Hi,

On 30 Dec 2001 at 13:05, Richard Rauch wrote:
> Given that you, also, refer to SCSI and ATA133 performance (which has
> ``nothing'' to do with my system), maybe I should point out:

some time ago people found out (and it has also been discussed on I 
think port-i386), that there are problems with VIA based systems. 
These problems are said to be able to lead to data curruption and are 
reproduceable like this: connect two ATA disks to a VIA based system, 
transfer about 100MB of Data from one disk to the other, during this 
transfer data corruption and or system hangs and such will happen. 
Using a soundblster soundcard will "enhance" the problem. It was 
supposed, that this was a DMA problem and will show up under high 
load. So it might be that your system suffers from the same problems, 
and your load is not enough to cause problems. Probably your problem 
is not related at all (if someone has such problems these days the 
686A is the first thing that comes to mind). Probably the NetBSD 
drivers detect the problems and switch to lower transfer mode 
preventing data corruption. I guess Manuel Boyer could help you more. 


> as a ``southbridge''.  I have no idea what, if any, ``northbridge'' I
> may have in here.

IIRC the northbridge connects CPU to memory and PCI and southbridge, 
the southbridge manages things like ATA, USB, sound, floppy etc., but 
I might be wrong here.


> From the confusion over which chipset is under discussion, and the
> comments about the patch not fixing all of the data corruption
> problems (so that where I have *none* now, I may wind up with problems
> should I apply the patch), I'm not eager to bother with the patch.

That is possible. Be aware that if your system suffers the 
DMA/latency problems others do, probably under high load data 
corruption might occur.

> You mention trying other chipsets, though---do you have in mind that
> I'm evaluating systems (or am about to buy a new system)?  If so, I
> must have conveyed the the wrong impression.  Or do you mean to
> suggest that I should try a new motherboard?  If the latter, I can
> think of better uses for the money at the moment, given what the
> computer's tasks are.  This is an annoyance factor, not a critical
> failure.

Someone mentioned thet good chipsets were needed for AMD CPUs, and 
that AMD should push the developement of better chipsets. I just 
wanted to mention that there is a chipset that I know no bad things 
about - the AMD760. 

HTH

mike