Re: direct memory access

From: Wesley Vogel (123WVogel955_at_comcast.net)
Date: 07/26/04 

Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 03:08:21 GMT

Well, you can call me and my machine "Old Timer", we answer to the same
name.

If you don't see the Advanced tab, either your hardware doesn't support DMA
or the DMA settings are incorrect in the BIOS.

Also... [[With some IDE drivers/Busmastering drivers, DMA cannot be enabled
through the device manager, but only through the driver settings. An
example of this is the Intel Application Accelerator.]]

Also...[[For repeated DMA errors. Windows XP will turn off DMA mode for a
device after encountering certain errors during data transfer operations. If
more that six DMA transfer timeouts occur, Windows will turn off DMA and use
only PIO mode on that device.
In this case, the user cannot turn on DMA for this device. The only option
for the user who wants to enable DMA mode is to uninstall and reinstall the
device.]]

DMA Mode for ATA/ATAPI Devices in Windows XP
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/IDE-DMA.mspx

There are DMA settings in my BIOS.

And my IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers
Primary IDE Channel & Secondary IDE Channel
have the advanced tab and DMA settings.

PnP Devices
PNP0201 EISA DMA Controller 

-- 
Hope this helps.  Let us know.
Wes
In news:htZMc.97167$sJ7.73249@newssvr29.news.prodigy.com,
WinGuy <no_spam@nomail.bot>  hunted and pecked:
> Not just CD and HDD devices use DMA (Dynamic Memory Access). Sound
> and Video and some other special purpose devices use DMA technology
> to directly access physical system RAM on the motherboard. Sometimes,
> but primarily only for older "legacy" devices used on older
> computers, settings regarding DMA need to be set in BIOS and not just
> through the operating system settings. The operating system itself
> will not allow a setting if the BIOS reports that support is lacking.
> This requirement was pretty much obsoleted by Plug and Play (PnP)
> hardware technology, which is why the very newer computers sometimes
> don't even have settings available to the user in BIOS regarding DMA
> or other assignments of resources such as IRQ. Some old timers might
> remember the days when soundcard settings, such as DMA channel and
> interrupt (IRQ) and so on, would have to be entered into the
> autoexec.bat file so that the card could work with DOS based games
> based on settings in BIOS for the device. These things often had to
> be "allocated" manually in BIOS (and most people couldn't figure that
> out, and so PnP was invented).
>
> However, it is unlikely that XP would be being run on such an old
> computer and so it is unlikely that manual BIOS settings would be
> needed. Still, even some of the newer computers have BIOS provisions
> for this in order to handle "legacy" PCI cards that are not fully PnP
> compatible with todays spec, and systems special ordered with the
> much older ISA motherboard slots almost always have the mentioned
> BIOS provisions. The PnP spec has gone through revisions through the
> years and so, for devices that support the latest revisions, manual
> settings in BIOS are not required regarding DMA or interrupts or etc.
> and so they might not even be available (in which case a legacy
> device might not be usable in a newer computer, such as is the case
> with the for now and ever-more lack of ISA support). For the curious,
> PCI relates to the white colored slots you can plug devices into,
> where as ISA were the old black colored slots that don't come in new
> computers anymore. If you operating system settings won't allow DMA
> to be used for a device, it doesn't hurt to see if by some chance
> your BIOS has provisions for manual settings. It could hurt, however,
> to set something in BIOS incorrectly ... hurt to the point that a
> computer will not boot or HDD structure gets messed up, so if in
> doubt about BIOS settings, take it to a computer service shop.

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