freebsd stable - Jun 2005 - ATA_Identify timeout ERROR - using Tyan S5350 with FreeBSD 5.4 (problems booting - SATA hard disk not recognised) -

Hi,

I just got a new Tyan S5350 using twin Xeon processors I am told this is now a
very standard motherboard.  

Unfortunately when I try to boot FreeBSD 5.4 Release I get the following
errors on the IDE/ATA/SATA connection.

The errors I get during boot up are as follows:

The hard disk is not recognised you get the error:

Ata0_master: Failure ATAPI_IDENTITY timeout (x3) Then
Ata1_master: Failure ATA_Identify timeout (x3)

This is true if I use a standard IDE drive (160Gb) or a SATA drive (250Gb).
The BIOS recognises the drives and is happy with them but the OS has this
problem. 

The board appears to use the Intel 6300SEB chip set using for the IDE/ATA/SATA

is it supported?  Or is there a problem with my motherboard?

The board we have is:
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/tigeri7320r_spec.html

If anyone is using this motherboard successfully please let me know so I can
organise a replacement.  

Any other help gratefully received.

Alan Jay 

PS The rest of the machine specs are - twin Xeon processor; 4 Gb RAM; Intel
Gigabit Network card in the PCI slot.  250Gb SATA drive. 

PPS Having looked around the lists there appear to be people who say this is
related to the issues described 5.2.1 release errata
(http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.2.1R/errata.html) 

PPPS loading in safe mode does work but it isn't a viable way to run a
server
anyone got any ideas why this occurs and how to work around it the ideas in
the errata for 5.2.1 don't seem to work assuming that I have the syntax
correct in the /boot/loader.comf

Hi,

Thought I would report back what I discovered.

Following some suggestions on this list I booted into safe mode and installed
the operating system successfully.  I still couldn't get the machine to boot
except in safe mode.  

After updating the source to the latest stable incarnation via cvsup I did a
makeworld and rebuilt the kernel to take advantage of SMP support of our twin
processors.

At the end of that process the server boots fine.  Not sure what the error was
but it is still the case if you use the basic downloaded boot CD from the
archives and boot the server it complains as below. 

But with the recompiled kernel it is fine.

Does anyone have any insigts?

Regards
Alan
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alan Jay [mailto:alan@cyclopsvision.co.uk]
> Sent: Tuesday, June 14, 2005 8:25 PM
> To: 'freebsd-questions@freebsd.org';
'freebsd-stable@freebsd.org'
> Subject: ATA_Identify timeout ERROR - using Tyan S5350 with FreeBSD 5.4
> (problems booting - SATA hard disk not recognised) -
> 
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I just got a new Tyan S5350 using twin Xeon processors I am told this is
now
> a
> very standard motherboard.
> 
> Unfortunately when I try to boot FreeBSD 5.4 Release I get the following
> errors on the IDE/ATA/SATA connection.
> 
> The errors I get during boot up are as follows:
> 
> The hard disk is not recognised you get the error:
> 
> Ata0_master: Failure ATAPI_IDENTITY timeout (x3) Then
> Ata1_master: Failure ATA_Identify timeout (x3)
> 
> This is true if I use a standard IDE drive (160Gb) or a SATA drive (250Gb).
> The BIOS recognises the drives and is happy with them but the OS has this
> problem.
> 
> The board appears to use the Intel 6300SEB chip set using for the
> IDE/ATA/SATA
> 
> is it supported?  Or is there a problem with my motherboard?
> 
> The board we have is:
> http://www.tyan.com/products/html/tigeri7320r_spec.html
> 
> If anyone is using this motherboard successfully please let me know so I
can
> organise a replacement.
> 
> Any other help gratefully received.
> 
> Alan Jay
> 
> PS The rest of the machine specs are - twin Xeon processor; 4 Gb RAM; Intel
> Gigabit Network card in the PCI slot.  250Gb SATA drive.
> 
> PPS Having looked around the lists there appear to be people who say this
is
> related to the issues described 5.2.1 release errata
> (http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.2.1R/errata.html)
> 
> PPPS loading in safe mode does work but it isn't a viable way to run a
> server
> anyone got any ideas why this occurs and how to work around it the ideas in
> the errata for 5.2.1 don't seem to work assuming that I have the syntax
> correct in the /boot/loader.comf