Re: IDE drives under debian-alpha
On Tue, May 11, 1999 at 08:27:37AM -0400, Peter S Galbraith wrote:
> Without making this too lengthy, I'm wondering whether I can
> enable the second IDE channel and attach one or two cheap
> EIDE (UDMA/33) drives. Digital simply tells me that no IDE
> peripherals are "supported" (the usual scenario) BUT perhaps
> the controller (I believe a DEC chip on the riser card) is
> not as crippled as they make it out to be. I assume that there
> are alpha based "PC's" out there which use IDE drives. Do
> you know whether there are any problems accessing these drives
> in linux under /dev/hdaX, /dev/hdbX,...?
No problem. I didn't have to "enable" anything, it just worked. Newer
kernels even contain specific support for the IDE chip used in the Miata (a
CMD646), but it also works without. There's nothing special to IDE support
on Linux/Alpha:
CMD646: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev 20
CMD646: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
hdb: TOSHIBA CD-ROM XM-5702B, ATAPI CDROM drive
hdc: Maxtor 71260 AT, ATA DISK drive
hdd: probing with STATUS(0x00) instead of ALTSTATUS(0x50)
hdd: probing with STATUS(0x00) instead of ALTSTATUS(0x50)
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hdc: Maxtor 71260 AT, 1204MB w/256kB Cache, CHS=2448/16/63
hdb: ATAPI 12X CD-ROM drive, 256kB Cache
The only drawback is that it's quite slow (1500kb/sec @ 6.3% CPU bonnie block
write performane, and 1200kb/sec @ 23.8% CPU for block reading).
> Another logistical question pertains to alpha/linux (or rather
> XFree86) not having support for Powerstorm graphics cards. I
> planned to use a Matrox Millenium II BUT then I don't think
> there is any support in dec unix for it! Aside from this
> annoyance, I'm wondering whether the AlphaBIOS console (I
> think using AlphaBIOS rather than SRM makes life easier as
> far as booting and PCI devices go) will even appear if the
> monitor is attached to a Matrox card?
No prob, at least when the Millennium is the only card in the machine. I
never had a PowerStorm Card (nor Digital Unix for that matter) so I can't
say more though...
--
Andreas Trottmann <andreas.trottmann@werft22.com>
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