A computer is a very complex thing and often it is very difficult to say whether a given error sitation is due to a hardware failure or due to a software problem. On this page I would like to collect problems and solution inorder to make them available for others. All cases presented here will be hardware faults that look at the beginning like a software problem.
Date: Tue Mar 25 14:00:03 MET 2003After I added a new Maxtor Fireball 3 (80Gb) disk to my Pentium 166Mhz computer with Intel Triton (PIIx) chipset I saw always the follwing lines on the screen and in dmesg after copying larger files:
hda: timeout waiting for DMA
ide_dmaproc: chipset supported ide_dma_timeout func only: 14
hda: status error: status=0x58 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest }
hda: drive not ready for command
Note that there is no CRC error reported. A CRC error would
point to a faulty disk or too long cable.
I searched the net and all I could find is that people were suggesting to turn off DMA with the command hdparm. However some wrote that they had also Maxtor disks so I bought a Seagate Barracuda and ... the problem was gone.
This is a Hardware incompatibility between the Maxtor Fireball 3 disk and the Intel Triton chipset.