[Openchrome-users] CN700 stability

[Heike C. Zimmerer]

Christiaan van Dijk <dvbmail at xs4all.nl> writes:

> Here are my latest findings on my CN700 system:
>
> I got an old WD400 drive (40gig/PATA/UDMA100) and reinstalled the 
> complete system with Suse 10.2, added DRM and Openchrome (very easy with 
> the new Xorg version). I also enabled DMA on all the devices. The system 
> has now been running for weeks without a single problem! :-) The system 
> can crash if any of the 3D hardware acceleration is used but this is a 
> known issue. Suse for example disables hardware acceleration in MESA if 
> a Via chipset is detected. AIGLX does use the 3D hardware and can cause 
> problems (seen this with OpenGL screensaver). Have to figure out how to 
> avoid this.
>
> The system runs a Myth backend for testing, MPEG2 SDTV takes about 50% 
> CPU load on a 1.2GHz board (connected to 1280*1024 display). Quite high 
> compared to my CLE266 1.2GHz which takes around 20% (connected to TV). 
> But still faster as full software. Have to try the CN700 on my TV, 
> should be easy since the board has a VT1622A encoder.

To add another aspect: I too had occasional freezes on my J7F2WE
(CN700, VIA Esther 1.2GHz) Board.  Disabling DMA didn't improve the
situation, but I've discovered by accident that without DMA there were
once in a while error messages written to the syslog complaining about
some missing DRQ during multiple sector I/O.

So I disabled multiple sector mode and re-enabled DMA, not expecting
much.  But - it seems to work.  I've tried all what I've learnt from
experience that seemed to bring the system down sooner or later, but
the system is up for 3 days now (never had more than about 24 hours
before, even at minimum system (home server) activity).

If your old drive isn't capable of multiple sector I/O, but the new
one is, this may well point to the same problem.  Then it may be worth
a try to reinstall the new drive and use "hdparm -m 0" to check if
that's really the cause of the failure.



Heike