Re: ECS k7s5a motherboard doesnt work

Re: ECS k7s5a motherboard doesnt work

[Justin Mierta]

well, i dont have a floppy drive, so that test is a little difficult to 
do, but i threw some ram in there that i have used in linux before, and 
i still had the slew of ide error messages.  and this harddrive has 
worked in linux before.  i'm getting more and more convinced its an ide 
controller +linux issue.

plus, i just discovered this:
http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0109.1/0198.html

which really points to ide controller and linux not fighting nicely 
together, altho the thread doesnt really point towards a solution.

justin


Alan Cox wrote:

>>well, i've been using it in win98 (unfortunately) and it works 
>>perfectly.  i havent even had it crash at all.  so i doubt its a 
>>hardware thing...
>>
>
>That proves absolutely nothing. Win98 stresses the system differently to
>Linux. Run test tools like memtest86 on it
>

Re: ECS k7s5a motherboard doesnt work

[Adrian Burgess]

On Mon, Oct 29, 2001 at 10:10:28AM -0500, Justin Mierta wrote:
> 
> well, i dont have a floppy drive, so that test is a little difficult to 
> do, but i threw some ram in there that i have used in linux before, and 
> i still had the slew of ide error messages.  and this harddrive has 
> worked in linux before.  i'm getting more and more convinced its an ide 
> controller +linux issue.
> 
> plus, i just discovered this:
> http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0109.1/0198.html
> 
> which really points to ide controller and linux not fighting nicely 
> together, altho the thread doesnt really point towards a solution.
> 
> justin

Ok, well, I'm still using the KS75A under Linux, Win98, and WinXP, and the
only OS that seems to have problems is Linux.  I don't have any data
corruption problems (as far as I know), but I'm still getting the DMA
timeout errors reported in the thread above.  There definitely seems to be
more reports than normal about IDE problems with Linux on this board.  And
other than IDE the board seems pretty stable.
Btw, the SIS900 is the on-board Ethernet controller.

Cheers,
Adrian

Re: ECS k7s5a motherboard doesnt work

[lung]

I had started a similar thread last week:

http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0109.1/0198.html


There is clearly something wrong with the sis ide driver.  I've lost years
of information due to backups also being corrupt.  I'll hopefully be
testing a patch in the next day or two from Andre.

Reading your previous posts, I'd still have to agree with Alan that
have something else going wrong.  I've had similar problems where things
have worked in windows, but then not even being able to install Linux.
The results problems have ended up being bad ram and inadequate cooling.


On Mon, 29 Oct 2001, Justin Mierta wrote:

> well, i dont have a floppy drive, so that test is a little difficult to
> do, but i threw some ram in there that i have used in linux before, and
> i still had the slew of ide error messages.  and this harddrive has
> worked in linux before.  i'm getting more and more convinced its an ide
> controller +linux issue.
>
> plus, i just discovered this:
> http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0109.1/0198.html
>
> which really points to ide controller and linux not fighting nicely
> together, altho the thread doesnt really point towards a solution.
>
> justin
>
>
> Alan Cox wrote:
>
> >>well, i've been using it in win98 (unfortunately) and it works
> >>perfectly.  i havent even had it crash at all.  so i doubt its a
> >>hardware thing...
> >>
> >
> >That proves absolutely nothing. Win98 stresses the system differently to
> >Linux. Run test tools like memtest86 on it
> >
>
>
>
>

Re: ECS k7s5a motherboard doesnt work

[Zephaniah E. Hull]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1792 bytes --]

On Mon, Oct 29, 2001 at 10:10:28AM -0500, Justin Mierta wrote:
> well, i dont have a floppy drive, so that test is a little difficult to 
> do, but i threw some ram in there that i have used in linux before, and 
> i still had the slew of ide error messages.  and this harddrive has 
> worked in linux before.  i'm getting more and more convinced its an ide 
> controller +linux issue.
> 
> plus, i just discovered this:
> http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0109.1/0198.html
> 
> which really points to ide controller and linux not fighting nicely 
> together, altho the thread doesnt really point towards a solution.

I'm using a K7S5A with recent 2.4.x kernels, and have no major
problems[0].

I don't remember why I have CONFIG_IDEDISK_MULTI_MODE on, but I do.

I also have CONFIG_IDEDMA_NEW_DRIVE_LISTINGS on, and obviously have
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SIS5513 on.

Oh, and I have CONFIG_IDEDMA_IVB as well.

The only problems I have seen with this board are that I can't find
drivers for the sound (no big loss), lmsensors does not seem to be able
to properly read the sensors (annoying), repeated 'VFS: Disk change
detected on device ide1(22,0)' messages (my cdrom drive, getting a
little annoying), and, thats about it.

I have not seen any data corruption.

My obvious question is what kernels are you running, and are you
enabling CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SIS5513 or not?

Zephaniah E. Hull.
> 
> justin

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Re: ECS k7s5a motherboard doesnt work

[Alan Cox]

> The only problems I have seen with this board are that I can't find
> drivers for the sound (no big loss), lmsensors does not seem to be able

[ALSA has one I believe]

> to properly read the sensors (annoying), repeated 'VFS: Disk change
> detected on device ide1(22,0)' messages (my cdrom drive, getting a
> little annoying), and, thats about it.

rpm -e magicdev

ECS k7s5a audio sound SiS 735 - 7012

[John Fremlin]

Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> writes:

> > The only problems I have seen with this board are that I can't find
> > drivers for the sound (no big loss), lmsensors does not seem to be able
> 
> [ALSA has one I believe]

I couldn't see one. Do you know what name it would have or where I can
get the datasheet for it?

The ECS K75S5A motherboard is built around a SiS735 chipset with
integrated sound, called a SiS7012 by SiS. According to
http://www.sis.com/support/driver/audio.htm one MS-Windows driver
covers the chipsets SiS635, SiS735, SiS633, and SiS733.

There allegedly exist non-free Linux drivers from OSS called the
SiS7012. 

The PCI dump for the sound part is

/proc/pci:
  Bus  0, device   2, function  7:
    Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS7012 PCI Audio Accelerator (rev 160).
      IRQ 11.
      Master Capable.  Latency=64.  Min Gnt=52.Max Lat=11.
      I/O at 0xdc00 [0xdcff].
      I/O at 0xd800 [0xd83f].


/sbin/lspci  -v:
00:02.7 Class 0401: 1039:7012 (rev a0)
        Subsystem: 1019:0a14
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 11
        I/O ports at dc00 [size=256]
        I/O ports at d800 [size=64]
        Capabilities: [48] Power Management version 2

[...]

-- 

	http://ape.n3.net

Re: ECS k7s5a audio sound SiS 735 - 7012

[John Fremlin]

Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> writes:

[...]

> > The ECS K75S5A motherboard is built around a SiS735 chipset with
> > integrated sound, called a SiS7012 by SiS. According to
> > http://www.sis.com/support/driver/audio.htm one MS-Windows driver
> > covers the chipsets SiS635, SiS735, SiS633, and SiS733.
> > 
> > There allegedly exist non-free Linux drivers from OSS called the
> > SiS7012. 
> 
> I guess someone who wants the driver needs to talk to SiS about
> datasheets

Who to talk to at SiS? They have a dubious web interface for sales and
marketing requests that I used, but I'd prefer to email someone who
knows what a datasheet actually is ;-)

Alsa doesn't advertise any contact with SiS at all :-(
-- 

	http://ape.n3.net

Re: ECS k7s5a audio sound SiS 735 - 7012

[Alan Cox]

> > [ALSA has one I believe]
> 
> I couldn't see one. Do you know what name it would have or where I can
> get the datasheet for it?

Apparently I was misinformed.

> The ECS K75S5A motherboard is built around a SiS735 chipset with
> integrated sound, called a SiS7012 by SiS. According to
> http://www.sis.com/support/driver/audio.htm one MS-Windows driver
> covers the chipsets SiS635, SiS735, SiS633, and SiS733.
> 
> There allegedly exist non-free Linux drivers from OSS called the
> SiS7012. 

I guess someone who wants the driver needs to talk to SiS about datasheets

Re: ECS k7s5a audio sound SiS 735 - 7012

[Dan Hollis]

On 2 Nov 2001, John Fremlin wrote:
> Who to talk to at SiS? They have a dubious web interface for sales and
> marketing requests that I used, but I'd prefer to email someone who
> knows what a datasheet actually is ;-)
> Alsa doesn't advertise any contact with SiS at all :-(

I've already talked with SiS. They are insisting that they will write the
drivers themselves, they dont want to release datasheets to anyone. The
reply I got (Thu, 25 Oct 2001) they said they are working on OSS drivers
in-house, and ALSA drivers are next.

Of course, who knows when they'll be released.

-Dan
-- 
[-] Omae no subete no kichi wa ore no mono da. [-]

Re: ECS k7s5a audio sound SiS 735 - 7012

[Alan Cox]

> I've already talked with SiS. They are insisting that they will write the
> drivers themselves, they dont want to release datasheets to anyone. The
> reply I got (Thu, 25 Oct 2001) they said they are working on OSS drivers
> in-house, and ALSA drivers are next.

I guess in the mean time SIS board are best avoided. Who knows if they'll
ever actually deliver

Re: ECS k7s5a audio sound SiS 735 - 7012

[Alan Cox]

> ALSA drivers seem to work. A standard SuSE 7.2 install with yast2 alsa installer
> had no problems with producing sound on a k7s5a.
> 
> The sound quality is somewhat poor however; but even with another sound card
> this board is cheaper than the alternativesa and works very fast. 

What driver does it install ? - Soundblaster 8bit ?

Re: ECS k7s5a audio sound SiS 735 - 7012

[Andi Kleen]

Dan Hollis <goemon@anime.net> writes:

> On 2 Nov 2001, John Fremlin wrote:
> > Who to talk to at SiS? They have a dubious web interface for sales and
> > marketing requests that I used, but I'd prefer to email someone who
> > knows what a datasheet actually is ;-)
> > Alsa doesn't advertise any contact with SiS at all :-(
> 
> I've already talked with SiS. They are insisting that they will write the
> drivers themselves, they dont want to release datasheets to anyone. The
> reply I got (Thu, 25 Oct 2001) they said they are working on OSS drivers
> in-house, and ALSA drivers are next.

ALSA drivers seem to work. A standard SuSE 7.2 install with yast2 alsa installer
had no problems with producing sound on a k7s5a.

The sound quality is somewhat poor however; but even with another sound card
this board is cheaper than the alternativesa and works very fast. 

-Andi (happy user of a k7s5a with a sblive) 

Re: ECS k7s5a audio sound SiS 735 - 7012

[Alan Cox]

> > I guess in the mean time SIS board are best avoided. Who knows if they'll
> > ever actually deliver
> 
> Why suggesting to avoid this board that looks pretty fast, stable and is
> very cheap? A reasonable and low cost Sound board will fit and will give
> far better sound quality for less CPU load.

because so many people have bought things on the promise of vendor support
that never appeared or was at best minimal

> Btw, I just purchased a CMEDIA 8738 based sound board for less than 20
> euros (119 FF to be precise).

Nice cards