Using only 2 cards is not an option unfortunately as the only reason i don't have 16 drives is this problem and as soon as i fill 16 i will be building another system to start expand further.

 

I would be prepared to buy a proper dual XEON system with 64bit PCI cards and redundant power supplies etc etc but i am concerned I will spend all this cash to get to a similar position.

With respect, I don't see how you can say "Using only 2 cards is not an option", when 3 cards do not seem to work.

 

There are lots of reports on the Internet about Promise cards in general being limited to only 2 at a time.  Although that was true of older Promise cards, Promise says absolutely nothing about compatibility of multiple cards concerning its later cards, like yours.  I may be wrong, but I find it suspicious when they avoid the subject so completely.  Several Newegg reviewers of a similar, newer card reported it being limited to 2 cards only, but I don't know where they got that info.

 

It looks to me as if they fixed the known limitation (that was in earlier cards), and enhanced their ability to find available IRQ's and other resources, but that doesn't necessarily make the problem go away.  If a third PCI card can find enough resources, perhaps shared IRQ's, it may appear to install fine, but you are asking for trouble with a shared IRQ.

 

Possibly relevant, possibly not, may be a different chipset than yours, and probably requires a re-compile:

http://www.beowulf.org/archive/2001-November/005395.html

http://www.beowulf.org/archive/2001-November/005396.html

 

I do hope you find a solution.  I personally can't recommend 3 Promise cards though.

 

On the other hand, here's a thread with someone using 3 and 4 Promise TX4 cards:  http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg08358.html

One has 4 Promise TX4 cards, the other has 3 Promise TX4 cards

 

On the other hand, here's a thread with someone using 3 and 4 Promise TX4 cards:  http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg08358.html

One has 4 Promise TX4 cards, the other has 3 Promise TX4 cards

 

 

Dang, you beat me to it!

 

Other threads, however, talk about problems with certain drives (Maxtor) and various other stability/compatibility issues.  Most of those, however, appear to be older posts which one would presume had been addressed.

 

 

Bill

First of thanks for the continuing support, I know how hard it is to remotely support less obvious problems such as this one.

 

RobJ, the links to the "special" compile options look very interesting and a viable option. Would there be any chance limetech of having this done in the next beta (sorry to ask but doing this myself would be problematic).

 

When i said using 2 cards is not an option I didn't really mean using 3 Promise cards is the only option rather i need 16 ports. I am more than happy to replace cards etc at the point when it looks very likely that is the only/best solution. I am not adverse to spending money when needed If i can get the driver patch implemented and I can test it (and it doesn't fix it) my next port of call is to look at different cards

Possibly relevant, possibly not, may be a different chipset than yours, and probably requires a re-compile:

http://www.beowulf.org/archive/2001-November/005395.html

http://www.beowulf.org/archive/2001-November/005396.html

 

Not relevant to your card, but that config option is already set:

CONFIG_PDC202XX_BURST=y

 

Something you might try is use a Promise SATA300 TX4 as your third controller.

 

BTW,  how are  you going to get to 16 drives?  Are you going to use PATA as well?

 

Possibly relevant, possibly not, may be a different chipset than yours, and probably requires a re-compile:

http://www.beowulf.org/archive/2001-November/005395.html

http://www.beowulf.org/archive/2001-November/005396.html

 

Not relevant to your card, but that config option is already set:

CONFIG_PDC202XX_BURST=y

 

Thats a pity i was really hoping that was the fix.

 

 

BTW,  how are  you going to get to 16 drives?  Are you going to use PATA as well?

 

Because when i decided to start moving my data to unRAID i purchased many of these cards as they were supported. I have enough to build a couple of systems.

 

 

Something you might try is use a Promise SATA300 TX4 as your third controller.

 

 

Promise SATA300 TX4 is not that common in the UK and very expensive for what they are (Approx $140 for one card = 4 ports). I also have completely lost faith in promise now. If i buy a new card it will be the Supermicro 8 port card since that halfs my port cost. I need to watch my costs now as with the failure to make the SATA150 TX4 works im essentially binning 8 cards.

 

 

An update. unRAID all of a sudden has become stable although I am not tricking myself into thinking the problem has been fixed, rather its just a longer period of no problems.

 

I noticded one of my promise cards shares an interupt with my NIC and the other 2 share with nothing. I always planned to upgarde my NIC so i went ahead and ordered an Intel 10/100/1000 Pro MT PCI-X server NIC. Word on the street is this is basically the best NIC you can buy without spending a fortune so i will keep you posted.

Intel card just wont work. Best i can get is 50% packet loss on pings.

An old thread but it is mine so I thought i would close it off by posting a success story.

 

My unRAID has never been all that stable and I could easily break it to become unresponsive if i pushed it to hard. Syslog always showed weird errors that were just cryptic enough to make no amount of googling useful.

 

However....

 

The new 4.3 beta series fixes this. Zero errors in my logs. Faster. No crashes and I can push it as hard as i want.

 

Simply superb.

 

It looks like this was likely a kernel/driver thing after all.