On 4/15/06, Debbie Deutsch <fedoralist@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Kam Leo wrote: > > > > > Only one IDE connector! And I thought my system was cheap. You really > > have an economy motherboard. > > > > Seriously, the sharing of that single bus does affect operation of all > > devices. Try turning off dma. If that solves your problem I recommend > > that you replace the hard drive with an SATA one. > > > > Oh, I have systems that cost more (because I want them to do more). > This is a little barebones system that can physically hold at most two > storage devices. There is no need for more than one IDE connector or > two SATA connectors. Given what I want to do with it, I will never need > more than those two drives in this system. At the same time, I didn't > want the system to be physically larger than need be. So, this system > is just right. > > Although I respect your seriousness and good intentions in offering your > advice, I am convinced that having the hard drive and the optical drive > on the same IDE bus cannot be the problem. There are several reasons > for my belief: > > 1. There was no problem with this configuration when the hard drive had > FC3 on it. FC3 booted and ran, no problems. > > 2. The optical drive is doing nothing when I try to boot. (For one > thing, booting Linux from the hard drive does not involve trying to read > or write to the optical drive. For another, there is no media in the > optical drive to read from.) So, even though the optical drive is > connected to the IDE channel, it is not using it. > > 3. The install process, during which both drives *are* active, worked > fine, twice. The system always hangs at the same point in the boot > process. If the problem were flaky hardware, the error would not be so > reproducible. > > 4. If merely having two devices on the same IDE bus were enough to cause > problems such as I am experiencing, there were be a lot more people > complaining about similar (and other) problems all of the time. > > Although I am no expert when it comes to Linux, I have almost 30 years > experience with computers, including some quality time up close and > personal with system architecture and design (mostly for data networking > gear, but it's the same issues and principles). I fully appreciate the > fact that the communications performance on a shared bus may decline > when there is more than one active user of the bus. However that is not > the same thing as there being errors. > > Debbie > Do not equate the quality/stability of the 32-bit FC3 drivers with the 64-bit FC5 drivers. They are not the same. The gap is closing but a lot more work needs to be done.
