Re: Problems with ICH2?

[Giles Lean <giles.lean%pobox.com@localhost>]

Matthias Scheler <tron%zhadum.org.uk@localhost> wrote:

> I'm therefore looking for somebody who can confirm that Intel's ICH2
> south bridge ...
> 
> piixide0 at pci0 dev 31 function 1
> piixide0: Intel 82801BA IDE Controller (ICH2) (rev. 0x05)
> piixide0: bus-master DMA support present
> piixide0: primary channel wired to compatibility mode
> piixide0: primary channel interrupting at ioapic0 pin 14 (irq 14)
> 
> ... works stable under NetBSD 4.0, especially in combination with raid(4).

I don't use raid(4) so can't help you there; I do use an ICH2 system
with NetBSD 4.0/i386 and it is stable:

piixide0 at pci0 dev 31 function 1
piixide0: Intel 82801BA IDE Controller (ICH2) (rev. 0x01)
piixide0: bus-master DMA support present
piixide0: primary channel wired to compatibility mode
piixide0: primary channel interrupting at irq 14

The only time this system hasn't been stable I discovered that the power
supply fan had failed.  After replacing the power supply (and adding an
additional case fan for good measure: the replacement power supply was
advertised as being "quiet" which sometimes merely means the fan doesn't
move much air) the system has run stably again:

  $ uname -sr
  NetBSD 4.0_STABLE
  $ uptime
   4:16PM  up 52 days,  4:45, 1 user, load averages: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

52 days goes back to the end of January, and that's the height of summer
here in southern Australia.  (The load average isn't always that low,
and I stress tested the machine after replacing the power supply with
concurrent heavy CPU and I/O workloads.)

Brian Buhrow wrote:

| Could you possibly be having a heat dispersion problem?

That would be my bet too, although hardware does sometimes break in
mysterious ways.

Cheers,

Giles