Re: <Q> Disk Controller Problem(Ultra DMA mode of HDD) of SiS 5571 chipset ???
- From: Jason Bourne <j_bourne_treadstone@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2006 15:10:06 -0400
Susan wrote:
Hey jpd[snip]
I want to know that Disk Controller Problem(Ultra DMA - UDMA) of SiS
5571 chipset, NOT USB Problem. In general, SiS5571 chipset has Disk
Controller Problem related to Ultra DMA mode in the Unix-like OS, such
as *BSDs, etc.
In urls you suggest, ''SiS 5571'' does not exist in ''DISK CONTROLLER''
category.
Well, the problem with Ultra DMA mode is the controller simply does not
support it. It does support bus mastering. Has nothing to do with any OS.
However, a quick look at man ata declares that any unsupported chipset will
still come up in PIO mode, which is the best you can expect anyway. A
snippet of the ata man page:
[Unknown ATA chipsets are supported in PIO modes, and if the standard bus-
master DMA registers are present and contain valid setup, DMA is also
enabled, although the max mode is limited to UDMA33, as it is not known
what the chipset can do and how to program it.]
Whether or not it will work you'll have to try it and see. If the BIOS
doesn't support booting from the CDROM you'll have to use a boot floppy.
Either FreeBSD or NetBSD will be a choice, and if choosing FreeBSD you may
want to consider 4.11 even though it is getting rather old at this point.
But it not being listed in the HCL is a strong indication it simply may not
work at all. IIRC the PR's I recall had more to do with USB support; if you
don't absolutely need USB turn it off.
As far as the 386BSD goes - that is ancient history which predates
everything, including the SiS 5571 as well as the Pentium processor and
even 4.4BSD from which the modern day BSDs are derived. You should just
forget completely about that concept, as it is somehow a misconception on
your part that it may be of any use to you. Even the document you asked
about has no real bearing today.
If you wish to read more about 386BSD a quick Google will turn up stuff to
read. However none of it has any relevance to your desire to use the
machine in question. With enough RAM you'd be surprised by what the machine
can actually be used for. My first firewall/NAT/gateway/server box was a
Pentium 75 overclocked to 100MHz with 64MB RAM. I used that for years
before moving my 500MHz K6-2 128MB RAM into that position. Of course the
K6-2 is tremendously better! If the ATA driver refuses to see the chipset
controller you can get a cheap add-in controller like an old used Promise
Ultra100 which has been supported since FreeBSD 4.3. In order to use this
approach you will need to check your BIOS setup to see if it gives the
option to change the boot [order] from something like "normal" to "scsi".
This support will be necessary to initialize and boot from the add-in
controller. I'll say again: As far as the seeming fixation with 386BSD is
concerned it is NOT relevant to trying to get usage from this box.
-Jason
.
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