TIMEOUT - WRITE_DMA - A possible FIX! turn off ACPI

[Arno J. Klaassen]

Joe Koberg <joe at osoft.us> writes:

> Zsolt Kúti wrote:
> 
> >My system produces these messages that I already know well from this
> >list (as well ;):
> >ad4: TIMEOUT - WRITE_DMA retrying (2 retries left) LBA=213249674
> >
> >
> Like many people I was confronted with "TIMEOUT - READ_DMA"
> and "TIMEOUT - WRITE_DMA" errors on my drives. I was frustrated.
> But I found a workaround: Turning off ACPI.

dunno, I'd more suspect ACPI<->APIC issues : untill now
I only had problems on nForce based systems, but today I 
installed a brand new VIA based A7VT mini-server and
re-voila les "XXX_DMA" errors (and accompanying severe
system slow-down).
(Disk swapped from the old PII-233 minimalist-server; worked
OK there; disabling APIC (in BOIS and/or config and/or hints)
made disappear the XXX_DMA messages (and gave me my network
connexion back ;) ) whilst ACPI still enabled).

FYI, Arno