ABIT BP6 & UDMA-66: Support for Debian Linux
Hi, everyone!
My system is Abit BP6 w/Dual Celeron 500MHz CPUs & 128MB PC-100 SDRAM on
board. One 18GB IBM UDMA-66 7200rpm HDD (master) & One 20GB IBM UDMA-66
7200rpm HDD (Slave) connected to the first ATA-66 channel.
I frist installed the Gentus Linux (Abit's RedHat-based distribution)
from the CD come with the main board, and both SMP and UDMA-66
functioned at after the first boot. (It's almost a painless
installation - very smooth indeed.) Execute "hdparm -t /dev/hde6" gave
a benchmark of something like 20MB per sec (very impressive! I have
another system running dual PIII-600 Coppermine with two 9GB SCSI HDD
which gave a figure something like 18MB/sec)
Then, I changed my mind to remove Gentus and install Debian Potato. By
choosing installation from floppies, I downloaded all the required image
including the UDMA-66 patch from
ftp://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/dists/potato/main/disks-i386/2.2.15-2000-06-07/images-1.44/udma66/
Installation was fine (the rescue disk could detect the ATA-66 HDD - no
need to swop them to ATA-33 channel during installation). SMP was not
ready yet. Kernel had to be recompiled. No Problem!
However, when I did "hdparm -t /dev/hde6" & "hdparm -t /dev/hdf1", this
time it gave a figure between 2 to 3 MB per sec. Even slower than a
ATA-33 5400rpm HDD in a single PII-266 64MB RAM system.
Q.1/ Can anyone explain to me this phenomenon?
Q.2/ How to optimize my system performance (esp the UDMA-66 HDD) with
Debian Linux?
Many thanks for your help!
Wilson
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