Asus P5B-VM motherboard: cd drive malfunctions if internal nic in use.

Asus P5B-VM motherboard: cd drive malfunctions if internal nic in use.

[Phil Kaslo]

Hello,

I have a new machine, Asus motherboard, in which the cd drive malfunctions 
if the internal nic on the mb (RealTek RTL8168b/8111b) is actively in use.   
The cd drive, on ide2, is, as per dmesg, a Sony:
 ide2: BM-DMA at 0xa400-0xa407, BIOS settings: hde:pio, hdf:pio
 hde: SONY DVD RW AW-Q170A, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
 hde: ATAPI 48X DVD-ROM DVD-R CD-R/RW drive, 2048kB Cache, UDMA(66)

I've seen this on 3 of these new machines so far.  One has a LITE-ON cdrom: 
 hde: LITE-ON DVDRW LH-20A1H, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
so this is not unique to the Sony.

Motherboard:  Asus P5B-VM  G965 775  BIOS Revision : 613
CPU: Intel Core 2 CPU 6300 1.86GHz

Fedora Core 6, x86_64, Linux version 2.6.19-1.2911.6.4.fc6.
Also, with Linux kernel version 2.6.20.1, from source.
With nic kernel module r1000.ko, version 1.05, from RealTek.
Also with kernel module r8169.ko, from kernel version 2.6.20.1.

>From /proc/interrupts:  ide2/hde/cdrom and eth0 are both on irq 17:
 17:      10602      44763   IO-APIC-fasteoi   ide2, uhci_hcd:usb2, eth0

When i first brought the system up, i got continual messages saying the 
cdrom seemed confused.  Turning off haldaemon quieted those.

Reproduce by bringing up a Fedora 6 or kernel version 2.6.20.1 system 
as above, using the internal nic. Start up an scp of 1 gb file from another 
machine to this machine.  In another window, attempt to mount a data cd, 
or play a music cd.  See it not work, and see error output from dmesg.  
Sample output:

 hde: cdrom_pc_intr: The drive appears confused (ireason = 0x01). Trying to 
 recover by ending request.
 hde: status error: status=0x58 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest }
 ide: failed opcode was: unknown
 hde: drive not ready for command
 ...
 hde: status timeout: status=0xd8 { Busy }
 hde: DMA disabled
 hde: drive not ready for command
 hde: ATAPI reset complete
 end_request: I/O error, dev hde, sector 64
 isofs_fill_super: bread failed, dev=hde, iso_blknum=16, block=16

Workaround - disable the internal nic in the bios.  Use a pci nic card, 
such as an Intel Pro 1000 (kernel module e1000).  Try the above test, and 
see the cd drive work.  Get no error output from dmesg.

>From /proc/interrupts with pci nic: eth1, e1000, is on irq 16 and ide2 is on 17:
 16:      11907    2833837   IO-APIC-fasteoi   uhci_hcd:usb1, eth1, nvidia
 17:         48      84696   IO-APIC-fasteoi   ide2, uhci_hcd:usb2

I do not know if this is a bios problem on this motherboard,
a problem in the r1000 and r8169 drivers for the Realtek nic,
or a problem in the ide drivers that drive the cdrom.

Thanks for any help or clues.

Phil Kaslo
Dept. of Computer Science  520-621/2760
University of Arizona      phil@cs.arizona.edu
Tucson, Ariz. 85721

Re: Asus P5B-VM motherboard: cd drive malfunctions if internal nic in use.

[Mark Lord]

Phil Kaslo wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I have a new machine, Asus motherboard, in which the cd drive malfunctions 
> if the internal nic on the mb (RealTek RTL8168b/8111b) is actively in use.   
> The cd drive, on ide2, is, as per dmesg, a Sony:
>  ide2: BM-DMA at 0xa400-0xa407, BIOS settings: hde:pio, hdf:pio
>  hde: SONY DVD RW AW-Q170A, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
>  hde: ATAPI 48X DVD-ROM DVD-R CD-R/RW drive, 2048kB Cache, UDMA(66)
> 
> I've seen this on 3 of these new machines so far.  One has a LITE-ON cdrom: 
>  hde: LITE-ON DVDRW LH-20A1H, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
> so this is not unique to the Sony.
> 
> Motherboard:  Asus P5B-VM  G965 775  BIOS Revision : 613
> CPU: Intel Core 2 CPU 6300 1.86GHz

Is that a PATA cd-drive?  If so, then you must have hooked it up
to the JMicron IDE controller.  That driver is just plain buggy.

I gave up on it for my own P5B-VM.  The libata version works better
than the drivers/ide, but I gave up on it and got a SATA DVD/RW drive.

Off topic:  do your USB ports power off when the system shuts down?
Mine don't -- the +5V continues on them.. I'd love a tip on how to
turn them off completely at shutdown.

Cheers

Re: Asus P5B-VM motherboard: cd drive malfunctions if internal nic in use.

[Alan Cox]

> Is that a PATA cd-drive?  If so, then you must have hooked it up
> to the JMicron IDE controller.  That driver is just plain buggy.

It ought to be rock solid, perhaps you can send me a detailed bug report.
In fact it actually doesn't do very much at all as the controller is
smart enough to do all the hard work itself.

> I gave up on it for my own P5B-VM.  The libata version works better
> than the drivers/ide, but I gave up on it and got a SATA DVD/RW drive.

The two drive the devices identically although if there was a problem I
guess the libata one would recover better.

Would appreciate bug reports anyway so I can do more detailed analysis.

Alan

Re: Asus P5B-VM motherboard: cd drive malfunctions if internal nic in use.

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Mon, Mar 12, 2007 at 06:35:10PM -0400, Mark Lord wrote:
> Is that a PATA cd-drive?  If so, then you must have hooked it up
> to the JMicron IDE controller.  That driver is just plain buggy.
> 
> I gave up on it for my own P5B-VM.  The libata version works better
> than the drivers/ide, but I gave up on it and got a SATA DVD/RW drive.
> 
> Off topic:  do your USB ports power off when the system shuts down?
> Mine don't -- the +5V continues on them.. I'd love a tip on how to
> turn them off completely at shutdown.

Most Asus boards have jumpers for the USB ports to select between +5V
and +5VSB (stand by power).  The reason to provide standby power is so
that keyboards with power buttons can remain powered so that you can
turn the system on using the usb keyboard.  If you want to power off the
ports entirely, jumper them to the +5V line instead which only has power
when the system is on.

--
Len Sorensen

Re: Asus P5B-VM motherboard: cd drive malfunctions if internal nic in use.

[Mark Lord]

> On Mon, Mar 12, 2007 at 06:35:10PM -0400, Mark Lord wrote:>

>> Off topic:  do your USB ports power off when the system shuts down?
>> Mine don't -- the +5V continues on them.. I'd love a tip on how to
>> turn them off completely at shutdown.
> 
> Most Asus boards have jumpers for the USB ports to select between +5V
> and +5VSB (stand by power).  The reason to provide standby power is so
> that keyboards with power buttons can remain powered so that you can
> turn the system on using the usb keyboard.  If you want to power off the
> ports entirely, jumper them to the +5V line instead which only has power
> when the system is on.

That's nice.

But the P5B-VM board does not have any such jumper for USB,
nor does it have any obvious combination of BIOS-setup options
to accomplish it.

Re: Asus P5B-VM motherboard: cd drive malfunctions if internal nic in use.

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Tue, Mar 13, 2007 at 12:23:06PM -0400, Mark Lord wrote:
> That's nice.
> 
> But the P5B-VM board does not have any such jumper for USB,
> nor does it have any obvious combination of BIOS-setup options
> to accomplish it.

Well it could only be done by hardware.  The P5B has those jumpers.  I
figured the P5B-VM while a budget micro board would still have those.  I
guess not.  Without jumper settings for it there is nothing you can do
about it.  A quick look through the manual certainly only mentions
standby power for the keyboard connector and not for the USB ports.

--
Len Sorensen

Re: Asus P5B-VM motherboard: cd drive malfunctions if internal nic in use.

[Phil Kaslo]

It is a pata cd drive, attached to the JMicron controller.

I'll look into whether the usb ports power off on shutdown.

Thanks,

Phil