Re: Interrupt routing with nvidia nforce2

[Andrew Doran <ad%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 11:50:09PM +0200, Lars Nordlund wrote:

> On Tue, 10 Jun 2008 22:23:42 +0100
> Andrew Doran <ad%netbsd.org@localhost> wrote:
> 
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I have a Shuttle SN45 v1 that uses the nforce2 chipset. All of the ACPI
> > interrupt routing information for the only PCI slot on the board appears
> > correct, and as best I can tell it appears to match the hardware config.
> > 
> > When using the ioapic, interrupts for the slot never arrive. I suspect that
> > some of the interrupt lines may not be physically wired up on the board, but
> > hopefully it is a software problem.
> > 
> > Does anyone else have an nforce2 chipset and do you see similar problems?
> 
> Yes, I see something like this on an i386 machine here. It has an
> nforce2 chipset and it causes interrupt timeout problems for this
> device (an extra PCI SATA controller since there is no onboard SATA on
> this mobo):
> 
> pdcsata0 at pci1 dev 8 function 0
> pdcsata0: Promise PDC40718 SATA300 controller (rev. 0x02)
> pdcsata0: interrupting at irq 11
> pdcsata0: bus-master DMA support present
> 
> rendering the system unusable without its harddisk. Toggling the APIC
> flag in the BIOS (unsure about exact naming) makes the timeouts go away.
> 
> Linux does not suffer from this. OpenSUSE works regardless of what I
> set the APIC mode to.

From what I've read Linux doesn't have the bug that I just found so it
would make sense that it works OK.
 
> I *think* FreeBSD and DragonflyBSD (same bootloader?) has trouble
> booting depending on this flag. I get an instant reboot before the
> kernel is loaded. It was however some time since I last tried them on
> this machine and it was before I knew about this APIC voodoo. I can try
> this again if needed.
> 
> Windows works in both APIC settings. But.., there is a big but here; It
> only works with the APIC setting used when it was installed. If I flip
> the mode in BIOS I have to reinstall windows to get it to work in the
> other APIC mode.. Otherwise it will just hang during boot.

That old caper.. Presumably something to do with the HAL it selected
at install time or a ton of crap buried somewhere in the registry. ;-)

Andrew