Re: something strange in libata-core.c for kernel 2.6.22-rc3

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Alan Cox wrote:
Yeah, that's consistent to what I've seen on my machine which is a
variant of A8N.  No matter what value I through at _STM, _GTM just
echoed the result thus always leading to 80c configuration.

I guess this means that what we have to do is trust that the BIOS set up
a reasonable mode and base the cable detect on that (either by reading
back the boot-up controller registers, or by calling GTM). I imagine
this is what the Windows default IDE driver is doing (just using the
boot-up mode and feeding it back using GTM/STM on suspend/resume cycles).
Alan, what do you think?

Interesting, sounds like it is still useful rather than just reading the
registers as the GTM/STM seem to survive resume cycles which drive config
may not (eg if the driver is loaded after a s2ram/resume.

I don't think that case is handled in this BIOS anyway - if you call GTM after resume without previously calling STM, it's just going to read whatever random values are in the controller and give you timings based on that, which presumably will be junk.

It looks like the main purpose for what it's doing with saving those registers in the _PTS method is to save and restore a couple of controller registers called ID20 (PCI config space offset 0x50, 16 bits) and ID22 (PCI config space offset 0x5C, 32 bits) which aren't otherwise used in the AML. According to pata_amd, for the AMD IDE interface the former is some reserved bits as well as the cable detect bits, while the latter is the cycle time and address setup time register. Presumably those aren't really the cable detect bits though, since the detection based on those bits in pata_amd doesn't really work..

If it just echoes back we should also be able to detect this by using
knowingly invalid values.

Well, this implementation doesn't purely echo back the same values, it echoes back values derived from what the controller was actually set to, so I imagine if you put in something ridiculous it would come back with the closest possible mode that it was set to (PIO mode 0, etc.)

I suspect the implementation we would need to use (which doesn't depend on anything not given in the spec) would be:

-On driver load, execute _GTM to get the timing mode the BIOS had set. Assume this represents the fastest modes the controller supports, and set cable detect based on whether it includes UDMA modes > 2.

-If we decide to set a slower mode (speed down due to errors, etc.), set it using _STM and then read back the actual values that were set using _GTM (for possible use in suspend/resume).

-On resume after suspend, re-set the last mode using _STM followed by executing _GTF and running those commands.

This won't handle the case where the driver is loaded after the system was already suspended to RAM and resumed, however I don't know exactly how one could handle that in this situation..

--
Robert Hancock      Saskatoon, SK, Canada
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Home Page: http://www.roberthancock.com/

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