devb-eide and CompactFlash pb

QNX DEVELOPERS Realtime and Embedded
1

hi

my QNX6 embedded application uses a Compact Flash on IDE. This Compact Flash (which cannot use DMA) is mounted quite early in boot image script, like this:

slogger
(…)
devb-eide nobmstr verbose &
(…)
waitfor /dev/hd0t80 30
mount -w -t qnx4 /dev/hd0t80 /CFG
(…)

→ sometimes, /dev/hd0 doesn’t even exist after devb-eide:
devb-eide says:
DISK: Error io_init status 16 (seems to correspond to EBUSY=16 in errno.h)

sloginfo seems to correctly detect Flash, but it says:
eide_mmap_device_io: status != altstatus
and
eide_command: Busy timeout

What happen to my Flash ? Why is it ‘busy’ ?
Can I change this timeout value ? (I need to have this partition mounted)

Thanx

2

This looks like it is possibly bad hardware. Does this happen with all CF devices you have tried or just the one that is currently in the slot?

3

Yes it happens with all devices.

I found the option ‘timeout’ = I/O request timeout (in devb-eide interface-specific options) which SEEMS to correct the pb:

devb-eide nobmstr timeout=100 & (by default, timeout=10, unit=second)

This seems to work every time with 64Mo / 128Mo DMA/no DMA devices.

Does it make sens ?
I really wonder why devb-eide needs a 100s timeout on an I/O request (a 10s timeout should be long enough, of course !!).

4

It depends. If the CF device is doing a reclaim when it is first configured then it might need more then 10 seconds before coming back.

How is the performance once the system is up and running (read/write)?

5

Once the system is running, open+write+close works well (typically several ms for 1ko data).

devb-eide being ran quite early in QNX boot, is it possible that an IDE detection routine executed by the BIOS could block CF internal controller ?

In my BIOS: all diagnostics and test routines are disabled. Options ‘drive assignment order’, ‘boot order’ and ‘ide drive geometry’ are marked ‘Not installed’.
Only the options ‘Primary/secondary Master/Slave PIO mode’ are configured as ‘Auto’.

I try to play with it…