Re: Debian support for Ultra ATA controller cards
On Jul 6, Curtis L. Daugaard wrote
> Erik Andersen wrote:
> >
> > On Jul 3, Curtis L. Daugaard wrote
> > > I will confess I joined this list to try to find an answer to a question
> > > that I've been unable to gain any light on.
> > >
> > > I have been unable to find out whether drivers are available or under
> > > development for this new generation of IDE cards. I have a Promise
> > > Ultra33 and Debian 1.3 will not recognize the drives on the card during
> > > installation.
> > >
> > > Can anyone provide information?
> > >
> > > Thanks.
> > >
> > > --
> > >
> > > C.L. Daugaard
> > > cdaugaard@judson-il.edu
> >
> > It just so happins that I maintain the Linux IDE/ATAPI cdrom driver. I
> > chat with Mark Lord, "The Linux IDE guy", fairly often. He has somebody
> > looking into support for the new Ultra DMA/33 IDE stuff which is supported
> > by the Intel TX and the VIA VP2 chipsets, among others. If you just want
> > to drive a regular IDE or ATAPI device with one of these, you are just fine.
> > I, for instance, have a TX chipset motherboard running a couple of old IDE
> > drives. To support the new Ultra DMA/33 stuff and get anything like the
> > claimed 33 MB/s, we need to add error handling for CRC transfer errors,
> > and probably also need code to set the drive and chipset into Ultra mode.
> > This stuff is in the making, but not done and ready for public consumption.
> > If you want more, ask Mark. His email address is in the Linux maintainers
> > list (right before my name [GRIN] ).
> >
> > -Erik
> >
>
> Thank you for the information. I had no doubt that the Debian
> developers would quickly work to support this new IDE mode, but it was
> nice to get some sense of what was happening.
>
> Based on your response, however, it seems there are two issues: the
> Ultra ATA mode per se and the Promise Ultra33 controller card itself. I
> say this because as you note, Linux will recognize older IDE/EIDE drives
> attached to VX motherboards (with the *onboard* Ultra ATA controller),
> but it will does not see such a drive attached to the Promise card, at
> least not for me.
>
> Thanks again,
>
> --
>
> C.L. Daugaard
> cdaugaard@judson-il.edu
> ______________________________________________
Just to be sure you clearly understand the way Debian works, Debian
developers repackage the work of other people into a useful packaging
format. Debian developers do not (while wearing their Debian developer
hats) hack the Linux kernel to add support for new stuff. Before they
do that, they hang up ther Debian hat, and put on their kernel hacker hats.
There are a number of people, like me, who happen to help out with both. The
question you asked was _really_ better suited to the linux-kernel mailing
list.
It does appear that if your Promise card will not run old, regular IDE
drives under Linux that there is a problem. Could you find out what chipset
this card is running? Does this card have its own BIOS chip on it?
-Erik
--
Erik B. Andersen Web: http://www.inconnect.com/~andersen/
email: andersee@debian.org
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