Hi again,
Have played some more, and here's where I'm at :
Primary FDC (on mobo) has 1.44Mb drive connected and powered
Secondary FDC (on AHA-1542B) has 1.44Mb drive connected and powered
I boot System Rescue CD, and type the following command :
modprobe floppy "floppy=4,4,cmos"
and I get the following in /var/log/messages :
Aug 03 16:11:47 sysresccd floppy4: setting CMOS code to 4 Aug 03 16:11:47 sysresccd Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 2.88M AMI BIOS, fd4 is 1.44M Aug 03 16:11:47 sysresccd FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077
There's no mention of "FDC 1", and /dev only gets populated with device files for fd0; nothing gets created for fd4. So I type :
mknod /dev/fd4 b 2 128 chgrp floppy /dev/fd4 chmod 640 /dev/fd4
So /dev/fd4 looks as follows :
brw-r----- 1 root floppy 2, 128 2009-08-03 16:12 /dev/fd4
Then as soon as I try and access fd4; with something like :
mount /dev/fd4 /mnt/floppy
I get :
mount: /dev/fd4 is not a valid block device
It's as though the second FDC isn't getting detected. The jumper is set for 0x370, and the AHA-1542B works fine as a primary FDC (jumper set for 0x3F0)
Surely this should work ? I'd be inclined to suspect the FDC on the AHA-1542B, but it works fine as a primary FDC
One thing I did notice; I ran cat /proc/ioports | grep 37, and got the following :
0376-0376 : 0000:00:07.1 0376-0376 : pata_via 0378-037a : parport0 037b-037f : parport0
Is the pata_via blocking the secondary FDC IO port ? I notice my main PC shows something similar :
0376-0376 : 0000:00:06.0 0376-0376 : ide1 0378-037a : parport0
I'm going to try an ISA I/O card, an older PC, and maybe another Linux distro, but I really would welcome any suggestions.
TIA
Justin
Hello Justin,
It's probably been 15 years since I last did this sort of work. I think you're on the right track -- if it found FDC 1 it would have said so, so something must be blocking or disabling it.
DCN
On Mon, 3 Aug 2009, justin@vikingship.co.uk wrote:
Hi again,
Have played some more, and here's where I'm at :
Primary FDC (on mobo) has 1.44Mb drive connected and powered
Secondary FDC (on AHA-1542B) has 1.44Mb drive connected and powered
I boot System Rescue CD, and type the following command :
modprobe floppy "floppy=4,4,cmos"
and I get the following in /var/log/messages :
Aug 03 16:11:47 sysresccd floppy4: setting CMOS code to 4 Aug 03 16:11:47 sysresccd Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 2.88M AMI BIOS, fd4 is 1.44M Aug 03 16:11:47 sysresccd FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077
There's no mention of "FDC 1", and /dev only gets populated with device files for fd0; nothing gets created for fd4. So I type :
mknod /dev/fd4 b 2 128 chgrp floppy /dev/fd4 chmod 640 /dev/fd4
So /dev/fd4 looks as follows :
brw-r----- 1 root floppy 2, 128 2009-08-03 16:12 /dev/fd4
Then as soon as I try and access fd4; with something like :
mount /dev/fd4 /mnt/floppy
I get :
mount: /dev/fd4 is not a valid block device
It's as though the second FDC isn't getting detected. The jumper is set for 0x370, and the AHA-1542B works fine as a primary FDC (jumper set for 0x3F0)
Surely this should work ? I'd be inclined to suspect the FDC on the AHA-1542B, but it works fine as a primary FDC
One thing I did notice; I ran cat /proc/ioports | grep 37, and got the following :
0376-0376 : 0000:00:07.1 0376-0376 : pata_via 0378-037a : parport0 037b-037f : parport0
Is the pata_via blocking the secondary FDC IO port ? I notice my main PC shows something similar :
0376-0376 : 0000:00:06.0 0376-0376 : ide1 0378-037a : parport0
I'm going to try an ISA I/O card, an older PC, and maybe another Linux distro, but I really would welcome any suggestions.
TIA
Justin _______________________________________________ Fdutils mailing list Fdutils@fdutils.linux.lu https://fdutils.linux.lu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fdutils
On 08/03/09 20:35, justin@vikingship.co.uk wrote:
Hi again,
Have played some more, and here's where I'm at :
Primary FDC (on mobo) has 1.44Mb drive connected and powered
Secondary FDC (on AHA-1542B) has 1.44Mb drive connected and powered
I boot System Rescue CD, and type the following command :
modprobe floppy "floppy=4,4,cmos"
Try adding "two_fdc" to this line (and any DMA and/or IRQ setting that you might need):
modprobe floppy "two_fdc floppy=4,4,cmos" modprobe floppy "two_fdc floppy=4,4,cmos 2,dma 6,irq" modprobe floppy "debug two_fdc floppy=4,4,cmos 2,dma 6,irq"
The two_fdc setting is needed to make the floppy driver probe for the second FDC. The CMOS setting is needed to specify the characteristics of the drive. Unfortunately, the module is not smart enough to infer existence of a second FDC from the existence of a drive numbered 4, so both options (two_fdc and 4,4,cmos) need to be given.
If you chose to use insmod, rather than modprobe, the space between the various options needs to be replaced with a TAB, as new versions of insmod apparently do their own parsing of the string before passing it to the module.
0x370 is already the default address for the second FDC, no need to specify it explicitly.
The 0x3f6 and 0x376 registers are used by the IDE controller, and the floppy module is sufficiently smart to not claim it (it claims two ranges per FDC, in order to leave this one register unclaimed. In case of 0x370, this would be 0x372-0x375 and 0x377 )
Regards,
Alain
and I get the following in /var/log/messages :
Aug 03 16:11:47 sysresccd floppy4: setting CMOS code to 4 Aug 03 16:11:47 sysresccd Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 2.88M AMI BIOS, fd4 is 1.44M Aug 03 16:11:47 sysresccd FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077
There's no mention of "FDC 1", and /dev only gets populated with device files for fd0; nothing gets created for fd4. So I type :
mknod /dev/fd4 b 2 128 chgrp floppy /dev/fd4 chmod 640 /dev/fd4
So /dev/fd4 looks as follows :
brw-r----- 1 root floppy 2, 128 2009-08-03 16:12 /dev/fd4
Then as soon as I try and access fd4; with something like :
mount /dev/fd4 /mnt/floppy
I get :
mount: /dev/fd4 is not a valid block device
It's as though the second FDC isn't getting detected. The jumper is set for 0x370, and the AHA-1542B works fine as a primary FDC (jumper set for 0x3F0)
Surely this should work ? I'd be inclined to suspect the FDC on the AHA-1542B, but it works fine as a primary FDC
One thing I did notice; I ran cat /proc/ioports | grep 37, and got the following :
0376-0376 : 0000:00:07.1 0376-0376 : pata_via 0378-037a : parport0 037b-037f : parport0
Is the pata_via blocking the secondary FDC IO port ? I notice my main PC shows something similar :
0376-0376 : 0000:00:06.0 0376-0376 : ide1 0378-037a : parport0
I'm going to try an ISA I/O card, an older PC, and maybe another Linux distro, but I really would welcome any suggestions.
TIA
Justin _______________________________________________ Fdutils mailing list Fdutils@fdutils.linux.lu https://fdutils.linux.lu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fdutils
Unfortunately, the module is not smart enough to infer existence of a
second FDC from the existence
of a drive numbered 4, so both options (two_fdc and 4,4,cmos) need to be
given.
I have tried with and without the two_fdc option.
But I thought from the Documentation, the kernel module didn't need the two_fdc parameter if you were making a cmos declaration for a 4th (or higher) drive......
floppy=two_fdc http://www.mjmwired.net/kernel/Documentation/floppy.txt#74floppy=<address>,two_fdc http://www.mjmwired.net/kernel/Documentation/floppy.txt#75Tells the floppy driver that you have two floppy controllers. http://www.mjmwired.net/kernel/Documentation/floppy.txt#76The second floppy controller is assumed to be at <address>. http://www.mjmwired.net/kernel/Documentation/floppy.txt#77This option is not needed if the second controller is at address http://www.mjmwired.net/kernel/Documentation/floppy.txt#780x370, and if you use the 'cmos' option.
Thanks for the response - will try giving the 1542b its own IRQ and DMA when I get home
I am coming in to the middle of this thread, but IRQs and aha-1542b does bring some bad memories back. I remember struggling to get them to work properly back in 1995. The upshot of it all is: 1542b and PCI are not compatible. I believe this was the official word from Adaptec. They then sold us AHA-2940s, which worked flawlessly (the same can't be said for the Seagate ST32550s they were connected to - those drives ran too hot and burned themselves out! ).
On Mon, 3 Aug 2009, justin@vikingship.co.uk wrote:
Hi again,
Have played some more, and here's where I'm at :
Primary FDC (on mobo) has 1.44Mb drive connected and powered
Secondary FDC (on AHA-1542B) has 1.44Mb drive connected and powered
I boot System Rescue CD, and type the following command :
modprobe floppy "floppy=4,4,cmos"
and I get the following in /var/log/messages :
Aug 03 16:11:47 sysresccd floppy4: setting CMOS code to 4 Aug 03 16:11:47 sysresccd Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 2.88M AMI BIOS, fd4 is 1.44M Aug 03 16:11:47 sysresccd FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077
There's no mention of "FDC 1", and /dev only gets populated with device files for fd0; nothing gets created for fd4. So I type :
mknod /dev/fd4 b 2 128 chgrp floppy /dev/fd4 chmod 640 /dev/fd4
So /dev/fd4 looks as follows :
brw-r----- 1 root floppy 2, 128 2009-08-03 16:12 /dev/fd4
Then as soon as I try and access fd4; with something like :
mount /dev/fd4 /mnt/floppy
I get :
mount: /dev/fd4 is not a valid block device
It's as though the second FDC isn't getting detected. The jumper is set for 0x370, and the AHA-1542B works fine as a primary FDC (jumper set for 0x3F0)
Surely this should work ? I'd be inclined to suspect the FDC on the AHA-1542B, but it works fine as a primary FDC
One thing I did notice; I ran cat /proc/ioports | grep 37, and got the following :
0376-0376 : 0000:00:07.1 0376-0376 : pata_via 0378-037a : parport0 037b-037f : parport0
Is the pata_via blocking the secondary FDC IO port ? I notice my main PC shows something similar :
0376-0376 : 0000:00:06.0 0376-0376 : ide1 0378-037a : parport0
I'm going to try an ISA I/O card, an older PC, and maybe another Linux distro, but I really would welcome any suggestions.
TIA
Justin _______________________________________________ Fdutils mailing list Fdutils@fdutils.linux.lu https://fdutils.linux.lu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fdutils
The AHA-29x0 series of HBAs were PCI, so by their very nature work flawlessly on PCI systems.
I don't have a problem getting the AHA-1542b's FDC to work; just not along side the motherboard's FDC. I can have the AHA-1542b's FDC working, or the motherboard's FDC working; but not both.
All that said; the AHA-1542b's FDC is completely seperate to the SCSI side of things, because the FDC works without having to load the aha1542 kernel module. When I have loaded the aha1542 kernel module, things do go awry - but that might be because I have nothing connected to the SCSI bus.
Whilst it might be handy to have the SCSI side of the AHA-1542b working (for retrieving data from SCSI tape drives, for example); it's not a show stopper. I can live without SCSI capability
I think myself and Alain agree where the issue lies, and he's kindly offered to patch the floppy kernel module, such that you can specify the IRQ and DMA for BOTH FDCs.
On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 5:48 PM, Robert Keyes bob@sinister.com wrote:
I am coming in to the middle of this thread, but IRQs and aha-1542b does bring some bad memories back. I remember struggling to get them to work properly back in 1995. The upshot of it all is: 1542b and PCI are not compatible. I believe this was the official word from Adaptec. They then sold us AHA-2940s, which worked flawlessly (the same can't be said for the Seagate ST32550s they were connected to - those drives ran too hot and burned themselves out! ).