Re: Promise SATA TX4 Controller on FreeBSD-Current -- problems

Would this problem be the system BIOS or could it possibly be the 
Promise TX4 board..... ?

I placed an inquiry to the people that I got this motherboard from, they 
have some techies that may know.   It's the SOYO Dragon Platinum 
Edition, and I'm sure the BIOS is up-to-date.

Oddly, I had everything working fine when these drives were plugged in 
to the Silicon Image (on-board) controller, though "dmesg" shows it 
wasn't optimum.


Thanks,
Forrest



On Thursday 20 May 2004 01:15 am, Forrest Aldrich wrote:
> Per advise of several people, I purchased a Promise SATA controller
> (TX4) for FreeBSD-5.
>
> I installed the card today, plugged the drives in (in the correct slots
> and order), and the system fails to boot.  Particularly, when you try to
> boot from the CD's, this (large) error is displayed and the system halts.
>
> The system runs a SOYO Dragon Platinum motherboard, which has the
> on-board Silicon Image controller (which I had working before, BTW).
>
> I'm hoping someone here can decode this, as it took quite a long time to
> hand-write down and type in:
>
> Building the boot loader arguments
> Looking up /BOOT/LOADER... Found
> Relocating the loader and the BTX
> Starting the BTX loader
>
> BTX loader 1.00 BTX version is 1.01
> Console: internal video/keyboard
> BIOS CD is cd0
> BIOS drive A: is disk0
>
> int=0000000d  err=000045e4  efl=00010046  eip=0000925b
> eax=00000000  ebx=00000000 ecx=0000feff  edx=0000fe04
> esi=0000000c  edi=00000000  ebp=00000000 esp=000017e0
> cs=0008  ds=0010  es=0000  fs=0000  gs=0000  ss=0010
> cs:eip 1f 0f a1 0f a9 cf fc 6a-10 1f 60 89 e5 0f b7 7d
>          2c 01 e7 04 8b 75 28 01-fe 31 c9 b1 02 31 c0 ac
> ss:esp=e6 45 00 00 00 00 00 00-00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
>            00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00-00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
>
> As far as I can tell there is no conflict with the motherboard/BIOS.   I
> tried to disable the on-board SATA (set to IDE only) and that made no
> difference.  It's a separate bus.
>
> Any info would be appreciated.

Well, my guess would be a BIOS bug, but an odd one at that:

00000000  1F                pop ds
00000001  0FA1              pop fs
00000003  0FA9              pop gs
00000005  CF                iret
00000006  FC                cld
00000007  6A10              push byte +0x10
00000009  1F                pop ds
0000000A  60                pusha
0000000B  89E5              mov bp,sp

The saved %ds register on the stack must be bad.  Looking at the stack 
contents, it does look like the stack is pointing at bogus memory (too many 
zeros).  Try turning off DMA in your BIOS perhaps.

-- 
John Baldwin <jhb_at_FreeBSD.org>  <><  http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/ <http://www.FreeBSD.org/%7Ejhb/>
"Power Users Use the Power to Serve"  =  http://www.FreeBSD.org