Re: Is it the hardware or the OS?

[Adam Williams <awilliam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> ...  I can't seem to find any problems with the drive
>>>causing the problem and I suspect it's my motherboard (IDE1 
controller)
>>>but can't find a way to confirm that.
>>>Has anybody experienced anything similar?
>>Yes, many times, those exact error messages. Is this system a Compaq?
>No, it's something that's been rebuilt twice. It was a Comtrade 
originally,

Just curious,  I have Linux on about 40 Compaq Presarios and about 75% of 
them exhibit those error messages (yet it does not seem to effect 
uptime).

>>>Or have an idea what's going
>>>on here?  I have a Windows98 machine connected to the Linux box
>>What IDE controller does it have?  Look in "dmesg".  Any reported bugs
>>for that controller? (search from www.google.com).  Have you messed 
about
>>with hdparm?
>I have no idea what the controller is. The manual indicates I have an
>Enhanced PCI Busmaster PCI Controller with UDMA/33, which, as far as I 
know,
>could be anything. It is a VIA board however, FIC VA-503+ (the old 
model).
>No hdparm and it's not overclocked.

Do you have UDMA enabled in the BIOS?
If you cat "/proc/pci" you should find a description of your IDE 
controller,  something like:

  Bus  0, device   7, function  1:
    IDE interface: Intel 82371SB PIIX3 IDE (rev 0).
      Medium devsel.  Fast back-to-back capable.  Master Capable.  
Latency=32.  
      I/O at 0xffa0 [0xffa1].