hi all,
i upgraded the firmware to the latest version available - V7.3-1.
at the SRM console prompt the newly installed disk model is correctly
listed by "show dev" but the OS will only see 128 GB from the whole
~250Gb space available.
i searched further and found that the southbridge chip used in the DS10L
is ALI M1543C A1. the official specification states that the integrated
IDE controller uses the Ultra-33 specification (aka ATA/ATAPI-4, ATA4,
Ultra ATA/33)
LBA addresses in ATA/ATAPI-4 are 28-bit (with each sector representing
512 bytes), so disk size limit in LBA mode is:
2^28*512=137438953472 bytes
137438953472/(1024*1024*1024)=128Gb
having the above in mind i think the limitation comes from the hardware
southbridge chip that implements the integrated IDE controller - this
means that it is not worth installing IDE disks larger than 130Gb in a
DS10L machine.
thanks to Graham Allan for his mail - pointing that he tested with
firmware version 7.2-1 and that the limitation is probably not in the
firmware itself.
Ali M1543C A1 used in AlphaServer DS10L:
http://alpha-supernova.dev.filibeto.org/hardware/alphaserver/ds10l/ali-m1543c/ali-m1543c-ds10l.png
Acer Laboratories Inc. Aladdin M1543C Southbridge datasheet
http://alpha-supernova.dev.filibeto.org/hardware/alphaserver/ds10l/ali-m1543c/SB_1543C.pdf
ATA/ATAPI-4 Working Draft:
http://alpha-supernova.dev.filibeto.org/hardware/alphaserver/ds10l/ali-m1543c/d1153r18-ATA-ATAPI-4.pdf
greetings,
Stoyan Angelov
my original question was:
> hi all,
>
> i have a spare 250Gb IDE disk that i want to install in my aplha DS10L.
> i looked in the mailing list archives and found a thread (from 2003)
> mentioning that the os will only see 130Gb from a similarly sized drive.
>
> is there any chance that the drive will work with the machine updated to
> the newest firmware available or there is a limitation because of the
> older IDE interface used ?
>
> currently i am running firmware version 7.2-1 but i could easily upgrade
> to 7.3 if this will help. the os is 5.1B with PK6.
>
Received on Sun May 18 2008 - 11:51:13 NZST
