sata_sil, writing bug with multiple cards?

[7091]

Greetings, 

I have been troubleshooting a problem for over a year now, and to make a 
long story short, I think the sata_sil driver has a bug during writing when 
there are multiple cards that are using different models of SiI chips in the 
system. 

I will be watching the list, although cc'ing me over email will be useful 
for speeding up replies. 

Longer version:
I've been having problems with my Linux server corrupting data.  Not just a 
little - it can't copy a 700 meg ISO file and end up with the same checksum 
(and usually corrupts the filesystem in the process). 

Hardware:
Asus A7N8X-Deluxe motherboard.  This has 2 parallel IDE connectors, each 
with a 40 gig IDE HD hanging off it, and 2 SATA connectors (driven by a SiI 
3112 chip) with (right now) 1 300G SATA HD and 1 250G SATA HD.  All of these 
facts are important. 

On my PCI bus, I have a SiI 3114A card with 3 more 300G SATA HDs.  It should 
be noted that only drives on the PCI card have corruption.  Neither the 
parallel IDE HDs, nor the SATA drives on the motherboard experience the 
problem. I have also tried replacing this card, which did not fix the 
problem.  Also, placing the same drive on the add-on card has corruption, 
the same drive, cable, power, etc. on the motherboard works fine. 

I've already swapped motherboards, CPU, and RAM. 

Booting to a Knoppix 5.1 CD shows the same problems. 

Reading is fine (i.e. I can read the same file 50 times and get the same 
md5sum).  Writing causes the corruption. 

The corruption happens no matter what filesystem I try (ext2, ext3, reiser, 
xfs).  (This does mean I've reformatted, etc. several times, so its not a 
metadata problem) 

This happens with at least 3 different drives (the 300 and the 250, 
different manufacturers), with different SATA data cables, power supplies, 
power cables, etc. 

Now, here's the kicker.  Booting to an OpenBSD kernel, and using one of the 
300G drives off the 3114A card (the one that show corruption under Linux) 
works fine. 

This happens with the Knoppix 5.1 kernel (2.6.19), my own compiled 2.6.20.3, 
and Debian kernel 2.6.18-4-k7. 

More spammy data:
# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AGP (different version?) 
(rev a2)
00:00.1 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 1 (rev a2)
00:00.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 4 (rev a2)
00:00.3 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 3 (rev a2)
00:00.4 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 2 (rev a2)
00:00.5 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 5 (rev a2)
00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 ISA Bridge (rev a3)
00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation nForce2 SMBus (MCP) (rev a2)
00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 USB Controller (rev a3)
00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 USB Controller (rev a3)
00:02.2 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 USB Controller (rev a3)
00:04.0 Ethernet controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Ethernet Controller 
(rev a1)
00:08.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 External PCI Bridge (rev a3)
00:09.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation nForce2 IDE (rev a2)
00:0c.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 PCI Bridge (rev a3)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AGP (rev a2)
01:06.0 VGA compatible controller: Matrox Graphics, Inc. MGA 2164W 
[Millennium II]
01:07.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8169 
Gigabit Ethernet (rev 10)
01:09.0 Mass storage controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3114 
[SATALink/SATARaid] Serial ATA Controller (rev 02)
01:0b.0 RAID bus controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3112 
[SATALink/SATARaid] Serial ATA Controller (rev 01)
02:01.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3C920B-EMB Integrated Fast 
Ethernet Controller [Tornado] (rev 40) 

Any assistance, input, etc. appreciated.  Thanks.
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