Subject: Re: nForce4 and SATA : some tests with BIOS options on 3.0 and -current
To: Dieter <netbsd@sopwith.solgatos.com>
From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Gr=E9goire_Sutre?= <gregoire.sutre@free.fr>
List: port-amd64
Date: 01/08/2006 00:32:50
On Friday 06 January 2006 18:49, Dieter wrote:
> > When I take my standard BIOS configuration and just disable APIC,
> > then the problem disappears (both in 3.0 and -current).
>
> Does your disk throughput suffer when you disable APIC in firmware?
> (e.g. dd if=/dev/rwd0d of=/dev/null bs=... count=...)

I tried dd if=/dev/rwd0d of=/dev/null bs=1m count=1000 on my 3.0 fresh
install (with the NetBSD 3.0 GENERIC kernel), and the result stays the
same (63 MB/s), whether I enable APIC or not in BIOS. BTW, the troughput
is the same as in Linux (and disabling or enabling APIC in BIOS does not
change anything there as well).

In my case I only have have one disk, so I guess I'll keep APIC
enabled and SATA ports 3,4 disabled.


> Back in early December, I added two additional SATA drives,
> filling up the nf4's 4 SATA ports.  Somehow the firmware got
>
> [...]
>
> In addition to this, NetBSD now gets the "lost interrupt" problem unless
> I turn off APIC in the firmware.  (FreeBSD and Linux seem to be okay.)

Do you remember whether you were using both built-in nForce4 SATA
controllers at the time where you only had two SATA drives? In my case, I
have to disable APIC if I want to use both controllers.

Gregoire.