freebsd stable - Nov 2004 - CDRW's DMA support problem (FREEBSD 5.3 Release)

With this message I am reporting a problem which occuered
while I was trying to install FreeBSD 5.3 Release in a
FUJITSU SIEMENS Athlon 2400XP laptop from a CD iso image.

During the boot proccess I 've got these messages

acd0: CDRW <Slimtype COMBO LSC-24081M/3MC1> at ata1-master UDMA33
acd0: TIMEOUT - READ_BIG retrying (2 retries left)
acd0: FAILURE - READ_BIG timed out
acd0: TIMEOUT - READ_BIG retrying (2 retries left)
acd0: FAILURE - READ_BIG timed out
acd0: TIMEOUT - READ_BIG retrying (2 retries left)
acd0: FAILURE - READ_BIG timed out
acd0: TIMEOUT - READ_BIG retrying (2 retries left)
acd0: FAILURE - READ_BIG timed out
acd0: TIMEOUT - READ_BIG retrying (2 retries left)
acd0: FAILURE - READ_BIG timed out
acd0: TIMEOUT - READ_BIG retrying (2 retries left)
acd0: FAILURE - READ_BIG timed out
acd0: TIMEOUT - READ_BIG retrying (2 retries left)
acd0: FAILURE - READ_BIG timed out


After waiting for a long time the TIMEOUTS, I finally
got in the sysinstall screen and the installation
stopped at the point where new packages had to been
added to my new system. I reboot the system and I continued
the installation from FTP, altough the safe mode option
didn't have any problem with DMA issues.

At the end when the installation was complete, it was
impossible to mount any cd/dvd disk. The problem was
solved by passing to the /etc/loader.conf this line

	hw.ata.ata_dma="0"

and everything gone well. I could mount any cd/dvd
disk without any problem.

It will be grate if this problem is solved in future
releases, cause it is very discouraging for a new
user to have such boot messages in his first installation
effort, even if it is unlikely for someone to have
the same, fine tunned to the problem, hardware.

For any further information please feel free to contact
me.


Kostas Theofilatos


ps: In order to install FreeBSD 5.3 Release to box with
the same symptoms like mine (without using FTP or safe mode)
it is enough for someone, to press "6" and escape to
the loader prompt before the kernel loads, and then give

              set hw.ata.atapi_dma=0
              boot

The further installation will go as expected...