This message is from the T13 list server.

On Sat, 26 Jan 2002 10:04:05 -0700, don clay wrote:
>This message is from the T13 list server.
>3.  The device will pause data  transfer only between sectors by waiting to post 
>the interrupt and raise DRQ in PIO mode or by de-activating DMAREQ in any 
>DMA mode.

Ahhh... Not true... There is no requirement (never has been a
requirement) that the device pause or terminate a burst at a sector
boundary. There may be some drives that did that but I don't think it
was or is a common pratice. In MW DMA is was common for host and/or
devices to terminate the burst every 64, 128, 256 words (pick one) so
that some stupid ISA bus motherboards had time to do DRAM memory
refresh cycles. Today I would expect to see Ultra DMA pauses any time
the host or device FIFO full/empty conditions require it and that has
nothing to do with sector boundaries. I would not expect Ultra DMA
burst termination at every sector boundary or even expect that when
burst terminations happen they happen at a sector boundary.

We must be very careful here... No one should design a host or device
that expects DMA bursts to pause or terminate at sector/block
boundaries. I think this has been one of the things confusing Pat
(Pat is that true?).



*** Hale Landis *** www.ata-atapi.com ***



Subscribe/Unsubscribe instructions can be found at www.t13.org.

Reply via email to