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ATA DMA Access

Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2007 8:34 pm
by ~
As we know, ATA PIO access is fairly simple but it could be improved if Bus Master were used; the problem is that every IDE controller in the motherboard is programmed differently from brand to brand, which makes it rather "worthless".

So, my question is if it's possible to use regular legacy DMA access and standard 0x1F0, 0x170 ports for ATA drives, and if so, does somebody has some information about it?

Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2007 4:33 pm
by Kevin McGuire
I have never tried to program the a ATA controller. I think it has on board DMA chips right? There has got to be a sort of common way to program them since linux has a generic ATA driver that supports DMA I think...

Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2007 5:14 pm
by pcmattman
Try this page: ATA Extensions Document... It has info on all the commands you send to the controllers and I'm pretty sure it covers DMA.