Re: NB3 ALi1543C IDE DMA transfer error

On Sat, 11 Feb 2006 20:37:51 +0900, "Toru Nishimura" wrote:
> I picked out dusty CATS board and managed to be successful in booting
> current kernel.  I found the followings difficulties;
> 
> - Cyclone1.2 bootloader can not TFTP boot neither of 2.1 nor 3.0
> aout-INSTALL image.  Kernel size looks to exceed the functional limit.
> - After upgrading the Cyclone1.3, NB3 aout-INSTALL is useful enough
> to proceed sysinst.  Booting netbsd-GENERIC is still not possible.  I needed
> to build trim-down kernel (3+MB).
> 

I've switched to the ABLE firmware these days.  I haven't seen any size 
problems with that, even when tftp booting - plus you can now boot the ELF 
kernels directly.

> The issue I'm now experiencing ALi 1543C IDE.  The transfer mode is
> always downgraded into PIO4.  I remember that 1.6.2 kernel better
> handled the IDE mode.  Does anyone out there have the same symptom
> and hopefully have the solution?

I see my disk being downgraded from UDMA-2 to UDMA-1 (but it normally 
doesn't go further than that).  There's something very dodgy with the PCI 
timing going on somewhere (but it might well be in the hardware).  I've 
had similar problems with cd-rom drives (and especially with cd-rw drives).

I also suspect that this may also be responsible for some of the other 
hacks that I have to use (to fix the mii probing in the tulip ethernet 
card, and to fix the keyboard delay so that it works correctly once in 
multi-user mode).

R