UDMA disks

[George Bonser <grep@shorelink.com>]

I think I have finally discovered how to clear the system of these types
of errors:

Nov 21 03:31:01 calvin kernel: hdc: irq timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy } 
Nov 21 03:31:04 calvin kernel: ide1: reset: success 

I have been getting tons of these ever since I installed a UDMA drive in
this machine. I have had the same exact problems with UDMA drives on other
machines with other motherboards.

I had ignored the hard drive setup in the BIOS because I knew Linux does
not use the BIOS for disk access. Though this is true, the BIOS may
require certain settings to properly initialize the IDE controller at
system reset and startup time. 

My particular system here is an MTech mobo with Award BIOS. Just for
grins, I set the BIOS setup for each drive from "Normal" to "LBA". All of
my errors seem, so far (knock on head), to have gone away! I know that
this option is not available on all BIOS with all motherboards but if you
have the option, you might give it a try and see if it clears your problem
too.


George Bonser

The Linux "We're never going out of business" sale at an FTP site near you!