2.6.x DMA ALI chipset bugs

From: plazmcman
Date: Tue Apr 13 2004 - 22:42:27 EST


I have an old IBM ThinkPad (266MHz) with an ALi chipset. lspci -v | grep -i ali reports:

[addr] Host bridge: ... M1531
Subsystem: ... M1531
[addr] ISA bridge: ... M1533
Subsystem: ...M1533
[addr] IDE interface: ... M5229
[addr] Bridge: ... M7101

Under kernel 2.4.22, DMA worked fine (~9MB/s hda). With 2.6.(0,3,4,5), the machine won't work with DMA enabeled at boot. Kernel panics due to "can't find init", and stuff like "can't execute /etc/rc.d/rc.S", or "/sbin/agetty", etc.

I _do_ have kernel support (built-in) for ALiM15x3. I can boot up the computer (kernel argument ide=nodma), and then attempt to turn DMA on - it will sometimes succed, _but_ there is no performance gain (~4MB/s - ugh).

Any workarounds, patches, help?

Thanks,
Brannon Klopfer
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