Try putting the card on the first controller and turning off the second
controller.
Johan
On 12/1/05, Martmn Coco <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Nick,
>
> First of all, thanks for all your input!
>
> My comments below:
>
> Nick Holland escribis:
> > Martmn Coco wrote:
> >
> >>Hi there,
> >>
> >>We are beginning to do some tests with Compact Flash IDE adapters and
> >>OpenBSD 3.8.
> >>
> >>We installed the OpenBSD 3.8 using a SanDisk 1.0GB CompactFlash on a
> >>Pentium 4 (dmesg at the end of this message). The installation finished
> >>flawlessly. But when booting, it seems to take ages to boot. The last
> >>time we checked, it took about 55 minutes for it to finish booting. Once
> >>it has booted, all the speed issues seem to disappear.
> >
> >
> > whoa.
> > Flash isn't as fast as disk...but..not 55 minutes!
> >
> > Where is it spending its time?
> >
> >
> >>We went through the BIOS to find anything related to PIO or DMA, but
> >>found nothing suitable.
> >
> >
> > Nah. I run OpenBSD on lots of machines without DMA, boot time is hardly
> > any different.
> >
> >
> >>We tried the very same card with a VIA Chipset and it worked like a
> >>charm, we couldn't tell the difference from booting from a normal HD.
> >
> >
> > ok, good media, good install. Good test. :)
> >
> >
> >>Any input on this will be greatly appreciated :)
> >>
> >>Thanks,
> >>Martmn.
> >>
> >>I attach the dmesg of the machine that seems to be having problems when
> >>booting:
> >>
> >>OpenBSD 3.8 (GENERIC) #138: Sat Sep 10 15:41:37 MDT 2005
> >> [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/GENERIC
> >>cpu0: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.40GHz ("GenuineIntel" 686-class)
2.42GHz
> >
> > ...
> >
> >>pciide0 at pci0 dev 31 function 1 "Intel 82801EB/ER IDE" rev 0x02: DMA,
> >>channel 0 configured to compatibility, channel 1 configured to
> compatibility
> >>pciide0: channel 0 disabled (no drives)
> >
> > ^^^^^^^^^
> >
> >>wd0 at pciide0 channel 1 drive 0: <SanDisk SDCFB-1024>
> >>wd0: 1-sector PIO, LBA, 977MB, 2001888 sectors
> >>wd0(pciide0:1:0): using PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2
> >
> > ...
> >
> > I see one oddity and another POSSIBLE explanation...
> >
> > The oddity is you have the flash on the SECOND disk channel. That
> > should work, but a buggy BIOS might get in the way.
> >
>
> I tried to move it to the first channel, but the speed problem was still
> there when booting:
>
> ...
>
> wd0 at pciide0 channel 0 drive 0: <SanDisk SDCFB-1024>
> wd0: 1-sector PIO, LBA, 977MB, 2001888 sectors
> wd0(pciide0:0:0): using PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2
> pciide0: channel 1 disabled (no drives)
>
> ...
>
> > The other POSSIBLE explanation is really a stretch, but it is so good
> > and explains things so well (fortunately, you didn't give details of
> > what part of the boot process took the time :), I gotta mention it:
> >
> > I see you have a P4. Could the heat sink have fallen off/not been
> > mounted properly? Supposedly, the P4 will slow itself down when it
> > overheats. IF the heat sink were not on at all (or a tiny air gap
> > existed), the thing would probably reach critical temp within a couple
> > seconds of power-on, and slow to an absolute crawl. The kernel is
> > loaded by the BIOS, so until the kernel was completely loaded. At that
> > point, OpenBSD would be halting the processor when it was idle, and it
> > would probably stay cool enough to keep running at respectable speed.
> >
> > Yeah, that's a wacko explanation, but it fits the facts so far (I think.
> > I live in a P4-free house, so I can't test this theory). I fixed a P3
> > machine over the phone that did the P3 version of the same problem
> > (started to boot, then froze, as P3's hang, rather than go glacial).
> > Blew a good service call by doing that. :)
> >
>
> It is a really good theory :), but as I mentioned before, the install on
> this machine went flawlessy, this meaning that when we boot from the
> floppy, no speed issues were encountered. We only get slow speeds when
> booting from the CompactFlash.
>
> >
> > Assuming those two ideas are not worth they electrons they were written
> > on, next test would be to try an ordinary HD in this machine.
> >
> > Next thing I'd like to see is a running commentary on what's on the
> > screen at, say, every five or ten minute intervals, so we can get some
> > idea where the slow-down is, and what is going on in the machine at each
> > point. Booting is fairly complicated, a combination of ROM, boot
> > loaders, OS and hardware...lots of places for things to go wrong.
> > However, never heard of this one before...
> >
>
> I'm not sure of what you mean by this. When you boot the box, first the
> boot> prompt takes a while to appear. Even the part that says using
> "disk 0 partition 3" (or something like that) is slow. When you get to
> the boot> prompt, and you hit enter, you start to get the "/-\|..."
> progress indicator, going reeeeally slow, but one can tell that some
> progress is being done, and that is why we left it to see how much it
> took to boot. For 55, 56 minutes, it's the same thing, and then the
> kernel is load and everything seems to start to work fine. The speed
> issue seems to disappear, so it's definitely a BIOS thing or something
> like that.
>
> I will use this CompactFlash in the VIA System to move on with the
> upgrade, and will try to do some more tests, but I really don't know how
> could I continue testing, other than upgrading the mobo's firmware (it's
> a Gigabyte board), but I really don't think that will do the trick.
>
> Thanks again for your reply,
> Martmn.
