This one time, at band camp, Colonelkorn said: > So my question is which problem do I tackle? The NIC not working in 2.2 > idepci or the VIA southbridge in 2.4? I'd really appreciate any help > the list can offer. I'd say stay with the newer kernel, if it's detecting the NIC for you - I would roll your own kernel to deal with the disk slowdown. There's a couple options in the kernel config for dealing with DMA, and they seem to do the trick. I'm using a VIA chipset board with a Maxtor drive here, no hdparm tweakig, and I get: gashuffer:# hdparm -t -T /dev/hda /dev/hda: Timing buffer-cache reads: 128 MB in 0.76 seconds =168.42 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 1.59 seconds = 40.25 MB/sec The relevant options are: CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEDMA_PCI=y CONFIG_IDEDMA_PCI_AUTO=y CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEDMA=y CONFIG_BLK_DEV_ADMA=y CONFIG_IDEDMA_AUTO=y in your kernel config. If you're not familiar with rolling your own kernel, there are a number of good howto's online, and debian uses kernel-package for it - there are also a number of good howto's available. I hear that takes all the work out of it, but I haven't converted to that yet. HTH, Steve -- He that bringeth a present, findeth the door open. -- Scottish proverb.
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