On Fri, Sep 17, 2004 at 12:45:26PM +0200, Thierry Lacoste wrote:
> Thanks a lot. The problem seems to disappear with "atactl wd0 setidle 0"
> (according to the man page the value 0 disables idle mode;
> I will try other values to keep power saving).
> 
> I have 3 additional questions :
> - How can I see the values attributed to the timers at boot time ?
>   I didn't find in the man.

I don't think the ATA standard offers a way to get this value

> - AFAICS, in my bios menu there is no item concerning the setting
>   of these values. Do I have to put the atactl command in rc.local
>   or is it possible to have the bios taking care of that ?

It depends on your BIOS. But if you can't change the BIOS value,
you can set the value in rc.local.
Or if you're using apm, you can let apmd change the value depending on
the power source. Check apmd(8) and /usr/share/examples/apm/


> - The command "atactl wd0 setstandby 0" (or any value) ends up
>   with "ATA command timed out" then the following kernel message:
>      pciide0:0:0: lost interrupt
>      type : ata tc_bcount: 0 tc_skip: 0
>   Where does the problem come from? Can it be related to unsupported DMA?

No, it's not related to DMA. Maybe the drive doesn't support the standby
command, or there is something broken in the code.
I'll check this this evening.

-- 
Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.eu.org>
     NetBSD: 26 ans d'experience feront toujours la difference
--