2.4.2x kernel + ICH4 DMA errors

2.4.2x kernel + ICH4 DMA errors

[Bill Church]

I have a GigaByte GA-8IGX with an Intel 845G chipset.

Two new Hitachi 180GXP 80G DeskStar drives. Both set as master on two
ATA/100 channels (/dev/hda and /dev/hdc).

P4 2.53 Processor at 533FSB

2 Sticks of 512MB Corsair 333MHz DDR Ram

My issue:

Started out with Gentoo gs-sources Kernel (2.4.22_pre2-gss). When I
would boot with both drives connected, /dev/hdc would timeout and hang
when enumerating the partitions. If I disabled DMA, the system would
boot with out error. I disabled ACPI also, but that seemed to have no
effect.

I reverted to the vanilla-sources Kernel (2.4.22) with the same config
file and experienced the same results. However, /dev/hdc would time out
several times but no hang. Upon investigation I found that /dev/hda had
DMA enabled but /dev/hdc had DMA disabled. So with hdparm I enabled dma
on /dev/hdc and tried some operations on that drive. Just an fdisk
/dev/hdc produced timeouts. Checking hdparm again on /dev/hdc revealed
that it was again disabled.

I then tried setting both drives on the same channel, manually setting
master on one drive and slave on another. Same issues as before. I also
tried swapping cables and drive positions. Moving /dev/hdc drive to
/dev/hda and vice-versa.

So I decided to revert to 2.4.20, I experienced the same results as did
originally (time out on /dev/hdc to lockup).

I then decided to try 2.6.0-test4, same results...

I am using 80 conductor 40 pin ATA-100 cables. And I'm using the PIIXn
option under ATA/IDE/MFM/RLL support.

Thanks in advance...

-Bill
bill at bsius dot com