ULTRA66/DMA mode 4 in Linux?

PhiberOptik asks: "I recently got a BP6 board, with onboard ULTRA66 controllers and ran into a problem with my Red Hat 6.0 installation. It seems that Red Hat Linux will not support the controllers, which my main hard disks are hooked up to. So far as I know, no Linux distros exist with ULTRA66 support, and BeOS or Solaris 7 won't recognize them either. Are there any updates or distros which support this new technology?"

Comments

BeOS and Promise Controller(s)

[Anonymous Coward]

Incorrect sir, the BeOS does support both 33 and 66 mb/s Promise ultra ATA PCI add in cards.

No it doesn't -

[Anonymous Coward]

It uses the Highpoint controller.

ATA66 is backwards compatible

[Anonymous Coward]

I am using a Western Digital Expert 7200 rpm ATA66 drive on a standard 40 pin connector on one of my Windows boxes. Using the VIA Bus Mastering drivers I get 14 MB/s sequential reads, 7.3 MB/s real-world reads.

Combined with the 2 MB on-drive cache it really screams. It was worth the extra money to get the expert.

One of the things that has always amazed me about Linux is the file system caching. Workstations feel faster at the EIDE 16 MB speed than any Windows machine at 33 MB. I can only imagine how responsive it will be at 66 with the 2.4 kernel.

Re:Oye.

[ptomblin]

It did? What broke? I'm using 2.2.10ac12 with RedHat 6.0, and I haven't noticed anything not working regarding NFS mounting. (One of these days I'll figure out how to do locking, though)

Re:Oye.

[valen]

> Distro's do not support hardware; kernels support hardware. Therefore, if you are using a >2.2.10 kernel, you will have support for all of the different pieces of hardware it supports- no >matter what distro you use. You must remember, that some people would prefer to use the kernel that comes with their distro; it avoids problems - for instance, RedHat 6.0 came with a modified version of kNFSd, and nfstools, that broke if you upgraded to the stock 2.2.x kernels...

That wasn't the question

[hazelsct]

The author stated there's no BeOS support for the 66 controller in the Abit BP6 motherboard. Sure, there may be support for other chipsets/boards, but that wasn't the question.
"...the firmament sheweth his handiwork" (Ps. 19:1)
Firmament Science and Engineering

Re:That wasn't the question

[nufan]

The BP6 uses the promise controller

Re:Ultra DMA

[MrJones]

Thanks, this really help!
C-ya

Oye.

[DrZaius]

I just have to make one comment that has really been pissing me off as of late:

Distro's do not support hardware; kernels support hardware. Therefore, if you are using a 2.2.10 kernel, you will have support for all of the different pieces of hardware it supports- no matter what distro you use.

Now then, if there exists support for this particular controller, you will have to make a module for it and configure the card with something like "modprobe ". You may, heaven forbid, have to hack around with things, maybe use a floppy distro to build your kernel and so forth.

Also, you will have to embed the module into your kernel if you need to boot off of your drives on this controller since the modules will be on that particular drive. Thus, I suggest making your root partition on a different controller and having fun that way.

If there exists no support for this card, I guess you will have to wait for it, write the driver yourself, or return your board and do a little bit of research before making another purchase.

Re:Backwards Compatabliity

[the order of His Maj]

Use hdparm under Linux to benchmark your drives.
Linux compares fairly favorably against MS anything...

Ultra DMA

[EddyGL]

This is how I got UltraDMA 33 working on my machine, RedHat 6.0 with an Asus P5A MB.
First go download the source code for kernel 2.2.10 ( the patch wont apply very well to the RedHat kernel source ) check www.kernel.org for a mirror near you, get linux-2.2.10.tar.gz
cd to /usr/src and rm linux
then tar xvfz ~/linux-2.2.10.tar.gz
Now you'll need the patch for Ultra DMA, you can get this at http://www.linuxhelp.org/linuxide/
The current filename is 2.2.10.uniform-ide-6.20.eridanus.patch.gz . download this file and place it in /usr/src the gunzip it, and type this command
patch -p0 2.2.10.uniform-ide-6.20.eridanus.patch.gz
now you can cd linux do a make menuconfig or xconfig and configure as you require, the new IDE drivers will be under block devices.
make and install your kernel as normal :-).
With a Quantum Fireball 6.4 gig UDMA drive I get a hdparm -t /dev/hda speed of around 13 Mps

See the mini-Howto

[weave]

I have Ultra-DMA66 working on two systems with Promise controllers. There is no support in the 2.2.x kernels yet. You have to patch it in. Wasn't that tough at all.

See the mini-HOWTO entitled "Ultra-DMA mini-HOWTO" at your favorite LDP mirror.

Backwards Compatabliity

[Capt Dan]

Worse comes to worse, the Ultra66 drives will work on a normal 40 conductor IDE connection.

It's not as fast, but it gets the job done.

I learned this when the company I got my drive "forgot" to send the 80 conductor cable...

Aside: the Abit BP6 is unbelievable. I haven't even bothered to overclock my dual celerons yet.

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