APIC on AMD Athlon 2500+ Broken?

[Tim Writer]

lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org (Lennart Sorensen) writes:

> On Wed, Jul 07, 2004 at 04:27:52PM -0400, Tim Writer wrote:
> > No, it's a RAID controller based on the PDC20276 chipset:
> > 
> >     tim-AxhZhUCsNFI at public.gmane.org% cat /proc/ide/pdcnew
> > 
> >                                 MBFastTrak 133 Lite Chipset.
> >     tim-AxhZhUCsNFI at public.gmane.org%
> 
> I think the ide controller in my machine at home is a 20267, which I
> haven't had problems with so far.  Different model with I believe a
> different driver, so who knows.
> 
> > I just use it as an additional ide controller because I dislike hardware RAID
> 
> Real hardware raid makes life simpler and reduces cpu load and such.  It
> can be great.

It can be horrible too.  Many (most?) products are still not well supported
by Linux meaning you have to boot into a crappy RAID BIOS to make changes.
That's difficult to do when managing systems remotely.  And, of course, every
product has a different interface making for a maintenance nightmare when you
have to support many such systems in the field.

In contrast, Linux software RAID works well and puts you in full control,
even allowing you to do unusual things like mirroring to a network block
device or a USB stick.  I don't really buy the performance argument because
the vast majority of modern machines are I/O bound with plenty of cycles to
spare for computing checksums, parity, etc.  Probably the most useful feature
of (some) hardware RAID is a non-volatile cache but what does that really buy
you over extra (inexpensive) RAM coupled with a decent UPS?

> The current crop of cheap integrated raid on the other hand is a bios
> extension that allows you to boot from what is otherwise just software
> raid, and once booted the device driver takes over running the software
> raid.
> 
> As far as I know all hardware raids rebuild while useable (as does linux
> software raid), which I have read is not the case with the promise
> raids.  They have to finish rebuilding before you can boot.  I hope what
> I have read is wrong, but then again it wouldn't really surprise me much
> if it was the case.

Another reason why I use them as regular IDE controllers.

> Something like a 3ware card on the other hand would be really nice to
> have.

Yes, I've heard these are nice.

-- 
tim writer <tim-s/rLXaiAEBtBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org>                                  starnix inc.
905.771.0017 ext. 225                           thornhill, ontario, canada
http://www.starnix.com              professional linux services & products
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