I have a strange problem with my AmigaOS 4 installation. Sometimes Workbench just freezes. For about 5-10 seconds everything just stops, it doesn't matter what I am doing, all programs behaves the same. The effect occurs even if I open a drawer and Workbench is just loading the icons. It stop loading until the pause is over and after 5-10 seconds everything continues just like nothing has happened. During the pause the pointer is still moveable but that's about it. It doesn't happen often but it is rather disturbing when it does. My system is stable otherwise.

I have tried to check what's happening with Snoopy but it shows nothing special at all. I guess that program freezes too. During the pause the harddisk LED has a steady glow and it always happens when something is accessing the harddrive. I am using SFS 1.277 on all my partitons. Does anyone have a tip on how I can resolve the problem?

Last edited by Niolator on 23-Nov-2007 at 10:47 AM.

@Niolator

Knackered hard drive / bad sector?

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@Niolator

Which OS4 version are you using ? I can remember there was exactly this kind of problem with one of the pre-releases (can't remember which one). It was fixed later. Try to search old threads on AW.net.

Last edited by Tomppeli on 23-Nov-2007 at 10:55 AM.

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@Tomppeli:

I am using AmigaOS 4 final or update 5 as some prefer to call it.

@yoodoo2:

I will use SFSCheck just to check if there is some problem with the partitons. I recently had to reformat one of them as it had a checksum error on one block so a problem with the file system might be the problem. I think that SFS really need a repair utility.

edit: Sloppy writing.

Last edited by Niolator on 23-Nov-2007 at 11:04 AM.
Last edited by Niolator on 23-Nov-2007 at 11:02 AM.

@Niolator

My guess would be a disk problem. I get the same symptom here from time to time and when it happens I get a cryptic message "xxx timed out, retrying..". I think the system freezes for about 20 seconds, then tries again.

In my case I know that it's time to clean and retighten the power connectors to the disk drives. Once I've done that, it'll run fine again for another year or so.

If you have a serial terminal, check the serial output or use Sashimi to check for debug output.

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Hyperion Support Forum: http://forum.hyperion-entertainment.biz/index.php

@Niolator

Please test with smartmontools, if your hd has problems.
And look how fast is your hd with sfs. Take this programme for this test:
http://os4depot.net/index.php?function=showfile&file=utility/benchmark/diskspeed.lha
A modern hd make more than 40 mb per second with the sil0680 controller on an amigaone.

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and anymore other Amigas...

Quote:

If you have a serial terminal, check the serial output or use Sashimi to check for debug output.

Or try to get the debug output from the buffer:

dumpdebugbuffer ram:debug.log

@ZeroG

I just ran SFSdefrag and the partition I have all my programs on were really fragmented. I doubt that is the problem though. With SFSCheck my partitions showed up having no errors except for the one I recently reformatted. Now it has a checksum error on a different block than the last time. I am making a backup as we speak and I am going to remove the partition and create a new one in HD toolbox just to make sure it works.

@AmigaPapst: Last time I checked the speed was artound 35 Mb/s. I will make another check after my new attempt to fix the bad partition.

Maybe it's time for a new HD too?

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@Flashlab

The hard drive isn´t that old it would be strange if it is that one who is bad. I noticed that I have a blocksize of 2048 though. Shouldn´t it be 512 with SFS? Maybe that is the problem?

@AmigaPapst

Hmm... Something is wrong here. My transfer rate is around 3-5 mb/s. I have a Silicon Image 0680 ATA-kontroller and I have added the line sii_xfer=F000 to the U-boot settings. I thought that was the correct line for activating Ultra DMA 5. I must have been mistaken, what line should it be?

@Flashlab

Removing and creating a new partition fixed the problem with the checksum error. Let's just hope it stays fixed.

@Niolator

Yep, if it happens again I'm afraid there's something wrong with the drive. Did you give the new partition 512 blocks?

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@Flashlab

Yes, I have fixed that on all partitions except for my System partition. I'll take care of that later. It's a lot more work restoring a system partiton after formatting it than an ordinary one.

@Niolator

Quote:

Hmm... Something is wrong here. My transfer rate is around 3-5 mb/s. I have a Silicon Image 0680 ATA-kontroller and I have added the line sii_xfer=F000 to the U-boot settings. I thought that was the correct line for activating Ultra DMA 5. I must have been mistaken, what line should it be?

Use Prefs/UBoot to set the UBoot envvars.

@ZeroG

U-boot prefs doesn't work at all for me. I can't save my changes and I can't even close the U-Boot prefs program. The only use I have of it is that I can see which settings I currently have.

I found out what setting it should be anyway. The right setting is sii0680ide_xfer F000. Now I have speeds sligthly above 30 Mb/s at least. I have never been above 40 Mb/s. I use DTA1 to test My HD with though, it is a 68k-program. Maybe I would get higher speeds reported with Diskspeed but it's more complicated to use.

@Niolator
I dont see the point considering you already are experiencing checksum errors. The only fix is to replace the physical disk itself, or you will just run into the same problem after reformatting/partitioning.

@Tomas

If they return I will follow your advise.

@Niolator

Are you sure you are running OS4 Final? The problem with Uboot prefs is strange too.
Do you have sii0680ide.device.kmod 52.1? (OS4 Final version)

Did you check your RAM? (I think about the Uboot prefs problem).

Last edited by elwood on 23-Nov-2007 at 09:46 PM.

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@Niolator

Please try in a shell:

> idetool -u sii0680ide.device 0

and show us the output. Also try the same with -d instead of -u.

@COBRA

OK, the results are:


2.System:> idetool -u sii0680ide.device 0
-------------------Unit 0 information------------------------
Flags : $00000185 - present, supports DMA, ATA, supports cache flush, interrupts used,
Xfer mode : best pio 12 (PIO 4, 16 MB/s) / best dma 69 (UDMA 5, 100 MB/s) / current 69 (UDMA 5, 100 MB/s)
Total blocks : 120103200
Blocksize : 512
Power mode : 2 / idle (ready for operation)
IO1 / IO2 / BMCR @ : $802500 / $80250A / $802520

and


2.System:> idetool -d sii0680ide.device 0
-------------------ATA device information-------------------
Dev type : IC35L060AVV207-0
Remov Dev : no
Remov Med : no (probably harddisk)
Revision : V22OA63A
Serial # : VNVB05G2RWB6P
LBA : yes
Tot. Secs : 120103200
Tot. Size : 61492838400 bytes, 60051 mbytes, 60 gbytes
Main features :
IORDY : yes
SMART : not enabled
Security mode : not enabled
Power mgmt : supported
Packet cmds : not supported
Write cache : enabled
Look ahead : enabled
Device reset : not supported
Write buffer cmd : supported
Read buffer cmd : supported
Nop cmd : supported
Download microcode : not supported
Read/write DMA queued cmd : supported
CompactFlash cmd set : not supported
Advance power mgmt : not enabled
Acoustic mgmt : not supported
LBA 48 : supported
Minimum PIO cycle time : 240 ns
Minimum PIO c.t. (IORDY) : 120 ns
DMA : yes
Minimum reg. cycle time : 120 ns
mode 64 ( 16 MB/s) : yes
mode 65 ( 25 MB/s) : yes
mode 66 ( 33 MB/s) : yes
mode 67 ( 44 MB/s) : yes
mode 68 ( 66 MB/s) : yes
mode 69 (100 MB/s) : yes
mode 70 (133 MB/s) : no
PIO :
mode 8 ( 3 MB/s) : yes (always)
mode 9 ( 5 MB/s) : yes (always)
mode 10 ( 8 MB/s) : yes (always)
mode 11 ( 11 MB/s) : yes
mode 12 ( 16 MB/s) : yes
Xfer S/IRQ: 16 (Max. number of sectors that can be transferred per interrupt on READ/WRITE MULTIPLE commands)
Xfer S/MUL: 16 (Max. number of sectors currently set to transfer on READ/WRITE MULTIPLE commands)


The version of sii0680ide.device.kmod is OK.

@Elwood

I have had Memchecker running for about two hours without a reported error but that was when I had recently installed the memory. I will start memchecker right now to see if anything has changed.

edit: Memtester I mean of course.

Last edited by Niolator on 25-Nov-2007 at 10:16 PM.