SUMMARY: alpha DS10L and large IDE disk

hi all,

i upgraded the firmware to the latest version available - V7.3-1.
at the SRM console prompt the newly installed disk model is correctly 
listed by "show dev" but the OS will only see 128 GB from the whole 
~250Gb space available.

i searched further and found that the southbridge chip used in the DS10L 
is ALI M1543C A1. the official specification states that the integrated 
IDE controller uses the Ultra-33 specification (aka ATA/ATAPI-4, ATA4, 
Ultra ATA/33)

LBA addresses in ATA/ATAPI-4 are 28-bit (with each sector representing 
512 bytes), so disk size limit in LBA mode is:
2^28*512=137438953472 bytes
137438953472/(1024*1024*1024)=128Gb

having the above in mind i think the limitation comes from the hardware 
southbridge chip that implements the integrated IDE controller - this 
means that it is not worth installing IDE disks larger than 130Gb in a 
DS10L machine.


thanks to Graham Allan for his mail - pointing that he tested with 
firmware version 7.2-1 and that the limitation is probably not in the 
firmware itself.


Ali M1543C A1 used in AlphaServer DS10L:
http://alpha-supernova.dev.filibeto.org/hardware/alphaserver/ds10l/ali-m1543c/ali-m1543c-ds10l.png

Acer Laboratories Inc. Aladdin M1543C Southbridge datasheet
http://alpha-supernova.dev.filibeto.org/hardware/alphaserver/ds10l/ali-m1543c/SB_1543C.pdf

ATA/ATAPI-4 Working Draft:
http://alpha-supernova.dev.filibeto.org/hardware/alphaserver/ds10l/ali-m1543c/d1153r18-ATA-ATAPI-4.pdf


greetings,

Stoyan Angelov


my original question was:
> hi all,
> 
> i have a spare 250Gb IDE disk that i want to install in my aplha DS10L.
> i looked in the mailing list archives and found a thread (from 2003) 
> mentioning that the os will only see 130Gb from a similarly sized drive.
> 
> is there any chance that the drive will work with the machine updated to 
> the newest firmware available or there is a limitation because of the 
> older IDE interface used ?
> 
> currently i am running firmware version 7.2-1 but i could easily upgrade 
> to 7.3 if this will help. the os is 5.1B with PK6.
>