Long-standing problem with the PDC20262 driver

[Malcolm Mallardi <magamo@ranka.2y.net>]

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Heyla folks.  I've been plagued by a problem with the Promise IDE 
Controller driver since before 2.4.x, and I'm still being plagued by it 

(It's been a problem with every 2.4.x release I've tried, which is all of 
them since 2.4.1)

Basically, on my machine, the kernel will freeze on bootup if I have the 
PDC 202xx driver enabled at all, but will run normally if I just use the 
generic IDE drivers with DMA support.

Here's my bootup messages when I get the problem, starting with where it 
first detects my motherboard's IDE controller.

PIIX4: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev 39
PIIX4: chipset revision 1
PIIX4: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
    ide1: BM-DMA at 0x1488-0x148f, BIOS settings: hdc: DMA, hdd: DMA
PDC20262: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev 78
PCI: Found IRQ 5 for device 00:0f.0
PDC20262: chipset revision 1
PDC20262: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
PDC20262: (U)DMA Burst Bit ENABLED Primary PCI Mode Secondary PCI Mode
    ide2: BM-DMA at 0x1400-0x1407, BIOS settings: hde: pio, hdf: pio
    ide3: BM-DMA at 0x1408-0x140f, BIOS settings: hdg: DMA, hdh: pio
hdc: HITACHI DVD-ROM GD-5000, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdd: _NEC NR-7700A, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hde: QUANTUM FIREBALLP KX27.3, ATA DISK drive
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
ide2 at 0x14a8-0x14af,0x149e on irq 5

At this point it stops and hangs.

without the PDC202xx driver enabled in the kernel, things look a little 
more like this; almost identical, but missing the (U)DMA Burst Bit line.

PIIX4: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev 39
PIIX4: chipset revision 1
PIIX4: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
    ide1: BM-DMA at 0x1488-0x148f, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:DMA
PDC20262: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev 78
PCI: Found IRQ 5 for device 00:0f.0
PDC20262: chipset revision 1
PDC20262: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
    ide2: BM-DMA at 0x1400-0x1407, BIOS settings: hde:pio, hdf:pio
    ide3: BM-DMA at 0x1408-0x140f, BIOS settings: hdg:DMA, hdh:pio
hdc: HITACHI DVD-ROM GD-5000, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdd: _NEC NR-7700A, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hde: QUANTUM FIREBALLP KX27.3, ATA DISK drive
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
ide2 at 0x14a8-0x14af,0x149e on irq 5
hde: 53550304 sectors (27418 MB) w/418KiB Cache, CHS=53125/16/63
Partition check:
 hde: [PTBL] [3333/255/63] hde1 hde2 hde3

... And continues with normal startup.

I seem to recall when I once looked at the promise driver that there was 
what appeared to be some form of exclusion list which included several 
models of Quantum FireballP harddrives, but mine was not on the list.

I suspected then (I think that was sometime around 2.4.9) that if I added 
the drive to that list that it would work, but I never tried it, due to 
the fact that I don't know C, and was afraid of breaking it more. :)

I looked in the pdc202xx.c driver today and noticed that the list has 
disappeared, but noticed that there were still references to it in the 
code, I'm assuming that it was moved to a header somewhere.

I may be barking up to completely wrong tree... Any ideas?

--
Malcolm D. Mallardi - Dark Freak At Large
"Captain, we are receiving two-hundred eighty-five THOUSAND hails."
AOL: Nuark  UIN: 11084092 Y!: Magamo Jabber: Nuark@jabber.com
http://ranka.2y.net/~magamo/index.htm

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