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DMA and Mandrake 7.2

one way to check it is to go to the console and type "dmesg"

Look through it as this is the 'startup messages'. This should show your computers start-up status. Scroll through it for to find out if it is in DMA/PIO mode
 
xtreme2k,
Thanx. Both hard drives on the primary IDE have DMA enabled. On the Secondary IDE, the CD ROM is DMA enabled and the Zip is not. So if I wanted to disable DMA on the CD ROM, how would I go about it. In the BIOS?
 
What type of IDE controller/chipset are you using? If it's a VIA chipset and you're using kernel 2.4, then you definitely do not want to use hdparm to enable DMA. That's described by Vojtech Pavlik (maintained of the VIA IDE driver) as an extremely dangerous thing to do -- i.e. avoid it.

The very latest versions of the kernel have a VIA IDE driver that will automatically enable DMA if you have the CONFIG_IDE_DMAAUTO (or whatever it's called) option enabled when you compiled the kernel. And according to the driver author, that is the only safe way to enable DMA.
 
Thanx BOFH and skriefal. What I really want to do is disable DMA on my CD ROM. I am running an i815e based motherboard. I'm fairly new to Linux, so if someone knows how to do this, I sure would appreciate it. If it is done at a console, would you please help me with the commands also? Thanx.
 
skriefal

check the change log in 2.4.2 mostly fixed.

Wallysaurus

try hdparm -d 0 /dev/hd<?> <?>=whatever your drive is
 
One way to control DMA/PIO could be done in the BIOS (actually this is the best method), or use the hdparm command
 
Wallysaurus....it seems you have more experience in Linux that I do. Why do you want to disable DMA (direct memory access??????) on your CD-ROM?
 
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