IDE corruption during heavy bt878-induced interrupt load

[joe briggs]

I am seeking comments or suggestions to this problem:

I create multi-channel digital surveillance systems using cards with 4 or more 
multiplexed bt878 framegrabbers; each one capturing 5 or more frames per 
second on each of its two input channels (total 4 * 2 * 5 = 40 fps).  
Typically I run using either a Promise or Adaptec HPT370 IDE-RAID controller 
with 2 WD-120GB/8MB-cache drives striped in RAID-0, with another IDE as hda 
for my system drive.  What happens is that every few seconds I get a "BTTV: 
RISC ERROR - resetting" from the frame grabber driver.  After a few days of 
this I have corruption on my Reiser file system; which usually I am able to 
clean up with mkreiserfs --fix-fixable or --rebuild-tree.  The corruption is 
both on my RAID and my system drive.  Missing doing this maintenance action 
can really ruin my day.

I am today replacing the IDE RAID with a 3WARE IDE-RAID that emulates SCSI on 
the premise that the problem has to do with hardware bus arbitration.  But as 
of yet I don't have any data to support that or show improvement.

All comments/suggestions/etc. appreciated.

Joe

-- 
Joe Briggs
Briggs Media Systems
105 Burnsen Ave.
Manchester NH 01304 USA
TEL/FAX [phone] MOBILE [phone]
www.briggsmedia.com