Hi,

I was checking around in this forum, specifically into the hardware-to-avoid area...
I noticed lots of posts around KT400/KT600 chipset based motherboards...

Now, I just want to make sure I'm right...

I have a KT600 MSI KT6-V board in my backend, as this board can support more than one DVB-C cards... and it's the only board (for now) that I had lying around.

Every x minutes, the backend stops feeding me data onto my frontend machine (also a KT400 based MSI board). I started tracing and following, and I noticed that every time it happens, the same instant my swap is getting used. only between 4 and 64kB are used, but still, odd behaviour. I thought my IDE drive was too slow (80GB older DiamondMax, just a test drive, as my 200GB WD drive gave up on me recently), but I expanded the memory from 512MB to 1GB, and the problem is still there... Only thing that changed is: the time before stalling doubled! almost second-wise sharp doubled in time!

Strangely, I thought my WD drive was causing errors, but with this Maxtor drive, I have almost identical issues. dmesg tells me this;
hda: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hda: dma_intr: error=0x84 { DriveStatusError BadCRC }
ide: failed opcode was: unknown
hda: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hda: dma_intr: error=0x84 { DriveStatusError BadCRC }
ide: failed opcode was: unknown
hda: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hda: dma_intr: error=0x84 { DriveStatusError BadCRC }
ide: failed opcode was: unknown

These messages appear every once in a while...


Now It's just a big guess, as I'm no hardware-expert...: is either one of my drives really bad, or is this all the Via-chipset bug everyone is talking about?

Second question: as I'm only using the PATA/IDE channels, is it better to start using SATA (both performance and dma-issue wise)? (just to know what drive to buy)

Third question: if the KT600 issue is unsolvable, would an MSI K8N Neo4 (Nforce 4) board, with the onboard 4 port SATA controller, do fine as a backend machine? It'll be my previous gaming machine, running a nice AMD Athlon X2 3800+ and 1GB DDR in dual channel. I might even be considering replacing the onboard SATA controller with a 3Ware hardware raid solution sporting 4x 250GB to provide faster access through a RAID5 setup, and having a good data-guarding solution at the same time.


Just let me know... I'm awaiting your ideas on my issues...
If you have a good alternative to my propositions, let me know!

Thanks guys!

There were known DMA issues with the older VIA chip sets, but they really should have sorted those out for the Athlon64 based boards. Check the MOMS list at Hauppauge for pointers to various BIOS fixes and the like related to such things. It's one of the best best resources I'm aware of for issues like this.

Your later suggestion would be the best, but until such time I would suggest you check your drive for errors.

If you can d/l this disk Ultimate BootCD and run the Western Digital DLG Diagnostics to check that the drive is OK.

You may want to check that DMA is turned on properly for your drive. If you do a search or check the wiki you will find what your looking for. I just can't think of the command off the top of my head.

_________________
Girkers