Tyan S5360-1U / 3ware 9500S-4LP / FreeBSD 5.x & 6.x - Boot Process Timeout

[Mark Dotson]

Hello everyone,

I have an annoying issue which is preventing me from installing FreeBSD 
onto my new machine.  I have a 1U server based on the Tyan S5360-1U 
(http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderi7520r.html) board with the 
3ware 9500S-4LP SATA card. 
(http://www.3ware.com/products/serial_ata9000.asp)

The problem is that I cannot even boot the computer WITH the 3ware card 
plugged in.  A CD ISO of 6.0 release and the default boot options 
initializes the twa driver, but right before it would normally launch 
the sysinstall program, I get the following error over and over, and 
cannot continue:

twa0: Error: 05:0x21b: Request timed out! (request=0XC3A28000)
twa0: Info: (0x16): 0x1108: Resetting Controller...:
twa0: Info: (0x04): 0x005e: Cache Synchronized after Power Failure: Unit = 0
twa0: Info: (0x04): 0x0001: Controller Reset Occurred: Resets=1
twa0: Info (0x16): 0x1107: Controller Reset Done!

This same error repeats, the only difference being the "resets" number 
increments.

Both the 3ware and Tyan boards have the newest versions of their bios 
available as of today.

Ok, so here is the results of my testing on this issue:

* Booting with ACPI turned off does not work; same error.
* Booting into "Safe Mode" does allow it to boot, but then no drives are 
detected for me to install the OS onto.
* Booting using the 3ware provided drivers and .ko jazz does not work; 
same error.
* The BIOS of the Tyan board detects the card, and allows me to sort 
boot orders and such; it looks normal.
* Turning off the Tyan's onboard SATA and extra IDE channel does not 
work; same error.
* Plugging the hard drives directly into the onboard SATA on the Tyan 
board WORKS, but ONLY IF the 3ware card is physically removed from the 
system to allow the boot process to continue.  (leaving the card in, but 
using the sata from the onboard motherboard fails because the boot 
process will not continue once it tries to initialize the card, even 
though the card has no hard drives attached to it.)
* I jumpered the PCI slot speed to be 66 Mhz, as per 3ware's 
recommendation for the operating speed of their 9500S-4LP card.
* The 3ware tech support people had me run diagnostics on the card, and 
it passed.
* The 9500S-4LP card itself works great when physically moved to another 
machine, with all versions of FreeBSD working correctly and flawlessly 
with the same hard drives.
* I am successfully able to install and boot Fedora Core 4 using this 
hardware and with the 3ware card; thus the problem seems to be SPECIFIC 
to the interaction of the 3ware card, this particular Tyan motherboard, 
and FreeBSD 5.x or 6.0.

As I run FreeBSD as my OS of choice, I'd prefer to either work through 
this problem, or simply return the entire unit and get a completely 
different system with a different Motherboard.

Does anyone have any ideas on this one?  I've got the machine setup on 
my tech bench, so I'm quite willing to try out any tests you guys can 
think of.

Thanks!

-Mark Dotson

Extra metrics about the server:

Dual 2.8 GhZ Xeon
2 GB (4x512 @ 2700) ECC Registered Memory
2 80 GB SATA Seagate drives
24x Samsung CDROM drive (The only IDE device, currently secondary master)