Mmm... first I've heard of any such problem.
Note that Triton chipsets are the most common chipsets for Pentium
machines today, by far. As such, odds are good that anyone having
*any* problem with a system is likely to notice it on a triton board.
All problems I've heard of thus far have been tracked to loose cables,
cables too long (IDE spec says 18" max, many boxes use 24"..),
or PIO/DMA settings too fast for the drive.
> a) Some BIOSes turn DMA on when they shouldnt
Rare, and Linux makes its own decision anyway.
> b) DMA mode tests your RAM and especially cache harder so if you've got
> a problem you'll find it
Quite possible.
> c) Most such transactions are faster and IDE cables are low quality and
> without parity so a slightly iffy cable is death
DMA transactions are *exactly* the same speed/timing as PIO transactions
(thanks to the same cycle time of 120ns, plus pipelining/prefetch in the
chipsets for the PIO transfers). Except for Ultra33 DMA, which *does*
include 32-bit CRC checking (far superior to parity).
-- mlord@pobox.com The Linux IDE guy