Re: How does PCIe appear to the host?

[Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

First, my thanks to everyone; while the news is not great from the
perspective of getting things working, it has greatly improved my
understanding of PCIe, so in that sense it was a success.  You people
are a marvelous resource!

> It's been my experience that pcie busses show up as pci busses from
> the software perspective

My experience is _very_ limited - I've used PCIe in all of one other
case - but that's how it worked in that case.

> If you're plugging in a card and it isn't seen, I'd check the BIOS
> and look for any pcie settings it might have.

I suspect it's worse than that in this case; see mlelstv's mail,
explaining that there are only four lanes available total, so my "x16"
slot is x16 only mechanically - it seems to me it would have been more
honest of ASRock to use a x1 socket that's open at the end so any size
card can fit mechanically but it doesn't appear to be more than it is.

> You don't say which version of NetBSD you're running, but I've used
> pcie as early as NetBSD-3 and quite extensively on NetBSD-5.

I didn't?  *check*  Ah, yes, just "relatively old".  It's my (somewhat
mutant) 5.2, and, yes, I have pcictl.

> You might experiment by booting without ACPI to see how the PCI
> busses probe in that case.

I may try that.  But I suspect the PCI(e) busses are doing the best
they can.  The ppbs are visible with pcictl list

000:28:0: Intel product 0x0f48 (PCI bridge, revision 0x0e)
000:28:1: Intel product 0x0f4a (PCI bridge, revision 0x0e)
000:28:2: Intel product 0x0f4c (PCI bridge, revision 0x0e)
000:28:3: Intel product 0x0f4e (PCI bridge, revision 0x0e)

which matches with what autoconf reports at boot time.  pcictl dump on
the ppbs reports a lot of stuff, but nothing interesting that the
backported dump of the XCAP/LCAP values doesn't, and, indeed, doesn't
report the max width value from PCIE_LCAP as far as I can see.

Here's what ACPI has to say.  As I mentioned, dmesg is identical with
or without the card.

ACPI Warning (tbfadt-0327): FADT (revision 5) is longer than ACPI 2.0 version, truncating length 0x10C to 0xF4 [20080321]
[...]
acpi0 at mainbus0: Intel ACPICA 20080321
acpi0: X/RSDT: OemId <ALASKA,  A M I ,01072009>, AslId <AMI ,00010013>
acpi0: SCI interrupting at int 9
acpi0: fixed-feature power button present
timecounter: Timecounter "ACPI-Safe" frequency 3579545 Hz quality 900 ACPI-Safe 24-bit timer
hpet0 at acpi0 (HPET, PNP0103-0): mem 0xfed00000-0xfed003ff
timecounter: Timecounter "hpet0" frequency 14318179 Hz quality 2000
FWHD (INT0800) at acpi0 not configured
attimer1 at acpi0 (TIMR, PNP0100): io 0x40-0x43,0x50-0x53 irq 0
LPTE (PNP0400) at acpi0 not configured
UAR1 (PNP0501) at acpi0 not configured
ADMA (DMA0F28) at acpi0 not configured
acpibut0 at acpi0 (PWRB, PNP0C0C): ACPI Power Button
acpibut1 at acpi0 (SLPB, PNP0C0E): ACPI Sleep Button
BTH0 (BCM2E1A) at acpi0 not configured
GPS0 (BCM4752) at acpi0 not configured
CAM0 (INTCF0B) at acpi0 not configured
CAM1 (INTCF1A) at acpi0 not configured
STRA (INTCF1C) at acpi0 not configured
SHUB (SMO91D0) at acpi0 not configured
FAN0 (PNP0C0B) at acpi0 not configured
acpitz0 at acpi0 (TZ01): active cooling level 0: 50.0C critical 90.0C hot 85.0C passive 26.8C

That first line looks possibly worrisome; if I knew ACPI I'd have a
better idea whether it's anything to be concerned over.

> If the PCIE card you're using is working properly, it should be seen
> by the BIOS as additional SATA ports.  If you have a drive plugged
> into it when you boot the BIOS, you might even be rewarded with a
> listing of the make and model of the drive you have connected.  If
> you see that, you then know it's not hardware trouble.

Hard to tell.  The BIOS setup facility is horrible; it was designed by
someone who thinks GUI glitz is more important than functionality.  But
I *think* I didn't get any additional drives listed (not surprising in
view of the above).

I'll experiment a bit more.  I think I have another machine with a PCIe
slot (I once had a quad wm in there, but I can't recall whether it was
x1 or x4 or what); if I can find it I may try the SATA card there.  If
I can find _it_, may also try the quad wm in the ASRock.

/~\ The ASCII				  Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
 X  Against HTML		mouse%rodents-montreal.org@localhost
/ \ Email!	     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B