Re: DragonFly and Thinpad X61s

[Bill Hacker <wbh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hasso Tepper wrote:
> I got a new toy and of course trying to get it all working with
> DragonFly. All went surprisingly good - install with current HEAD,
> snd_hda(4) and em(4) are working fine as does X (Intel 965 chipset).
>
> All went well until I tried to boot without power supply. It didn't boot
> any more, but just hanged right after detecting SATA controller before
> (while?) detecting harddisk. I played with various settings in BIOS (AHCI
> vs. Compatibility mode) and here are the results:
>
> HEAD AHCI with AC             - OK
> HEAD AHCI without AC          - hangs after detecting SATA controller
> HEAD Compatibility with AC    - hangs before detecting SATA controller
> HEAD Compatibility without AC - hangs before detecting SATA controller
>
> 1.10 AHCI with AC             - OK
> 1.10 AHCI without AC          - hangs after detecting SATA controller
> 1.10 Compatibility with AC    - OK
> 1.10 Compatibility without AC - OK
>
> All other OS'es I tried to boot on it work fine in every situation (with
> and without AC) - Linux (Debian), NetBSD (Jibbed LiveCD) and FreeBSD 7.0
> beta 4 installer. The last one is particularly interesting, because we
> should share the ATA code with FreeBSD 7. I also tried to disable ACPI,
> played with various powermanagement settings in the BIOS, but couldn't
> make any difference.
>
> There is also too few changes in the ATA to explain regression 1.10 ->
> HEAD with compatibility mode, but I'll certainly try to play with
> reverting these. I also played with some desktop machines trying to boot
> HEAD on them. Results are bad - out of 5 machines only one booted with
> AHCI, two I could get booting with legacy IDE mode, two didn't boot at
> all. Problems are same - booting just hangs at some point around ATA
> controllers detecting. So, there seems to be worryingly a lot of issues
> with IDE we need to fix IMHO.
>
> So, any ideas how should I continue? How to debug it? Any help is
> welcome.

When one of the experts needs help we may be in deep Kim Chi...

;-)


Odd that this happens NOT with several of the other OS, but I had a similar 
issue with FreeBSD 7X on a mini-tower PC that was not solved until I replaced 
the PSU (original was newish, not obviously bad, and should have had at least 
50% more power than needed...).

Pure supposition from an old wire-wrap and gate-delay guy, but...

- SATA controllers and devices require more power than PATA.

- 'adequate' power on the basis of ergs or Watts may not be 'clean' power when 
under peaky loads (spikes may ensue, and they can be interpreted as signals).

- scanning, ID'ing, init'ing SATA may be more 'aggressive', timing, interrupt, & 
duty-cycle-wise under the two problematic OS'en reported than under those which 
work OK.

Ergo, troubleshooting may need an oscilloscope and a capacitor or three as much 
as code review. Neither easy to apply on laptop MB.

JM2CW,

Bill Hacker