D98E%DDATHD21.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu (Peter Lautenschlaeger) (01/03/91)
> I've been working on bringing up MINIX 1.5 with Bruce Evans' 386 > enhancements on my new DTK 386sx with a WD-1006 RLL controller and > 120Mb Seagate RLL drive. Occasionally, but often enough to > be annoying, the machine locks up during a hard disk access > with my process (be it cp, fsck, or anything else) waiting on > FS, FS waiting on WINCHester, and the IDLE task just racks up > time. I have the same problem on NEAT 20Mhz 286 machine, this seems to me a common problem. I dimly remember having heard of timing problems with this controller. But I can't remember the answer. Peter
raymond@gem.stack.urc.tue.nl (Raymond Nijssen) (01/03/91)
D98E%DDATHD21.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu (Peter Lautenschlaeger) writes: >> I've been working on bringing up MINIX 1.5 with Bruce Evans' 386 >> enhancements on my new DTK 386sx with a WD-1006 RLL controller and >> 120Mb Seagate RLL drive. Occasionally, but often enough to >> be annoying, the machine locks up during a hard disk access >> with my process (be it cp, fsck, or anything else) waiting on >> FS, FS waiting on WINCHester, and the IDLE task just racks up >> time. > I have the same problem on NEAT 20Mhz 286 machine, this seems to > me a common problem. I dimly remember having heard of timing problems > with this controller. But I can't remember the answer. Fortunately, this is not a common problem. The problem Peter refers to does only occur if you (1) use 2 harddisks and (2) your OS uses overlapped seeks, i.e. letting one drive seek while transferring data on the other one. Since you don't have 2 drives, and Minix doesn't support overlapped seeks (like ISC), this infamous WD1006 bug is not likely to be your problem. BTW, I have indications that WD1006 chips without the word 'PROTO' on them do not have this problem. Maybe someone else might comment on this. -Raymond
ghelmer@dsuvax.uucp (Guy Helmer) (01/05/91)
In <124@gem.stack.urc.tue.nl> raymond@gem.stack.urc.tue.nl (Raymond Nijssen) writes: >D98E%DDATHD21.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu (Peter Lautenschlaeger) writes: >>> [ my info about my WD-1006 controller causing MINIX to hang ] >> I have the same problem on NEAT 20Mhz 286 machine, this seems to >> me a common problem. I dimly remember having heard of timing problems >> with this controller. But I can't remember the answer. >Since you don't have 2 drives, and Minix doesn't support overlapped seeks >(like ISC), this infamous WD1006 bug is not likely to be your problem. I still haven't figured out an answer to my problem. Some have suggested that I try putting my machine in slow mode, but that didn't help at all. I can consistently hang my machine by doing a "cp /dev/hd4 /dev/null", so I don't do that anymore :-). The machine seems to lock up whenever I do lots of fast sequential i/o. I wonder if MINIX is sending commands to the controller before it is ready to accept them? >-Raymond -- Guy Helmer helmer@sdnet.bitnet, uunet!dsuvax!ghelmer work: DSU Computing Services, Business & Education Institute (605) 256-5315 play: MidIX System Support Services (605) 256-2788 postnews: message content ambiguous; spurious information added as required