[rescue] tape drive with no SCSI

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Thu, Nov 08, 2001 at 12:30:35AM -0500, Patrick Giagnocavo wrote:
> Joshua D Boyd wrote:
> 
> > My drives and controller on my lintel station are UDMA.  All reasonably
> > new stuff, no fancy hardware, default BIOS settings (except to make it
> > boot CDROM then floppy, then HD, instead of the opposite order).  Stock
> > debian installation.
> 
> Under Linux you use hdparm to manipulate drive and controller settings.  
> 
> Sounds like something isn't set up right.  
> 
> Plus some buggy drive controllers are downgraded to PIO3 or PIO4
> automatically unless you force it to a better mode.  
> 
> I've done the tests IDE vs. SCSI.  On a recent x86 system there is 0.5%
> CPU usage difference, that is it.  But you have to set up the IDE drives
> properly.
> 
> Use "time hdparm -t" or whatever the test flag is.

Hmm.  Seems I don't have an hdparm command installed.  I'll have to look 
into this.  

However, it also seems to me that this is something that should just work 
out of the box.  It is a standard 440bx chipset on a tyan mobo.  There 
aren't that many things that are more standard, especially since this mobo 
doesn't have extras like built in SCSI, sound, or ethernet.  The BIOS 
startup display  says that it is in UDMA mode (although I suppose the 
kernal could be downgrading it after startup).

This sort of thing really hits my buttons about linux (and perhaps any 
unixish OS I suppose).  I just want to sit down and work and play with new 
things.  It is not my goal to learn how to tweak out OSs, nor is it my 
goal to learn to admin networks (although it seems I'm doomed to continue 
learning about each for the time being if I want to get tasks 
accomplished).  Sigh.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd