[NBLUG/talk] hardware or software error

Eric Eisenhart eric at nblug.org
Thu Dec 11 17:15:01 PST 2003


On Thu, Dec 11, 2003 at 06:22:05PM -0500, Bob Blick wrote:
> Dec 11 14:59:23 ctc kernel: hda: lost interrupt
> 
> Each time it does this thing, it puts a line like that in the log. The
> machine is a fairly conventional old Pentium 2, 300MHz, 192MB ram, Tyan
> motherboard, 8MB ATI AGP video, SB16 ISA audio, tulip PCI network card,
> 40GB Maxtor hard drive. CDROM drive is on the secondary cable.

Assuming that by "secondary cable" you mean the CDROM has a separate
connection to the motherboard, try reseating both ends of the cable that
goes from the motherboard to the hard drive.  Try replacing the cable if
that doesn't work.

I believe that translates to "communication with your first IDE hard drive
is intermittent", which could be the motherboard, the hard drive or the
cable, but the cable's both most likely and easiest to replace.

> This problem sometimes happens twice in a minute, sometimes only once in
> 15 minutes. The hard drive doesn't make any bad sounds or act bad in any
> way.
> 
> Any suggestions where I should look? I am thinking the first thing to do
> is play around with PCI settings in the bios.

You may want to check and make sure that the SB16 isn't using the same
interrupt as anything else, but the AGP and PCI stuff should negotiate their
IRQs just fine.  Check if it happens more when using the sound card; maybe
even take the sound card out entirely to test that.
-- 
Eric Eisenhart
NBLUG Co-Founder & Director-At-Large
The North Bay Linux Users Group
http://nblug.org/
eric at nblug.org, IRC: Freiheit at freenode, AIM: falschfreiheit, ICQ: 48217244



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