In the past, the IDE-driver relied on BIOS setup that worked well.
Now there are so many reported cases of BIOS setup failures that is
is scary. I would contribute this problem to the "miniport"
interface that MS uses to setup devices via a plug-in or
something......again we suffer at the fingers of
Gates..............
I think the explanation is more simple than this, all of the IDE
controller chipset vendor MS drivers I've ever disassembled do all of
the PIO and DMA "tuning" and setup in the MS driver, overriding
anything the BIOS did at all. The BIOS settings are simply discarded
and never actually used.
So even if the BIOS is getting it wrong, MS users are not likely to
ever see any effects since vendor IDE drivers are doing the dirty work
in the OS driver anyways.
I'm sure there are cases where this is not true, but all of my
sampling has shown it to be this way.
Later,
David S. Miller
davem@redhat.com
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