On Sun, Oct 21, 2001 at 03:21:53PM +1000, Ioan Nemes wrote:
> > 
> > Interestingly, I have seen reports of similar problems with *AMI's
> > own* drivers for Linux and other operating systems
> > (e.g. Solaris/x86).  The upshot is that I simply do not trust the
> > AMI controllers and won't use them for anything important.
> .....
> 
> Hmmmm ... I am using them with UnixWare (database servres - Progress),
> and I never had any problems (at least in the past five years)!

Do you use writeback caching?  How much cache do you have?  The AMI
documentation claims that many of their cards support as much as 512MB of
cache -- but in my experience, using more than 64MB causes lossage as
severe as the card crashing the motherboard BIOS of the host system!  With
64MB in an "Enterprise 1300" and write-back turned on, the card _usually_
works -- except that sometimes data evidently never gets written back.

"oops!"

I haven't seen this lossage under other operating systems myself (mind you,
you don't even *need* an operating system to see the first kind of lossage)
but I've seen similar reports from users running Linux, Solaris/x86, and
Unixware.

-- 
Thor Lancelot Simon	                                      tls@rek.tjls.com
    And now he couldn't remember when this passion had flown, leaving him so
  foolish and bewildered and astray: can any man?
						   William Styron