Well it looks like I *finially* got my Gateway DX4300 to install and run Plan9 (using 9atom version 3/19/2010). I've decided to post the following notes for the poor saps using the DX4300 for just about anything, because I've read various posts with people having trouble with these MB's. Also, I hope that this might be useful as an overview for those having weird SATA problems installing and running Plan9.
Overview: As Erik Quanstrom pointed out, some of the EIDE/SATA interface chips are buggy, and one should not mix/match devices. The problem on my machine is installing plan9 on any SATA hard drive on a DX4300 causes weird problems. (Maybe we can sort it out later, for for now a mixed IDE/SATA setup works. The DX4300 appears to have two SATA controllers. The first controls SATA 1-4, they can be disabled, and have their mode set. The second, SATA 5-6, is always on and you have no control over the mode, etc. My first success with plan9 on this machine was achieved by unplugging *all* SATA devices and booting off an EIDE CDROM and disk. Once this worked I reconfigured one device at a time, reinstalled, tested, etc., until I ended up with what seems the most stable configuration. An interesting aside, on this MB, if you use SATA5/6, then the devices show up as hd*, and if you use SATA1-4 they show up as sd*. This solves some anoying problems on this MB for Linux users who find that their drive letters float around alot... Notes on Interesting Configurations... ================================= SATA(6) - CDROM SATA(5) - 1TB Disk EIDE(M) - 250G Disk (DMA-0 must be set) EIDE - Enabled SATA - Enabled mode - Native IDE This appears to be the most stable configuration. It will boot Plan 9 from the CD, Linux from the SATA HD, and Plan9 from the IDE HD. Booting plan9 from the SATA HD gives the following errors: Plan9 on SATA(5): PBS2... Plan 9 From Bell Labs ELCR: 0C80 pcirouting: South bridge 1002, 439D not found dev A0 port 1F0 config 427A capabilities 2F00 mwdma 0007 udma 047F LLBA sectors 1953525168 dev B0 port 1F0 config 85C0 capabilities 0F00 mwdma 0007 udma 013F dev A0 port 170 config 427A capabilities 2F00 mwdma 0007 udma 013F LLBA sectors 488397168 . 1. 1 2. 1 3. none of the above *nobiosload: Booting from the EIDE MBR and using sdC0!9fat!9pcf (which is the SATA drive, gives the following errors: ELCR: 0C80 pcirouting: ignoring south bridge PCI.0.20.3 1002/439D .. ohci interupt: unhandled sts 0x00000040 ohci interupt: unhandled sts 0x00000040 and here is where it hangs. In order to get this to work please note that I had to boot Plan 9 with nodma, and actually set the EIDE disk DMA to 0 in the BIOS. I have since then added extra SATA drives to 1+2, and they appear to function properly. ================================= SATA(6) - CDROM SATA(5) - 1TB Disk EIDE(M) - 250G Disk EIDE - Enabled SATA - Enabled mode - Native IDE and ACHI This configuration will boot from the CD, Linux from the SATA HD. Grub and Plan9 cannot see the IDE HD. Attempting to boot plan9 from the SATA HD gives the same *nobiosload error as above. ================================= SATA(6) - CDROM SATA(5) - 1TB Disk EIDE(M) - 250G Disk EIDE - Enabled SATA - Disable This configuration will boot from the CD, Linux from the SATA HD, plan9 from the IDE HD, but plan9 from the SATA HD gives the same: ohci interupt: unhandled sts 0x00000040 errors from above. =================================
