Nvidia cable detection problems & ACPI (beware, slight off-top)

From: Oleg Verych
Date: Mon Feb 05 2007 - 16:02:58 EST


> Unfortunately there's no standard way to do host side cable detect on
> nForce systems without going through ACPI. It's done through a GPIO
> pin. Board vendors are free to reallocate which GPIO pin is used for
> this feature.

Want to know how to make incompatibility? "Ask me How!(tm)".

Regarding ACPI, please see Linus at first,
<http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/487507>

And then, are you sure MSACPI will be compatible with any competitor
in near future?

[]
> The *real* solution is to use the BIOS ACPI _GTM _STM methods for this.
> Then you can remove all chipset specific knowledge from the IDE driver.
> This is what the MS driver does on Windows, so you know it's received a
> lot of testing from NVIDIA and board vendors.

Do you mean: with all possible crutches?

I'm very upset, that hardware nvidia-lego forces system software (and
programmers) to know "unfortunately no standard" ways of desinging
things... One read-only-for-os, hardware set bit in kind of control
register isn't possible at all, tphu. BDU market (BDU=brain dead user),
which Microsoft dominates, makes BDD (... designers ;)

> -Allen

No, you don't.

Do you know, why top posting is bad?

Hi.

> From: "Allen Martin"
> Newsgroups: gmane.linux.kernel,gmane.linux.ide
> Subject: RE: Nvidia cable detection problems (was [PATCH] amd74xx: don't configure udma mode higher than BIOS did)
> Archived-At: <http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/489859>
> Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2007 09:08:03 -0800


>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz [mailto:bzolnier@xxxxxxxxx]
>> Sent: Monday, February 05, 2007 7:09 AM
>> To: Allen Martin
>> Subject: Fwd: Nvidia cable detection problems (was [PATCH]
>> amd74xx: don't configure udma mode higher than BIOS did)
>>
>> Hi Allen,
>>
>> Would it be possible to get some help on this issue?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Bart
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Tejun Heo <htejun@xxxxxxxxx>
>> Date: Feb 5, 2007 3:50 PM
>> Subject: Re: Nvidia cable detection problems (was [PATCH] amd74xx:
>> don't configure udma mode higher than BIOS did)
>> To: Alan <alan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> Cc: bzolnier@xxxxxxxxx, linux-ide@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
>> linux-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>
>>
>> Alan wrote:
>> [--snip--]
>> >> CK804 IDE, at least mine, reports 80c in a lot of cases where it
>> >> shouldn't. I dunno the reason but it also makes drives confused
>> >> about cable type. Maybe it has the wrong capacitor
>> attached or something.
>> >> This is A8N-E from ASUS, probably one of the popular ones
>> using nf4.
>> >
>> > I take it this was how you came to find every cable related
>> bug while
>> > trying to work out what was going on ?
>>
>> Yeap, pretty much. I thought fixing drive side cable
>> detection would fix it, but hell no.
>>
>> >> When that happens, libata EH does its job and slows the
>> interface to
>> >> udma33 after quite a few error messages. On IDE, if this happens,
>> >> the drive is put into PIO mode making the machine painful to use.
>> >
>> > No the IDE layer does DMA changedown fine, well apart from all the
>> > error/timer races in the old IDE code.
>>
>> I dunno. It always ended up in PIO mode in my case. I can
>> post the log if necessary.
>>
>> [--snip--]
>> >> I agree with you that this is a hack and ugly as hell. I
>> don't like
>> >> it either, but it solves an existing problem which could have and
>> >> possibly will hit many users. So, I think this problem should at
>> >> least be verified. If it's just my BIOS/motherboard
>> that's crazy, I
>> >> have no problem forgetting about this.
>> >
>> > It certainly seems to be Nvidia specific, so perhaps Nvidia can
>> > provide more details on the Nforce4 cable detection ? As
>> with a lot of
>> > Nvidia stuff there was much reverse engineering involved in the
>> > original code base.
>>
>> Hmmm... Anyone happen to have working nvidia contact?
>>
>> > And if its a specific board or couple of boards then we
>> should perhaps
>> > use DMI to match them specifically.
>> >
>> >> So, anyone with CK804 (a.k.a NF4) up for some testing?
>> >
>> > If it still goes I've got a rather iffy NF3 but not an NF4 handy.
>>
>> Yeah, please. If I connect a hdd at the end of 40c cable and
>> leaving the middle connector empty, the 80c bit is always one
>> and the drive says it's 80c cable while the BIOS configured
>> mode is correctly udma33. This is the same for SAMSUNG
>> SP0802N, Maxtor 91301U3 and HITACHI_DK23BA-20.
>>
>> --
>> tejun
>>

> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain
> confidential information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution
> is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by
> reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wha? Cool!

____
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/