Linux-kernel mailing list archive 1998-42,: Re: Kernel freeze on boot (.123-.125) in IDE init

# Re: Kernel freeze on boot (.123-.125) in IDE init

Mark H. Wood (mwood@IUPUI.Edu)
Fri, 23 Oct 1998 12:49:57 -0500 (EST)

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On Fri, 23 Oct 1998, Torbjorn Lindgren wrote:

> On Fri, 23 Oct 1998, Andre M. Hedrick wrote:
> > On Fri, 23 Oct 1998, Richard Lyons wrote:
> > > The long story: I have an ASUS P2B-DS (100MHz 440BX AGPset Mainboard with
> > > PIIX4E South Bridge) with a single Celeron 266MHz processor - hda is
> > > a 2.1G Quantum Fireball, and there's a Promise Ultra33 plugged in with
> > > 3 8.4G Fujitsu drives (MPC3084AT) as hde/hdg/hdh. It'd been running
> [...]
> > Since 'hda' is attached to the onboard ide-chipset and ide-pci.c: line 168
> > is only related to two chipsets (PDC20246 and AEC6210), I can not fully
> > understand the relation between the two controller issues.
> >
> > Second, "PIIX4E South Bridge" ???
> >
> > "PIIX4" :: sounds like Intel
> > "South Bridge" :: sounds like Alladin
>
> It's the ISA/IDE part of the Intel chips he said he had, 440BX.
>
> A quick web-search will confirm that while Intel doesn't appear
> to officially call the 82371AB PIIX4 controller "South Bridge", many
> different independent source do call it this. Presumably it's some kind of
> project name or something like that. (AltaVista Advanced Search, "South
> Bridge" NEAR Intel)

The SouthBridge is a bus adapter gizmo that dumbs down PCI traffic to
drive ISA slots. The NorthBridge is the gizmo that adapts the CPU's
protocols to the PCI bus. Like this:

N CPU
) NorthBridge
PCI bus
----------------------------------------------
^ PCI PCI \ PCI PCI
| periph periph | periph periph
V / SouthBridge
ISA bus
____________________
ISA ISA ISA
S periph periph periph

The names NorthBridge/SouthBridge appear to be PCI engineering jargon rather
than official product names.

The PIIX4 has lots of other goop in it such as IDE, USB, and so on.

    --
    Mark H. Wood, Lead System Programmer   mwood@IUPUI.Edu
    Some things are not improved when made "graphical".  Imagine how crude
    Kilmer's "Trees" would be if reduced to comic-book form.

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