[ale] boot parms ide=???

[Danny Cox]

Marvin,

On Wed, 2003-02-19 at 06:16, Marvin Dickens wrote:
> hdparm -c1 -m16 -d1 /dev/hda
> 
> This enables 32bit access and multisector reads. These items may already be
> present in a compiled kernel. It depends on distro.

	Just one little nit to pick.  The man pages don't say this, only code
inspection will reveal this.  

	If you're using DMA, then -c{01} doesn't matter.  That only affects PIO
transfers (16 bit words or 32 bit words), so by all means, if you're
stuck with PIO, use -c1!

	The same is true for -mN.  The code has different paths depending on
whether it's transferring single or multiple sectors.  However, when DMA
is in use, that's all bypassed, and the multisector stuff is handled by
the scatter/gather DMA code.

	All that to say that -c1 and -m16 don't hurt, but they don't do
anything when -d1 is in force.

	It's also a good idea to run on -u1 IF YOU CAN.  Most modern chipsets
work just fine with unmasking ints.  The effect of not setting it can
cause seemingly unrelated things to happen.  For example, if you're
burning a CD with -u0, and you have an established modem connection, it
can drop (too many chars arriving, but ints are blocked, resulting in a
dropped carrier).

	I'll head back to my rock, now.

-- 
kernel, n.: A part of an operating system that preserves the
medieval traditions of sorcery and black art.

Danny

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