HDAMA Onboard SATA issues with installed RAM > 4GB

[Eric Wort]

Thanks all for the assistance, but I found a Tyan proprietary sata_sil 
driver for SuSE 9.3 that contains the following text:


6. Known Restriction

   The driver could only work on a platform that has less than 4 giga 
memory.

It looks like I may be out of luck with this SATA controller, I guess 
I'll go back to trying to get my HPT374 driver to not lock up with 
drives attached on boot.

Eric Wort

> Eric Wort wrote:
>
>> First off, I have never been able to get this machine to boot any 
>> release of Fedora Core with more than 4GB of RAM installed, as it 
>> starts having SATA seek errors.
>>
>> Configuration is as follows:
>> Dual Opteron 248's in a RioWorks HDAMA board
>> 4 or 8 GB worth of 1GB Corsair registered DDR400 sticks
>> 2 SATA 74gig Raptors (for the OS)
>> 2 SATA 200gig Seagates
>> 3 PATA 200gig Seagates
>> SATA drives are hooked to the Promise PDC20319 onboard controller
>>
>> Upon trying to upgrade to FC4 from FC2 with 4GB of RAM in the box, 
>> the machine would crash just after detecting the videocard in 
>> anaconda.  For some reason I decided to randomly toss in the other 4 
>> sticks(bringing the total to 8GB) and try the install again, which 
>> worked perfectly during the entire install.  Upon rebooting the fresh 
>> FC4 install, it had the same SATA seek errors as normal.  Taking the 
>> box back down to 4GB allowed it to boot right up.  Does anyone know 
>> why the install kernel would have zero problems with an hour long 
>> install, while the stock FC4smp kernel can't even boot without seek 
>> errors?  I imagine it may be due to the install kernel being single 
>> processor, but I am not sure.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Eric Wort
>>
>