DMA problems with MSI MS-6191 Irongate

[Silverman]

The system has the afore mentioned motherboard with an AMD SlotA 600MHZ CPU and 256 meg SDRAM PC133 ATI Rage Pro Turbo AGP and Win ME full version. The system will not retain native DMA settings in Windows on reboot and when the chipset drivers are installed all the correct devices are detected on reboot but when restarting the PC, the system will WPF resulting in a system restore back to a previous time before the drivers are loaded to get it running again. Also it appears as though the Sound and AGP share an IRQ11. I know it's an old board with a relatively low end cpu in it but it's all the people can afford right now and it will be used mainly as an internet device and for burning cd's as well as the occasional DVD movie, thus the need for DMA. Any help or ideas is greatly appreciated.

[NooNoo]

What are the bios settings for UDMA? Where is the DVDrom on the ide?

[Silverman]

The hard drive is master on primary ide with 80 cond. 40 pin cable the DVD is master and CDRW is slave on Secondary, The hard drive is UDMA4 and both cd's are detected as UDMA2 capable in bios, DMA doesn't stay enabled on the hard drive with the CDRW and DVD disconnected as well.

[NooNoo]

Have you tried disabling system restore?

Click Start.

Choose Settings.

Select Control Panel, then System.

Click the Performance tab.

Choose File System, then Troubleshooting.

In this window, click Disable System Restore.

Click OK.


reboot

set the dma on the hard drive only

reboot
see if it sticks this time

The CDRW probably cannot use dma

[Silverman]

System restore trick did not work in this case, now it seems that the mouse PS2 port is no longer functional, looks like its to the scrap yard with this aged machine. Thanks for the help Noo.

[confus-ed]

Originally posted by Silverman
System restore trick did not work in this case, now it seems that the mouse PS2 port is no longer functional, looks like its to the scrap yard with this aged machine. Thanks for the help Noo.

...defeatist ! ... when did the ps/2 port die ? before/after or during...?

You want to be looking at acpi, that controls all device 'allocations' looks like its confus-ed to me....

We do have all the chipset patches for it, not the via ones but those provided by the motherboard vendor, they are specific !?

[TRICKPLAYER]

I just had a similar, problem with a friends pc, GA7-ZXE and XP 2000, system was very unstable, and would not load games, it was resolved by disabling DMA on the cd rom devices, don't know if this helps, but your friends need to forget about DMA or go for XP maybe

[Silverman]

Originally posted by confus-ed
...defeatist ! ... when did the ps/2 port die ? before/after or during...?

You want to be looking at acpi, that controls all device 'allocations' looks like its confus-ed to me....

We do have all the chipset patches for it, not the via ones but those provided by the motherboard vendor, they are specific !?

It is an AMD chipset. Tried with and without all Drivers loaded. The PS2 mouse port died during an XP service pack1 update. On Reboot the mouse port was no longer detected, FDISK and Format and a reload of ME didn't bring it back so I can presume that the port is dead. USB mouse works ok, for now, but am afraid it is just a matter of time before the whole system blows a capacitor or something. And thank you for the tip on ACPI as this gave me one more item to check...
and not really defeatist, more like reality. I've already spent countless hours on this machine and I will probably recommend an upgrade.

[confus-ed]

Errrr .... what o/s are we trying to fix ? We started with "Win ME full version" then we get "The PS2 mouse port died during an XP service pack1 update" .... mmmm I get confus-ed enough on my own ! .... help an old dude out will ya ? Tell me which...

I'm gonna bang on about acpi now, cos the two o/s's operate completely differently ... but which ever one it is you most definately, absolutely, certainly, never ever want your video sharing an irq. ... got that ? Sharing is bad, necessary, but bad, we need to 'convince' it otherwise.....

As for being defeatist, I get the picture , but my motto is 'fix it or die' .... don't have me committing Hari-Kari just yet please ... if it boots there's hope !

Oh ... & you got the 'inf' patch from Here ? .... you might notice the inf files seem to be only for 98se & w2k ... no xp (maybe's that's native?) & we have flashed the bios ???

As Trickplayer says DMA isn't really needed for writing CDs, its slower in PIO mode, but still works....

[Silverman]

Win Me was the O.S. the owner had originally so I started with it. Ran into the DMA problems and thought it was an O.S. issue so I backed up the drive flashed the bios and installed XP just to see if the DMA problem was fixed. Lo and behold DMA worked Natively for both DVD and CDRW. I figured great the owner would be happy and I would be happy but during the SP1 update the Mouse port went out. I figured it was an issue with XP and went back to Me but the mouse port never came back (still DOA). Sorry to confuse you more than you already are. As I said before the USB port works fine. The Drivers I used were sent to me directly from the motherboard manufacturer (MSI). They look alot like the AMD drivers, dates and all, just rebadged for the MSI board I guess. Didn't need XP drivers as the Chipset is supported fine and dandy by the O.S. Still makes me wonder about the PS2 port going out like it did, I checked the fused links and they are good. Could have been just a fluke that that portion of the I/O went out at that time.

[confus-ed]

Win Me was the O.S. the owner had originally so I started with it. Ran into the DMA problems and thought it was an O.S. issue so I backed up the drive flashed the bios and installed XP just to see if the DMA problem was fixed. Lo and behold DMA worked

Okay ... now I know what o/s we have ! ... I'll say DMA working or not, isn't really to do with the o/s at all .... but bios. However 9x does things one way & xp/w2k another entirely .... Let me ellucidate ....

9x gets all its device settings from the bios table of allocations of resources called the dmi pool (sometimes shown in bios as NVram), then it takes this and ennumerates (makes up from) this a further table called the MS specification table, this is what 9x windoze uses to assign all the allocations to individual devices (IRQs & memory ranges, also DMA) like you can find in device manager (view-resources by connection?), this takes note of what you set the options 'plug & play' & 'acpi' to, but only notice not like it really should with acpi 'on' & use the dmi pool info, for reasons best known to Uncle Bill & his cronies they decided to do something else

Now by the time we get to XP, Uncle Bill woke up .... he looked & thought ... Ye God's that 'eds right again ! ...and as it ought XP now only reads the dmi pool, not extra messing about, XP now has its own internal IRQs(if you look XP magically allows for 256 IRQs but there's only really 16), but doesn't change bios, when it can't sort allocations it lets ACPI do it - Hurahhh!

So, back to the point! .... In XP you only really have one bios setting which affects how it deals with device allocations, ACPI - Advanced Configuration & Power Interface, ACPI allows for more advanced sharing of devices, it identifies what devices on the PCI bus 'play nice together', and allocates them a shared irq on either 9,10 or 11, if you leave it off then no sharing ought to take place & you need to juggle slots if you run out of IRQs...

There's only one catch with this & xp, before you install you need to decide whether ACPI should be on or off yourself ! Once you've installed it one way its a devil to change, (depends which way around & there are tricks - but this post is long enough allready!) ... Generally with any 'new' board (2001 on) choose ACPI on, before that its guesswork unless you happen to know about the differences between PCI specifications ... which is hardly bedtime reading !

Yikes ! how much did I type ? that's explained the background .... but still not a blind bit of help ... at least you know why it goes wrong!

Lets fathom whether the board is 'dying' or not first ... dead ps/2 port points me that way especially as you can't see any physical damage... I take it you know how to get a mouse driver working in dos...? If so try it , else ask ! .... I'm sick of typing !

The top & bottom of this is ... get 'sharing' right & all will be well .... I hope !

[TRICKPLAYER]

Also you could use a serial mouse, some of the usb one's don't always work in dos etc, on older boards