setting. I made sure it's on the correct bus (Two
> PCI-X busses, one 133 max and the other 100 max) and upon boot there is
> zero output from the BIOS.
(...)
Some BIOS enable by default a "fast/quick boot" option that skips the
information to fasten the booting times and thus the POST screen is not
even displayed (or it comes that fast that is hardly readable).
You can check if such option is enabled and then turn it off, just this
time, to be able to read the screen, verify the PCI-X slot is operating
at its selected frequency and then you can disable the option again.
> It almost seems that the card becomes some sort of extension to the
> BIOS as there's no onboard int19h (or is it 10?) interrupt for a boot
> option. The interesting part is that each port and drive is detected
> within the motherboard BIOS itself. Allowing me to disable/enable
> specific ports and drives.
I also have a similar card (it's a zeroconf RAID card from adaptec)
attached to the supermicro servers and while there's no card information
presented at the POST screen, it is displayed the information for all of
the available PCI-X slots and general information about the system (ram,
hard disks, etc...).
> So I'm still stuck at square one, I have followed the instructions in
> the man page for lspci and have looked at the pci.h source file, but
> apart from telling me what the acronyms may stand for, there is no real
> further explanation on what the actual status of the card is. One
> status line is 66MHz+ and the other is 66MHz+ 133MHz+. I'm unsure.
Yup, I neither found more information about the meaning of these fields,
but if you do a quick search in Google for "Status: Cap+ 133MHz+" you'll
get zero results, which leads me to think this is not measuring what we
think it is measuring :-)
> I think my best bet is to subscribe to the linux-pci mailing list and
> try there, I hate not being sure that I'm using my hardware to its
> fullest potential.
I would also try with debian kernel mailing list. My guess is that kernel
gurus will be able to tell you what's this information all about.
Greetings,
--
Camaleón
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