OS/2 Shareware BBS: 8 Other/08-Other.zip/eidete19.zip/EIDEFLAW.TXT

Text File | 1995-10-29 | 59KB | 1,559 lines

PCI EIDE CONTROLLER FLAWS REV 19


Revision 19: 1995 October 29


SUMMARY OF RECENT CHANGES

1)   The RZ-1000 and CMD-640 flaws have still not been fixed
    in new versions of the chips.

2)   Intel's CtrlTest to check for both the RZ-1000 and CMD-
  640 chips is now available under the name RZtest.exe.
  Beware! old versions of the MS Word documentation contains a
  macro virus. The virus was removed in October 95. See
  http://www.intel.com/procs/support/rz1000/index.html

3)   There is a mysterious new patch for 640B for Warp
  called 640x_v20.zip dated Sept 1, 1995. Its source is
  unknown, however it appears to work, and work faster than
  Fixpack 10. It is probably the code the CMD company wrote. I
  have had one report that it was available via FTP at
  Phen.techhouse.brown.edu, but I have never been able to get
  through myself. I have another report it was not there. CMD
  has an OEM BBS for its customers, but it is not open to the
  public. I could not find it on the public BBS at (714) 454-
  1134, however I did find 640X_USR.403 which contains a
  variety of patches for various operating systems.

4)   Art Scott ([e-mail]) suggests that you can
  sometimes tweak the performance of the RZ-1000 back up by
  configuring the setting in advanced BIOS for the maximum
  number of cycles that a PCI device can hold onto the PCI bus
  before the next board gets a turn, from 66 to 33.

5)   According to John Blenkinsop ([e-mail])
  WFWIN10.ZIP is now available to update the install diskettes
  to the Fixpack 10 level. It includes the RZ-1000 and CMD-640
  fixes, but does not automatically install the CMD fixes. See
  ftp://service.boulder.ibm.com/ps/products/os2/fixes/v3.0warp
  /english-us/wfwin10/wfwin10.zip

6)   IBM heard about the RZ-1000 flaw back in June 1994, but
  dismissed it as a "hardware error".

7)   According to [e-mail], one retailer, La Cle
  Informatique, in France is offering to replace the defective
  Vobis motherboards it sold.

8)   EIDEtest 1.9 and CDTest 1.1 released. The only change
  is a warning to run your tests with background execution
  configured on.

9)   Fixpack 10 contains the necessary fixes for Warp.
  Beware! There are leaked, buggy copies of Fixpack 10 out on
  the net.

10)  PJ19409.zip has been changed. It now contains all the
  fixes necessary for the RZ-1000 and for the CMD-640. Follow
  the installation instructions carefully. If you just follow
  your nose, chances are you will be worse off than you are
  now. This fix has been incorporated into Fixpack 10.

11)  Intel contradicts itself on the performance hit from
  disabling prefetch to bypass the flaws. Robert Schultz
  ([e-mail]) reports a 50% performance hit
  after applying the CMD-640 fix. Marco Trunzer
  ([e-mail]) reports a 15% slowdown.
  There are still no benchmarks on the effects on background
  bus-intensive processes.

12)  Dell is upgrading its XPS 90 to avoid the flawed chips,
  but they are keeping the old kiss of death name.

13)  Micron P5-90 M54Pi-N 11P has flawed CMD 640 chip on the
  primary channel, but a working SMC chip on the secondary
  channel. By moving your EIDE devices to the secondary
  channel, you can avoid the flawed chip.

14)  The precise mechanism of failure for both the RZ-1000
  and CMD-640 is now understood. The RZ-1000 has two different
  flaws and the CMD-640 has five. In addition most motherboard
  manufacturers using these two chips hooked them up
  improperly.

15)  SMC 37650 controller is probably ok.

16)  NT 3.5 not immune after all. It handles the RZ-1000 but
  not the CMD PCIO 640. Fix is available.

17)  Software from IBM and Intel to detect both faulty chips
  directly.

18)  Explanation of what "Intel Inside" means.

19)  Dell offers upgrade BIOS to turn off the prefetch
  buffers.

20)  List of safe and unsafe operating system software.

21)  IBM hardware is clean.

22)  Stonewall rebuilds. Intel recants on offer to replace
  defective motherboard.

23)  Problem is showing up under Windows For WorkGroups in
  32-bit mode.

INTRODUCTION

There are serious flaws affecting about 1/3 of all PCI
motherboards. The flaws affect any motherboard or EIDE
controller paddleboard containing the PC-Tech RZ-1000 PCI
EIDE controller chip or the CMD PCIO 640 PCI EIDE controller
chip.

The flaws affect motherboards from ASUSTeK, AT&T, DEC, Dell,
Gateway, Intel, Micron, NEC, Zeos and others. Since Intel
makes so many of the motherboards sold under other brand
names, the flaws affect many machines, both 486 and Pentium
PCI.

The flaws show up most frequently when you run a true
multitasking operating system such as OS/2 Warp or NT. It
also shows up under Windows For WorkGroups in 32-bit mode
during tape or floppy backup and restore. In theory the
flaws could do damage under DOS, DESQview, Windows and
Windows For WorkGroups in 16-bit mode, but so far there have
been no damage reports. Windows-95 contains code to bypass
the flaws.

The RZ-1000 has two flaws. The CMD-640 has those same two
flaws plus three others. To make matters worse, most
motherboard manufacturers using these two flawed chips
connected them up incorrectly. There are software bypasses
for these flaws. However, the Warp fix the CMD-640 reduces
disk performance by 15 to 50%. The RZ-1000 fix has
negligible impact on disk I/O though it can slow down
background processes.

I would advise new hardware to bypass the CMD-640 flaws, and
living with software fixes to bypass the RZ-1000 flaws.


WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS?

When you are using an IDE or EIDE hard disk attached to the
EIDE motherboard port, the flaws subtly corrupt your files
by randomly changing bytes every once in a while. The flaws
introduce bugs into EXE files, subtle errors into your
spreadsheets, stray characters into your word processing
documents, changes to the deductions in last year's tax
return files, and random changes to engineering design
files.

This corruption happens when you are simultaneously using
your EIDE or IDE hard disk and some other device, most
commonly the floppy drive or mag tape backup.

The same sorts of problem may occur on reading a CD-ROM
drive attached to an EIDE port.


IS IT SERIOUS?

These flaws are nasty. They are causing hundreds of times
more havoc than the infamous Pentium divide flaw ever did.
"I am Pentium of Borg. You will be approximated."

Not only does this corruption occur, but it occurs quietly,
often going unnoticed.

If the system crashes, you usually put the blame on the
operating system software, or the application. It might
actually be a faulty RZ-1000 or CMD-640 EIDE controller chip
nailing you.

When a directory becomes corrupted, you may not notice it
until the damage is irreparable. If a spreadsheet
application reads a comma-delimited ASCII file, it may
simply miss a few bytes in a number, an error that may go
unnoticed, and that error could cascade through the rest of
the spreadsheet.

If you have had unexplained crashes in OS/2, you have
probably experienced the problem, and should make a thorough
check for hidden corruption. Remember that the bug may only
slightly alter your data, and the corruption may not be
obvious.

Keep in mind that not every problem is the RZ-1000's or the
CMD-640's fault. Overheating, unrelated hardware faults and
design flaws, or software bugs can cause similar symptoms.
DMA channel conflicts also cause similar symptoms. Happily,
EIDEtest and CDTest can unmask all manner of simultaneous
I/O faults.

Unfortunately, correcting the problem just stops further
file corruption. It will not help to clean up the existing
damage to your files. Right now, the focus is on bypassing
the flaws. Preventing further corruption is child's play
compared with the nightmare of trying to track down all the
existing random errors in files. Backups even from day one
may be corrupt. If you have the either of the flawed chips,
you will probably never be able to completely eliminate the
effects of past corruption.


HOW DO YOU TELL IF YOU HAVE THE FLAWED CHIPS?

There are four categories of motherboard:

1)   Definitely safe. Motherboards may still have flaws, but
  all software in use bypasses them.

2)   Probably safe. In theory there could be problems, but
  no one has reported any so far.

3)   Possibly dangerous. You will have to run EIDEtest,
  CDtest, or IOTest to find out.

4)   Probably dangerous. You will still have to run the
  tests to find out for sure.

Definitely Safe

Definitely safe includes older machines with ISA. EISA, or
MCA buses. The flaws only affect machines with the new PCI
bus or the VESA VL bus. PCI machines that use the new Triton
chipset from Intel do not have the flaws

PCI machines with Intel BIOSes that run only DOS, DESQview,
Windows 3.1 or Windows-95 are safe. If you have a non-Intel
BIOS and run only DOS, DESQview, Windows 3.1, Windows-95 and
never use the "fast mode" simultaneous disk I/O feature on
floppy or tape backup/restore, you are safe.

You still might want to test your machine. There are similar
problems with other causes the tests will unmask.


Probably Safe

If you have a non-Intel BIOS and run only DOS, DESQview,
Windows 3.1, or Windows for WorkGroups 3.11 in 16-bit disk
access mode, you probably will not see the problem, even
though you may have one of the faulty chips.


Possibly Dangerous

Most auxiliary chipsets (e.g., OPTI Viper, SMC, Mercury and
Neptune) used on PCI motherboards do not include a built in
EIDE controller. Such motherboards use a separate EIDE
controller chip -- often the flawed RZ-1000 or CMD-640. If
you use a separate no-name EIDE paddleboard, it will likely
use the one of the flawed chips. In theory, the flaws could
affect DOS, Windows, and Windows For WorkGroups with 16-bit
disk access during floppy/tape backup and restore, though no
one has reported problems yet. Windows For WorkGroups with
32-bit disk access is dangerous if you have the flaws.


Probably Dangerous

PCI Motherboards (both 486 and Pentium) with the older
Mercury and Neptune chipsets are likely to have the flawed
chips. The Mercury chipset was popular in P60 and P66
systems, and the Neptune in P70, P90 and P100 systems.
Mercury chipsets are labelled with an MX suffix and Neptune
with NX. If you are using NT, OS/2 Warp or Linux, you are
likely to have already experienced extensive file corruption
if either of the flawed chips are present. Check the list
later in the article for motherboards known to carry the
flawed chips.


TESTING FOR THE FLAWS

Scot Llewelyn, one of the eight authors of PowerQuest's
PartitionMagic, discovered one of the RZ-1000 flaws and made
it public. Prior to that, only employees of PC-Tech, Intel
and Microsoft were aware of how to bypass the flaws. In the
process of tracking the RZ-1000 problems down, Internet
comp.os.os2.bugs participants discovered a second flawed
chip, the CMD-640.

Scot did most of the initial work documenting the first RZ-
1000 flaw. He wrote a program called IOtest that can detect
the flaws if:

1)   You are using OS/2 Warp.

2)   You are willing to go through the hassle of creating a
  separate small partition to run the test. You can use his
  program, PartitionMagic, to make room to create one.

3)   You have an EIDE hard disk attached to your EIDE port.
  It cannot detect the problem if you only have an EIDE CD-
  ROM, or if the EIDE port is currently unused.
  Scot originally called his test program DMAtest because he
  erroneously thought simultaneous DMA was the sole culprit.
  Do not confuse PowerQuest DMAtest with Gazelle's DMAtest
  which only tests if the floppy drive will work happily
  simultaneously with the hard disk.

The world needed an easier-to-use test that would run under
DESQview, Windows, Windows For WorkGroups, Windows 95, NT
and OS/2. So I wrote EIDEtest to test for the flaws without
requiring you to create a special partition or buy Warp
OS/2. I also wrote CDTest to test for the flaws when you
have an EIDE CD-ROM drive.

You can also get both programs from me by snail mail.

If these tests fail, it proves you have a serious problem,
but not necessarily that you have the RZ-1000 or CMD-640
chip.

If the tests pass, you still may have a problem since,
especially under DOS, DESQview and Windows, the flaws may
only show up very rarely. If you run the tests under Windows-
95 they will always pass, even if you have a defective chip,
because the operating system already bypasses the flaws. If
you suspect trouble, run the tests several times.


VISUAL INSPECTION

You can also have a look at your motherboard. Between the
PCI slots, at the edge of the motherboard, look for a
rectangular chip about 1 by 2 cm (0.5" x 0.75") that says RZ-
1000 near the top of the chip. There are variations on the
chip name, e.g., "RZ-1000BP". Unfortunately, the markings
are not always present, especially in ASUSTeK motherboards
which may have the "CMD PCIO 640A" or "CMD PCIO 640B" chip.
As of October 1995, all versions of the RZ-1000 and CMD-640
are defective, even new ones.


DIRECT TESTS

The OS/2 Warp Bonus Pack Sysinfo version 3.02 utility (the
upgraded downloaded version) will report on your EIDE
controller. The signature for the RZ-1000 looks like this:

manufacturer: PC TECHNOLOGY INC
class code : 0001
Vendor ID: 1042
Device ID: 1000
Revision ID: 0001

For the CMD-640B it will look like this:
manufacturer : CMD TECHNOLOGY INC
class code : 0001
Vendor ID :1095
Device ID : 0640
Revision ID : 0002

The Warp disk driver IBM1S506.ADD with the /V switch will
tell you if you have the RZ-1000 or CMD-640 chip.

Intel has written a new test that looks directly for either
of the two faulty chips called CtrlTest.exe, however it is
filed under its old name RZTest.exe.

The Windows-95 Control panel will also report on the EIDE
controller chip.


WHERE HAVE FLAWS BEEN FOUND?

Via email, on BIX and on the Internet and in
comp.os.os2.bugs, people have reported finding flaws in the
following specific motherboards.

Motherboard          Chip     Reporters

Acculogic VL         CMD-640  Mark Lord ([e-mail])
Paddleboard                   tentative

ACMA P590            ?        Bob Smith

AST Bravo MS-T P/75  CMD-640  Mike Coplien
                              ([e-mail])

ASUSTeK PCI/I        CMD-640  Marco Trunzer
P54SP4                        ([e-mail]-
                              karlsruhe.de)

                              Maurice Schekkerman
                              ([e-mail])

                              Mike Coplien
                              ([e-mail])

                              Robert Schultz
                              ([e-mail])

                              Thomas L. Kusterer
                              ([e-mail])

AT&T Globalyst 630   CMD-640  Mike Coplien
                              ([e-mail])

CMD CSA-62101Kx VL2  CMD-     George Voros
IDE paddleboard      640B     ([e-mail])

Compaq Presario      CMD-640  Walter Wu
                              ([e-mail])

Compaq Prolinea      CMD-640  Walter Wu
                              ([e-mail])

DEC Celbris 590      CMD-640  Fred Thomsen
                              ([e-mail])

DEC Starion 700I     CMD-640  Mike Coplien
                              ([e-mail])

DEC Venturis 466     CMD-640  Mike Coplien
                              ([e-mail])

DEC Venturis 560     CMD-640  Fred Thomsen
                              ([e-mail])

Dell Dimension XPS   RZ-1000  Scot Llewelyn
P100                          ([e-mail])

Dell Dimension XPS   RZ-1000  Steve Ertman
P75                           ([e-mail])

Dell Dimension XPS   RZ-1000  Dong Chen ([e-mail])
P90
                              Larry Lai ([e-mail])

                              Lawrence Rounds
                              ([e-mail])

                              Mike Griggs ([e-mail])

                              Mike Heath
                              ([e-mail])

                              Moira Watson
                              ([e-mail])

                              Nathaniel Beck @weber.ucsd.edu

                              Pete ([e-mail])

                              Shallenberg
                              ([e-mail])

                              Wijadi Jodi
                              ([e-mail])

Dell Optiplex 575    CMD-640  Mike Coplien
                              ([e-mail])

Dell Optiplex XM     CMD-640  Aron Eisenpress
590                           ([e-mail])

Dell XPS-133c        neither  Blake Scholl ([e-mail])

EliteGroup UM8810P-  CMD-640  Bodo Huckestein ([e-mail]-
AIO                           Koeln.DE)

                              Guy Kapteijns
                              ([e-mail])

Escom P5/60          CMD-640  Detlef Meier
(Intel Premiere               ([e-mail])
ATLX)                         Rogier van Wanroij
                              ([e-mail])

Escom P60I           CMD-640  Tim Schofield
                              ([e-mail])

Escom P90            RZ-1000  Karl Knoflach
                              ([e-mail] )

                              ([e-mail])

Gateway 2000 P5-60,  RZ-1000  Angus Black
Intel Mercury Rev 3           ([e-mail])

                              Gary Farr
                              ([e-mail])

                              Daron Davis
                              ([e-mail])

                              Jerry Lynch ([e-mail])

                              Keith Patterson
                              ([e-mail])

                              Rick Gregory
                              ([e-mail])

                              Roy L. Smith
                              ([e-mail])

Gateway 2000 P5-66   RZ-1000  Randy Nerwick
                              ([e-mail])

Gateway 2000 P5-90   RZ-1000  Alan Murphy ([e-mail])

                              Roy L. Smith
                              ([e-mail])

Intel Hendrix        CMD-640  Clif Purkiser Intel Corp
                              ([e-mail])

Intel Insight P5-60  RZ-1000  Jim Arnone
Premiere PCI II               ([e-mail])
Baby AT, Neptune
Chipset

Intel Plato 90       RZ-1000  Adrian Teo
                              ([e-mail])

                              Alain Rassel
                              ([e-mail])

                              Chris Norman
                              ([e-mail])

                              Clif Purkiser Intel Corp
                              ([e-mail])

                              Kevin Chua
                              ([e-mail])

                              Kevin T. Van Maren
                              ([e-mail])

                              Kim Hvarre
                              ([e-mail])

                              Martin Kogelbauer
                              ([e-mail]
                              )

                              Rick Nelson
                              ([e-mail])

                              Richard Techmanski
                              ([e-mail])

Intel Premiere       RZ-1000  Clif Purkiser Intel Corp
                              ([e-mail])

Intel Premiere LPX   CMD-640  Clif Purkiser Intel Corp
                              ([e-mail])

Intel Premiere MM    CMD-640  Clif Purkiser Intel Corp
                              ([e-mail])

Intel Robin LC       CMD-640  Clif Purkiser Intel Corp
                              ([e-mail])

Knowledgebase P90    CMD-640  Andy Longton
laptop                        ([e-mail])

Micron P5-90         CMD-640  Primary fails, secondary is
                              OK.

                              Eric Johnson
                              ([e-mail])

                              Jim Short
                              ([e-mail])

                              Mike Coplien
                              ([e-mail])

Micronics M54Pi      CMD-640  Adam Haar
                              ([e-mail].
                              au)

Midwest Micro P90    CMD-640  (412d25$[e-mail]
                              )

NEC Image P90        CMD-640  Mike Coplien
                              ([e-mail])

Packard Bell Legend  CMD-640  James Treworgy
100CD                         ([e-mail])

PCI-EIDE local       CMD-640  ([e-mail])
clone, Phoenix BIOS
4.04, ALI chipset

Quantex P5/90 PM-2   RZ-1000  Jay Schamus
                              ([e-mail])

Soyo SY-4SA2 486     ?        Jeffrey Hurwit
prior to B5                   ([e-mail])

Unknown 486 DX       SMC3765  Eric Stephen Mountain
                     0        ([e-mail] )

Unknown 90 MHz       ?        Andreas
                              ([e-mail].e
                              du)

                              Carol Lim ([e-mail])

Viglen P90 (Intel    RZ-1000  Phil Buckley
Plato)                        ([e-mail])

Vobis                RZ-1000  Thomas Wagner
                              ([e-mail])

Vobis 4886DX2-66     CMD-640  Guy Kapteijns
                              ([e-mail])

Zenon P90            RZ-1000  Aria Novianto
                              ([e-mail])

ZEOS Pantera         RZ-1000  Paul Whitelock
                              ([e-mail])




KNOWN GOOD MOTHERBOARDS

The following motherboards have been tested with EIDEtest or
CDtest and found to be ok. Not to worry, there are many more
good boards than I have listed here:

Motherboard      Chip    Reporters

Arsys P200-PCI   Triton  Robert Aboud
                 /sis    ([e-mail].c
                         om)

ASUSTek PCI/I-   Triton  Roedy Green
P54TP4                   ([e-mail])

Dell Dimension   ?       Note: older versions of
XPS P90c                 this board were flawed.

                         Dave Nuttall
                         ([e-mail])

Intel Zappa      Triton  Ron McGlade
                         ([e-mail])

Micronics 486    ?       Bob Meredith
VLB                      ([e-mail])

Seanix           Opti    Bill Unruh
                 Viper   ([e-mail])

Soyo SY-4SA2     SYS     Jeffrey Hurwit
486/B5                   ([e-mail])




WHAT CAN YOU DO IF YOU HAVE A FLAW?

 1)  Pester the manufacturer. Unfortunately, the EIDE
   controller chips are soldered in. The only way to repair a
   flaw is to replace the whole motherboard, recycling the
   socketed chips -- the CPU, DRAM and SRAM cache. It would be
   very expensive for computer and motherboard manufacturers to
   fix a flaw.
   After a month of stonewalling, Dell has announced it will
   offer a BIOS upgrade to turn off the prefetch buffers.
   According to [e-mail], one retailer, La Cle
   Informatique, in France is offering to replace the defective
   Vobis motherboards it sold.
   You can contact Dell at [e-mail] or (800) 624-
   9896.
   Intel is now acknowledging the problem. For a short while,
   Intel offered to replace defective motherboards, then they
   reneged. You can contact them at [e-mail] or
   call their tech support line [phone]. Select options
   1-3-1. You can find international contact numbers at:
   http://www.intel.com/intel/intelis/contact.html.
   You can call ASUSTeK at [phone].
   Call PC-Tech at [phone].
   Call CMD Technology at [phone], [phone] or
   [phone] FAX.

 2)  Buy a new unpopulated Triton PCI motherboard and
  recycle the CPU, DRAM and SRAM cache chips from the old
  motherboard. Unfortunately, the Triton chipset has design
  shortcuts that hamper performance in simultaneous I/O
  situations. At least they don't corrupt data.

3)  Run the controller in degraded mode. Some BIOSes have a
  feature disable the EIDE prefetch buffer. Vendors may offer
  a BIOS upgrade to allow you to manually disable prefetch.
  The BIOS may also turn it off automatically if either of the
  defective chips is present. This will bypass both RZ-1000
  flaws and two of the five CMD-640 flaws. Art Scott
  ([e-mail]) suggests that you can sometimes tweak
  the performance of the RZ-1000 back up by configuring the
  setting in advanced BIOS for the maximum number of cycles
  that a PCI device can hold onto the PCI bus before the next
  board gets a turn from 66 to 33.

4)  Buy a PCI EIDE paddleboard controller such as the DTC
  2130S, the Tekram 290N/290S, the Promise 2300+ or the
  BusLogic BT-910 to replace the one on the motherboard. You
  must disable the EIDE controller on the motherboard. This
  fix will waste one of your precious slots. Be careful. You
  could be leaping out of the RZ-1000 frying pan into the CMD-
  640 fire since paddleboards often use the CMD-640.

5)  Buy a SCSI hard disk and CD-ROM, and avoid using the
  EIDE ports entirely. Under OS/2 and Linux, SCSI gives better
  performance, but costs more. DOS, Windows, Windows For
  WorkGroups and Windows-95 are unable to exploit the advanced
  features of SCSI, but at least avoid the EIDE flaws when you
  go pure SCSI.

 6)  Find a software work-around. There are fixes for Warp
  to bypass all the flaws in the RZ-1000 and CMD-640. Fixpack
  10 is the first fixpack to bypass the flaws. Now that Intel
  and IBM have finally revealed the technical details, all the
  operating system writers can patch their EIDE drivers to
  bypass the flaws. There are also fixes for NT 3.1 and 3.5.
  See below for details.

 7)  Get a BIOS upgrade. For DOS, DESQview, and Windows 3.1,
  to bypass the flaws you may need a new BIOS -- an EPROM
  chip. If you have a flash BIOS, you can update it simply by
  downloading a file. Most BIOSes already have code to bypass
  the flaws for DOS, DESQview and Windows. However, more
  advanced operating systems bypass the BIOS, so even a smart
  BIOS will not protect you. However, the BIOS CMOS settings
  may allow you to disable prefetch, which also protects you
  even in true multitasking operating systems.

 8)  Cut the trace. Cut the trace on the motherboard from
  the floppy changeline to the EIDE controller. However this
  just bypasses one of the CMD-640's five flaws and one of the
  RZ-1000's two flaws.

9)  Use the Secondary EIDE Controller. Some motherboards
  such as the Micron P5-90 M54Pi-N 11P use different kinds of
  controller on the primary and secondary EIDE ports. The
  primary may be flawed, but the secondary OK.
  Whatever method you use to bypass the flaws, retest with
  EIDEtest and CDTest afterwards to be sure your fix worked
  and you caught all the problems.


CLEANING UP THE MESS

Once you have bypassed the flaws, you can start working the
problem of cleaning up your files.

The first thing to do is to re-install your operating system
and all your application programs. This will replace any
damaged EXE and DLL files.

Catching errors in your data files is more difficult. Keep
your eyes peeled for any improbable spreadsheet results. You
may have to hire a programmer to write you some comb
programs to sniff through your databases, looking for
suspicious values.

If you routinely use the verify feature of Lotus Magellan,
it can detect changes to files that should not have changed.
This may help you uncover some of the damage. The flaws are
not polite enough to redate the files they corrupt.

If you have backups from before the time you bought the
faulty machine, you can restore them and re-key everything.

Most people will not be so fortunate. All their backups will
also be corrupt.

Most people with flaws will just have to put up with random
errors dotting their data files ever after.


OPERATING SYSTEM SUMMARY

Operating System   Work Around

Netware            - No problems reported.
Unixware 1.1
NEXTSTEP
Banyan
Solaris 2.4+
SCO Unix 3.1+
Windows-95

DOS                - No problems reported so far. If you do
DESQview           have trouble:
Windows 3.1        - Turn off EIDE prefetch in CMOS
                   settings.
                   - Upgrade BIOS chip.
                   - Turn off simultaneous disk/floppy/tape
                   I/O in your backup programs.

Windows For        - Turn off 32 disk access mode.
WorkGroups         - Turn off EIDE prefetch in CMOS
                   settings.
                   - Upgrade BIOS chip.
                   - Turn off simultaneous disk/floppy/tape
                   I/O in your backup programs.

Windows NT 3.1     - Turn off EIDE prefetch in CMOS
                   settings.
                   - Apply ATDISK.SYS fix.

Windows NT 3.5     - Turn off EIDE prefetch in CMOS
                   settings.
                   - Apply the 640XNT35.ZIP fix.

OS/2 2.1           - Disable prefetch buffer in CMOS
                   settings.
                   - Load the IBMINT13.I13 driver instead
                   of the IBM1S506.ADD driver. This trick
                   will only work if your BIOS has flaw
                   bypass code. It will be slow.
                   - Upgrade to Warp

OS/2 Warp 3        - Apply Fixpack 10, it contains all the
                   special fixes.

                   If for some reason, you are unwilling to
                   apply Fixpack 10, you can do the
                   following:
                   - Disable prefetch buffer in CMOS
                   settings.
                   - Apply the RZ-1000 portion of
                   pj19409.zip if you have the RZ-1000.
                   - Apply the CMD portion of pj19409.zip
                   including IBMIDECD.FLT if you have the
                   CMD-640.
                   - If that does not work, try
                   basedev=CMD640x.add /16BIT.
                   - In a pinch, if you cannot do either of
                   the first two things, add a line to
                   config.sys BASEDEV=IBMINT13.I13 and
                   remove the line BASDEV=IBM1S506.SYS. The
                   IBMINTI3.I13 Device driver lives in
                   C:\OS2\BOOT, and on the first install
                   diskette, and the on the CDROM in
                   \OS2IMAGE\DISK_1. This trick will work
                   only if your BIOS has flaw-bypass code.
                   It will be slow.

Linux              - Disable prefetch buffer in CMOS
                   settings.
                   - To bypass the CMD-640 flaws use the
                   boot time kernel parameter:
                   hda=serialize.
                   - To bypass the prefetch flaws, use the
                   default settings to suppress interrupts
                   during I/O on the external Hard Disk
                   Parameter utility hdparm..


REPORTING YOUR FINDINGS

Whether or not you find any flaws, please email me at
[e-mail] or post the following information in the
Internet newsgroup comp.os.os2.bugs:

1)   Test results. (I would like to hear about both machines
    with and without flaws.)

2)   Brand and model of your motherboard.

3)   Brand and model of your entire system.

4)   Which chip did you find, the RZ-1000, the CMD-640, the
  SMC 37650? What did SYSINFO 3.02 report about your EIDE
  controller chip?

5)   Have you noticed data file corruption?

6)   Which tests and versions did you use? (IOtest,
  EIDEtest, CDtest, RZtest, CtrlTest or visual inspection)

7)   What activities did you run in the background during
  the test?

8)   Which operating system and version you used to run the
  test (e.g. Warp Connect blue spine)

9)   Which fixpacks and patches did you applied before
  running the test?

10)  Brand and model of EIDE hard disk

11)  Brand and model of EIDE CD-ROM

12)  Markings on the suspect chip, e.g., "RZ-1000BP", "CMD
  PCIO640B", "SMC 37650".

13)  Vendor's name

14)  Vendor's response on informing him of your problem.

WHOSE FAULT IS IT?

The wags will have fun tormenting Intel for using the flawed
RZ-1000 and CMD-640 in its motherboard designs, even though
Intel did not manufacture either of the two faulty chips.
Intel is not the only company to manufacture motherboards
with the faulty chips, but Intel will bear the brunt of the
bad publicity.

PC-Tech manufactured the faulty RZ-1000 EIDE controller chip
used in many PCI motherboards. PC-Tech is a subsidiary of
ZEOS, the clonemaker. In turn Micron Electronics owns ZEOS.
PC-Tech has offices just down the street from Zeos in
Minnesota. Intel bought the chips from PC-Tech, and in turn
many clone makers bought motherboards from Intel. Other
motherboard manufacturers also used the faulty chips. In a
similar way Intel and other companies also used the CMD-640
chip from the CMD Technology Corporation of Irvine
California.

PC-Tech, Intel and the clone makers all failed to test their
designs properly. The software makers did not test their
software on enough machines to show up the problem before
releasing it.

Even worse, in some motherboard designs, Intel used the CMD-
640 chip. This goof was inexcusable, since the chip, by
deliberate design, is incapable of simultaneous I/O.

How did the flawed CMD-640 chip and the RZ-1000 slip through
Quality Assurance testing? My guess is no one did real world
testing; technicians only tested under laboratory conditions
using only simple operating systems like DOS. They might
have ignored flaws that happened only sporadically, blaming
it on a faulty chip rather than a faulty design. It is very
hard to catch a flaw that only manifests rarely.

CMD, PC-Tech, Intel, and Microsoft have known about how to
bypass these problems for quite some time. IBM was aware
there was a problem but was unaware of the solution. For
obvious reasons, these companies were reluctant to inform
the public of the danger of the ongoing subtle corruption.

No one who understood the RZ-1000 and CMD-640 flaws
publicised their findings. If PC-TECH, Intel and Microsoft
had not been so secretive, they could have averted the
damage. Perhaps they were silent because the flaws primarily
hurt the customers of competitor, IBM.

The collective damage done by withholding information about
the flaws is huge, certainly many millions of dollars for
those large companies whose backups are corrupt as well. It
will be interesting to see if anyone launches a damage
lawsuit against CMD, PC-Tech, Intel or Microsoft. If they
do, it might make both hardware and software makers more
careful about releasing improperly tested products.

IBM is not totally innocent either. According to
Massimiliano Vispi ([e-mail]), on June 17, 1994, IBM
posted a document:
http://ps.boulder.ibm.com/pbin-usa-
ps/pub_huic_getrec.pl?DVantero.swm.boulder.ibm.com+DBos2+DA2
2398+ST"H085835"+USPublic
that stated:

     "Another case has been where the PCTech chip RZ-
     1000 used for IDE operations on the PCI bus is in
     use (PJ15378). On Intel Pentium motherboards with
     PCI/IDE on board slot, data is sometimes lost.
     This is a hardware error. This is PJ15378."

Sam Detweiler of IBM explained that this referred only to
the trailing 2 byte loss RZ-1000 problem. IBM was not aware
of the concurrent floppy problem with prefetch at that time.

Discussions with Intel and PC-Tech lead IBM to believe that
re-writing the interrupt handler to avoid reading the IDE
status register recursively would solve the problem. PC-Tech
never did explain the precise failure mechanism.

IBM says the CMD-640 problem also appeared in October 1994
with the Vobis systems. CMD did not inform IBM of the
problem.

Prefetch also affected the CMD chips (640, 640A and 640B).
CMD built their own driver based on IBM code to handle the
serialisation problem. They did not fix the prefetch problem
in their driver so it appears they too were unaware of it at
this time.

There is potential here for some massive lawsuits. No wonder
the companies who knew about the flaws have been so tight-
lipped. Think of the damage if Boeing or GM had its plans
for coming products stored on flawed machines. Literally,
these flaws could cause plane crashes.


INTEL'S SPIN

There are three levels of "Intel Inside".

1)   Weak. Your motherboard has an Intel CPU but a support
  chipset from another manufacturer.

2)   Medium. Your motherboard has an Intel CPU and Intel
  support chipset such as the Neptune or Triton, but some
  other company built the BIOS and motherboard.

3)   Strong. Your motherboard has an Intel CPU, Intel
  support chipset, Intel motherboard and Intel BIOS.

Intel literature on the RZ-1000 and CMD-640 only refers to
(3). Intel cannot very well speak for (1) and (2) where
the PCI EIDE controller design was out of their control,
even though these machines bear the "Intel Inside" logo.

Intel does not make this distinction clear in their
literature.

According to Intel, "This problem is a consequence of the RZ-
1000's inability to fully compensate for all the
implications of running an IDE hard disk as an extension of
the PCI bus, instead of running as an extension of the AT
bus which it was originally designed to do."

Intel would have us believe the problems are flaws per se,
but rather a limitation that the programmers forgot to take
into consideration.

The truth is grey. UART chips have similar flaws.
Programmers have gradually learned to code around them. We
don't insist that all COM port hardware be recalled. We now
tend to blame a programmer if he does not bypass the known
UART flaws.

Given that software work-arounds are now possible, the
primary blame shifts for any perpetuation of the problem to
the software authors.

However, there are many other EIDE chip designs that do not
have this "limitation". Since the chip are supposedly
generic implementations of the ATA interface standard, I
cannot so lightly excuse these flaws.


SPECULATION

Because setting the flaws right would be so expensive, I
suspect that clone makers and motherboard manufacturers will
continue to refuse to replace the defective equipment. At
best they may offer BIOS upgrades to bypass the flaws.
Microsoft has already added code to Windows-95 to bypass the
flaws. Clone makers will rely on software vendors to write
drivers that bypass the flaws for Warp, NT, Linux and the
various UNIXes.

Now that the OS/2 fixes are out, the pressure to set things
right will dwindle. Since DOS, Windows in 16-bit mode,
Windows-95 are immune, little pressure to correct the
problem is likely to come from those camps.

The motherboard manufacturer has five options:

1)   Replace the motherboard. Recalls on a mass scale would
  be extremely costly for the motherboard manufacturers, so
  you can count on them to fight. ($400 parts + $250 labour)

2)   Provide a replacement paddleboard EIDE controller that
  takes up a PCI slot. ($75)

3)   Provide a new BIOS chip that bypasses potential
  problems for DOS and Windows. The BIOS could also turn off
  prefetch which would rescue multitasking operating systems
  that do not use the BIOS for I/O. ($10)

4)   Tell the users to upgrade to software that bypasses the
  flaws, and to turn off simultaneous disk/tape/floppy I/O in
  any backup software run under DOS, DESQview or Windows.
  Users won't like the performance hit, however. ($0)

5)   Stonewall and refuse to even acknowledge the problem.
  This will be more difficult now that Intel and Dell have
  publicly admitted the problem. ($0)

Intel has already set the precedent by offering to replace
defective Pentiums, even though software can bypass its
divide flaw. The RZ-1000 flaws are far more serious, and the
CMD-640 flaws are even more serious still.

Keeping this under wraps is going to be hard for the clone
builders. Brooke Crothers of Infoworld did several stories
based on my compilations. I have been in contact with Jerry
Pournelle of Byte. I sent email to John Dvorak. Even Dean
Takahashi of the San Jose Mercury Daily News did story. In
the November 1995 editions, a 1000-word abridged version of
this essay appeared across Canada in The Computer Paper
and Toronto Computes. The stonewall is coming tumbling down.
As one individual pointed out, I read your postings on the
Internet, and see them the next day quoted in my daily
newspaper.


WHAT ARE THE FLAWS?

IBM Confirmed the RZ-1000 has two different flaws:

1)   In prefetch mode, multi-sector reads often fail.

2)   The chip erroneously responds to floppy status commands
  and corrupts hard disk or CD-ROM I/O in the process.

IBM confirmed the CMD-640 has five different flaws:

1)   It has the same prefetch problem as the RZ-1000.

2)   It has the same floppy status problem as the RZ-1000.

3)   It does not support simultaneous I/O on the primary and
  secondary EIDE ports.

4)   Confusion over legacy and PCI mode.

5)   Does not support 32-bit writes.

THE FLAWS UNDER A MICROSCOPE

After the manner of Ionesco, Roedy Green said, "All great
programmers are paranoid." Programmers have to anticipate
problems that could happen only once in a trillion machine
cycles since such problems would still show up on average
every three hours. EIDE problems sometimes go days without
manifesting. Sometimes they show up within seconds,
depending on the unrelated I/O activity in the machine.

I have read about ten conflicting explanations from
authorities on the cause of the problems. Much of the
confusion comes because there are so many different flaws --
all generating similar symptoms. I based the following
explanations on postings from Sam Detweiler of IBM's Warp
Device Driver section ([e-mail]).

The RZ-1000 and CMD-640 both have the prefetch flaw and the
floppy status flaw. The CMD-640 has three additional flaws.
I will focus on the three most important.


FLAW 1: PREFETCH BUFFER FLAW

The RZ-1000 and CMD-640 both have the prefetch flaw.

Data moves from the hard disk to RAM via a bit bucket
brigade. The RZ-1000 grabs data 16 bits at a time from a
buffer in the integrated controller in the hard disk, and
hands it off 32 bits at a time off to the PCI bus. The CPU
sits in a tight loop grabbing data from PCI bus and storing
it in RAM. In prefetch mode, the RZ-1000 keeps ahead of the
CPU, requesting two 16-bit chunks from the hard disk, in
order to have a 32-bit chunk ready when the CPU asks.

When you disable the prefetch buffer, you turn off the
parallelism and run in a degraded lock-step mode. In
degraded mode, the RZ-1000 waits until the CPU asks for a 32-
bit chunk. Then it puts the CPU on hold while it asks the
hard disk for two 16-bit chunks. It glues them together, and
puts them on the PCI bus and allows the CPU to continue.

I advise all but the most dedicated technophiles to skip the
next paragraph.

If the RZ-1000 is running with prefetch enabled, it
erroneously considers a sector read complete as soon as it
has grabbed the last 16 bits from the hard disk and stuffed
it into the prefetch FIFO buffer. It should not consider it
complete until the CPU has stuffed all the data into RAM.
The RZ-1000 then starts to read the next sector. If the
current read operation is interrupted, or delayed by
simultaneous DMA from some unrelated device, before the last
two bytes are read from the FIFO, and the next sector is
prefetched into the FIFO before the current data transfer
completes, then the chip will erroneously signal yet another
Data Available Interrupt. Because OS/2 has already signalled
EOI (End Of Interrupt) to the PIC (Programmable Interrupt
Controller) and enabled interrupts, it recurses into the
disk driver interrupt handler. The driver then reads the
status register. Unfortunately, because of a cheap design
shortcut, the FIFO is used both for data and status. The CPU
reads the data in front of the status as if it were the
status. This causes the interrupted data transfer to later
read the following status as if it were data, resulting in
corruption. Both the RZ-1000 and CMD-640 fail in exactly the
same way.

There are two software techniques to bypass this flaw:

1)   Never schedule more than one I/O at a time. Use strict
  polled mode with no interrupts. Turn off all unrelated
  interrupts during I/O. This is the DOS/Windows approach. The
  disadvantage is poor performance and possible lost incoming
  modem characters.

2)   Turn off the prefetch buffer. According to Intel and
  IBM, in a lightly loaded system, there is sufficient spare
  capacity on the PCI bus so running in degraded mode only
  slows the disk down by 1%. However, programs making
  extensive use of the PCI bus such as LANs or video bit-map
  painting will also slow down. Both Intel and IBM tell us
  that turning off prefetch to bypass the flaw has negligible
  effect on performance. Yet in the Plato BIOS rev 12, Intel
  says that enabling the prefetch buffers will "significantly
  increase PCI IDE Hard Disk performance." They can't have it
  both ways.

FLAW 2: FLOPPY STATUS

The RZ-1000 and CMD-640 both have the floppy status flaw.

This flaw is the result of an incredible chain of blunders.

The original MFM (the predecessor to IDE) interface design
blunder was using different bits of the same I/O port, 3F7,
for two unrelated purposes, detecting the floppy changeline
and reporting hard disk status. Modern EIDE controllers are
no longer supposed to do this, but some chips carry on in
the old tradition and provide legacy logic. Motherboard
manufacturers then often blunder by attaching the floppy
changeline to the EIDE controller. This way both the EIDE
controller and the floppy controller think they are in
charge of reporting floppy changeline status. On top of
that, the designers of both the RZ-1000 and CMD-640 chips
both blundered by trying to save a little silicon by using
the same registers to store both hard disk status and data.

For the insatiably curious here is precisely how the
corruption occurs. Simultaneously I/Os to both the hard disk
are floppy disk are running. The floppy controller generates
an I/O complete interrupt. The floppy driver then check the
floppy status. Part of reading floppy status is checking the
changeline bit -- contained in the ambiguous port 3F7.

If the motherboard manufacturer goofed and hooked up the
floppy changeline to the EIDE controller, the RZ-1000
erroneously responds to the floppy status request. It is in
charge of the hard disk, not the floppy. It is the floppy
controller's job is to respond. The RZ-1000 feeds two data
bytes from its FIFO out as floppy status. These data were
was supposed to go to the hard disk driver. Thus the chip
loses two bytes from the hard disk transfer, corrupting
data. Turning off prefetch also solves this problem. Unlike
the first flaw, only simultaneous floppy I/O start can
trigger this problem. Simultaneous I/O of any kind can
trigger the first flaw.


FLAW 3: NO SIMULTANEOUS I/O

Only the CMD-640 has this flaw. The CMD-640 can't do more
than one I/O at a time. This flaw was so obvious everyone
found out about it long ago. All EIDE controllers (even
fully functioning ones) cannot run master and slave
simultaneously. However, two separate EIDE controllers are
supposed to allow primary and secondary channels to run at
once. The CMD-640 has dual controllers on one chip. However,
because of a lack of two register sets, the primary and
secondary channels will not work simultaneously unlike every
other design. For example, you can't run your EIDE hard disk
and EIDE CD-ROM at the same time.

Simultaneous I/O speed is the reason we put two EIDE devices
on separate channels, both as masters, rather than making
one a master and one a slave on the same channel.

IBM has a bypass for this blunder. When it detects a CMD-
640, Warp never schedules more than one I/O at a time when
the CMD-640 is active, reducing the operating system to DOS-
like performance. Independent experiments show the
degradation from using the CMD fix is 15 to 50%.


BACKGROUND

If you read the literature on this problem, you will see
various daunting technical terms. Here is a rough
explanation.

There are six kinds of I/O used in PCs.

1)   PIO - Programmed I/O. The CPU spoon-feeds each byte to
   the I/O port. The port can usually accept data as fast as
   the CPU can feed it. Typical IDE drives work this way under
   DOS. For slower devices, the CPU polls the status to see if
   the device is ready for yet another byte.

2)   Scheduled I/O. This is a variant of PIO where the
  operating system feeds the I/O device some bytes, then
  calculates how long it should take for the I/O device to
  digest them, then it goes away for a while to do something
  else, then it comes back when it figures the I/O should be
  complete, and feeds the device a few more bytes. This is how
  Warp usually controls parallel port printers.

3)   Interrupt I/O. Every time the port is ready to eat
  another byte, it raises an interrupt and the CPU feeds it
  some more. This is the typical way COM ports work and how
  Warp uses printers with the /IRQ option. Warp EIDE drivers
  combine methods (1) and (2). The hard disk interrupts when
  it has completed the read into its on-board buffer. Then the
  CPU fetches data out of the buffer with PIO mode.

4)   Third party DMA. The DMA controller on the motherboard
  copies data from RAM to the port and generates an interrupt
  when it is done with a block. Floppy drives and inexpensive
  mag tape backup drives use this method. Because of the
  unfortunate original AT design compromises, this method is
  exceedingly slow. Third Party DMA is never used for PCI bus
  devices though it is still used for ISA or motherboard-based
  floppy controllers on PCI motherboards.

5)   First party DMA, sometimes called Bus Mastering. A DMA
  controller on the device copies data from RAM to the port
  and generates an interrupt when done High end SCSI cards --
  such as the Adaptec 2940 or 2940W use this ultimate way to
  fly.

6)   Memory mapped I/O. The CPU copies data to a magic
  region of RAM which is actually on the I/O device. LAN cards
  or REGEN VRAM on video cards use this technique.
  In a true multi-tasking system, such as OS/2, the CPU goes
  off and works on behalf of applications when the port is
  busy, and trusts an interrupt to bring it back when the
  device needs more service. It schedules several I/Os
  simultaneously. In contrast, DOS and Windows never do more
  than one I/O at a time. Further, under DOS/Windows the CPU
  idles while waiting for its single I/O to complete rather
  than working on applications.


LEARNING MORE

You can use the Internet to learn more about this problem.
If you do not have Internet access, I can provide you these
files on diskette. See below for details. When accessing
files on the Internet generally you must use lower case.


TEST PROGRAMS

Roedy Green's EIDEtest and CDtest programs for DOS,
DESQview, Windows, Windows For WorkGroups, Windows 95, NT,
OS/2 and Warp. They ensure your hard disk and CDROM will
function without interference from background I/O activity.
These indirectly detect the flawed RZ-1000 and CMD-640
chips. By the time you read this, I may have posted a newer
version.

     ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/diskutil/eidete19.zip
alternatively
     ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/.4/os2/incoming/eidete19.zip
or
     ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/.4/os2/sysutil/eidete19.zip

Intel's RZ-1000 and CMD-640 chip detect program. RZtest.exe
expands to form CtrlTest.exe. Beware! the CtrlTest.Doc
documentation contains an MSWord macro virus.

     http://www.intel.com/procs/support/rz1000/index.html

IOTest from PowerQuest, the makers of Partition Magic, a
     Warp test for the flaws.

     http://www.powerquest.com/download/iotest.zip

Version 3.02 of the self-extracting Warp utility, that
should be placed in OS2\APPS. SYSIGUI.EXE will emerge.

     ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/ps/products/os2/fixes/v3.0wa
     rp/english-us/sitcsd/sysinfo.exe


FIXES

Warp Fixpack 10. This bypasses the flaws for both the RZ-
1000 and CMD-640 faulty EIDE chips. It also fixes numerous
other bugs in Warp. It comes as a set of six files file --
totalling about 8 MB. Make sure you get it from an official
IBM CSD site because there are leaked pre-released buggy
copies floating about the net. Before applying it, verify
that the readme.1st on the first fixpack disk is dated
9/21/95 at 17:40. The package as a whole should be dated
9/22/95 or later. This fixpack applies to all versions of
Warp including Warp Connect. It contains in itself all
earlier fixpacks. You don't need to apply any previous
fixpacks first. If you have the CMD-640, it is especially
important you carefully read the installation instructions.
You need to manually modify config.sys. DO A COMPLETE BACKUP
FIRST. Many people are having a variety of troubles with
Fixpack 10 -- often traced to failure to carefully follow
the installation instructions, including a COMMIT step.


ftp://service.boulder.ibm.com/ps/products/os2/fixes/v3.0warp
/english-us/xr_w010/xr_w010.1dk

ftp://service.boulder.ibm.com/ps/products/os2/fixes/v3.0warp
/english-us/xr_w010/xr_w010.2dk

ftp://service.boulder.ibm.com/ps/products/os2/fixes/v3.0warp
/english-us/xr_w010/xr_w010.3dk

ftp://service.boulder.ibm.com/ps/products/os2/fixes/v3.0warp
/english-us/xr_w010/xr_w010.4dk

ftp://service.boulder.ibm.com/ps/products/os2/fixes/v3.0warp
/english-us/xr_w010/xr_w010.5dk

ftp://service.boulder.ibm.com/ps/products/os2/fixes/v3.0warp
/english-us/xr_w010/xr_w010.6dk

alternatively


ftp://ftp.pcco.ibm.com/pub/corrective_service/xr_w010.1dk

ftp://ftp.pcco.ibm.com/pub/corrective_service/xr_w010.2dk

ftp://ftp.pcco.ibm.com/pub/corrective_service/xr_w010.3dk

ftp://ftp.pcco.ibm.com/pub/corrective_service/xr_w010.4dk

ftp://ftp.pcco.ibm.com/pub/corrective_service/xr_w010.5dk

ftp://ftp.pcco.ibm.com/pub/corrective_service/xr_w010.6dk

WFWIN10.ZIP. It updates the Warp install diskettes (for all
released versions) to the FixPak 10 level, including the RZ-
1000/CMD-640 fixes. However, it does not automatically
install the CMD-640 files.


ftp://service.boulder.ibm.com/ps/products/os2/fixes/v3.0warp
/english-us/wfwin10/wfwin10.zip

Microsoft Windows NT 3.1 ATDISK.SYS fix for the CMD-640
     chip:

     http://www.microsoft.com/KB/softlib/mslfiles/pciatdsk.e
     xe

Microsoft Windows NT 3.5 fix for the CMD-640 chip:

     CMD's BBS at [phone]. File 640XNT35.ZIP

If you don't want to install the entire Fixpack 10, you can
install these Warp bypasses for the RZ-1000 and the CMD
flaws. Warning. This file has been updated several times
without changing the name. Make sure you get the most
recent. The installation instructions are tricky. Follow
them carefully.

     ftp://service.boulder.ibm.com/ps/products/os2/fixes/v3.
     0warp/english-us/pj19409/pj19409.zip

CMD fixes for various operating systems CMD-640 chip. Expand
     with PkUnZip -d 640X_USR.403

     CMD's BBS at [phone]. File 640X_USR.403

Warp bypass for the early CMD-640 chip flaws. It has been
superseded by pj19409.zip. You no longer need to install it
before pj19409.zip.

     ftp://ftp-os2.cdrom.com/pub/os2/drivers/cmd640x.zip


ESSAYS

Roedy Green's FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) an unabridged
copy of this article in both Winword and ASCII format. By
the time you read this, I may have posted a newer version.

     ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/diskutil/eidete19.zip
alternatively
     ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/.4/os2/incoming/eidete19.zip
or
     ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/.4/os2/sysutil/eidete19.zip

PowerQuest essay:

     http://www.powerquest.com/

Intel's FAQ

     http://www.intel.com/procs/support/rz1000

PC-Tech's essay:

     http://www.mei.micron.com/rz1000/rz1000.txt

Catch Pat Duffy's ([e-mail]) essays each
     Sunday in:

comp.os.os2.misc, comp.os.os2.setup.misc,
     comp.os.os2.setup.storage and
     comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.misc

Check out Pat Duffy's Web site at:

     http://warp.eecs.berkeley.edu/os2/workbench/work.htm
and
     ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/ab/abe/


WHAT IF YOU DON'T HAVE INTERNET ACCESS?

If you send me $5 (US or Canadian) to cover duplication,
postage to anywhere in the world, and handling I will send
you a diskette containing the relevant test programs, fixes,
Internet postings and essays. Sorry, but for various reasons
I do not provide this package via EMAIL. See the address
below.


CONTACTING THE AUTHOR

The author, Roedy Green is a computer consultant who prefers
to work on Forth, C++, Delphi, DOS, OS/2 and Internet Web
projects.  [phone].

I have been swamped with phone calls and Email from people
who have not yet read this essay. If you phone to ask a
question already covered in this essay I may be rather short
with you. You may be only asking for a few minutes of my
time free, but it adds up so that I have not been able to
earn any money for four months.

Please report any machines with flaws. Send email to:

     [e-mail]

or discuss this problem on the Internet newsgroup in:

     comp.os.os2.bugs.

You can also write via snail mail:

Roedy Green
Canadian Mind Products
#601 - 1330 Burrard Street
Vancouver, BC CANADA
V6Z 2B8

-30-