IDEINFO.EXE Page 1
Contents
Introduction.......................... 1
Output................................ 2
How to interpret the output........... 3
Some notes............................ 5
Credits............................... 5
Me.................................... 5
Changes, additions.................... 6
Introduction
-------------
Try ? or H as parameter and you will see a short description of
possible parameters. This is what the output looks like:
________________________________________________________________
IDEINFO [[H] || [?] || [R]] || [[F]] [P xxx] [P xxx].. ]]
Tries to tell all about all IDE drives, including ATA-2 stuff.
Options may be preceded with -, / or none
-H or -? prints this help.
-R Reads idedrive.* files from current directory.
-F Writes drive identify info to idedrive.* files to current directory.
-P xxx looks only adapter at port xxx, xxx in hex format
File extension is next available number when writing.
File size is 512 bytes.
You may redirect output.
Example: Look only for adapters at 1F0h (primary) and 170h (normal secondary)
and write info to files.
IDEINFO P 1f0 P 170 F
________________________________________________________________
Default action is to scan all four addresses mentioned in ATA-2
draft spec for IDE adapters(1f0h, 0170h, 0f0h, 070h), if found,
report characteristics of master drive and search also for
slave.
File format will remain the same even when new versions of
ideinfo appear. That is because ideinfo uses the same raw
format that the drive sends.
Better way than redirecting output is therefore to store
drive info to files. New version of ideinfo may find new
features or be more accurate. If you have a file stored
with old version you just run new version with -R parameter.
Page 2
Output
--------
Output for a normal ATA (not ATA-2) drive looks like this:
Note: Identify Device information words used are in brackets.
_______________________________________________________________
DRIVE 0 Adapter 1 at base address 170h
Disk Reports BIOS Reports
Default Current
# of Cylinders______: 665 [1] 665 [54] 0
# of Heads__________: 16 [3] 16 [55] 0
# of Sectors/Track__: 63 [6] 63 [56] 0
Model Number________: Conner Peripherals 340MB - CFA340A [27-46]
Serial Number_______: BQBA27A [10-19]
Controller Rev. #___: 6FT1.70 [23-26]
Double Word Transfer: No [48]
Controller type_____: a dual ported multi-sector buffer capable of
simultaneous
transfers with a read caching capability. [20]
Buffer size (kB)____: 64 [21]
# of ECC bytes______: 4 [22]
# of secs/interrupt_: 64[47]Current setting 16 [59]
LBA support No [49],[60-61],[53],[57-58]
DMA support Yes [49]
IORDY supported No [49]
IORDY can be disabled No [49]
ATA compliant max. PIO transfer mode: 1 [51]
SW DMA txfer cycle timing modes: [62] Active [62]
MW DMA txfer cycle timing modes: 1, 0 Active 0 [63]
Sorry, no ATA-2 features implemented
Adapter 1 at 170h Drive 1 not found
Last status 0h
______________________________________________________________
The output above was generated running under OS/2 2.11. For some
reason OS/2 lets user programs access secondary adapters and
correctly inhibits access to primary adapter. Note the effect of
/SMS (Set Multiple Support) parameter of OS/2 IDE driver
IBM1S506.ADD (# of secs/interrupt_:, Current setting 16 ).
For newer drives you might get also something like this:
_______________________________________________________________
Congratulations, your drive supports ATA-2 [53]
Advanced PIO transfer modes supported: 4, 3 [64]
Min MW DMA transfer cycle time/word: 120 ns 16.7MB/s [65]
Mfg Recommended MW DMA transfer Cycle Time 120 ns 16.7MB/s [66]
Min PIO transfer Cycle Time w/o Flow Control 200 ns 10.0MB/s [67]
Min PIO transfer Cycle Time w IORDY Flow Control 120 ns 16.7MB/s [68]
________________________________________________________________
For ATA-2 reference I used Revision 2f july 26, 1994. I may have
messed up some interpretations of spec, hope not too many.
Page 3
How to interpret the output
---------------------------
For a more complete reference you should get ATA-2 spec (draft)
from:
ATA Anonymous FTP Site
fission.dt.wdc.com
ATA directory is: "/pub/ata"
SCSI Bulletin Board 719-574-0424
Document Distribution
Global Engineering
15 Inverness Way East
Englewood, CO 80112-5704
Tel: 303 -792-2181 or 800-854-7179
Fax: 303 -792-2192
Translation:
------------
Disk Reports
Default Current
# of Cylinders______: 665 665
# of Heads__________: 16 16
# of Sectors/Track__: 63 63
First column is default translation and next is current. Current
may be all -1 if validity bit is not set. Some drives accept any
translation that doesn't exceed capacity and some accept only
one translation.
Multiple sector setting:
------------------------
Normally the drive generates an interrupt for each sector
read/written but enabling multiple sector setting and using
read/write multiple commands enables the drive controller to
work more efficiently and saves CPU cycles because interrupt is
generated and processed only once for a given number of sectors.
You must have BIOS support or a software driver to utilize this.
Some drives get 30% data transfer speed boost, others only %5.
Buffer size (kB)____: 64
# of secs/interrupt_: 64 Current setting 16
If Buffer size is half of secs/interrupt value and "Current
setting" is missing the drive doesn't most propably support
multiple sector per interrupt feature. If "Current setting" is
shown, the drive should work with multiple sector per interrupt.
LBA support
-----------
Found in most drives with capacity over 528MB. Normal BIOS and
IDE translation parameters together have a limit of 528MB. BIOS
alone has a 8GB limit. IDE alone has a 137GB limit. LBA (Logical
Block Address) uses no translation and blocks or sectors are
addressed with 0 to a device specific maximum LBA number. The
maximum LBA number cannot exceed 268 435 455 (137GB). Using LBA
should save some CPU cycles.
Page 4
DMA support
-----------
DMA (Direct Memory Access) means that the device writes directly
to main memory thus freeing CPU from I/O handling. The other
transfer mode is PIO (Programmable I/O). ISA bus has a limit of
16MB DMA addressable memory.
IORDY supported
---------------
IORDY is needed with PIO mode 3 and 4.
Transfer modes
--------------
+--------------------------------------------------+------+
| PIO |Mode 0|Mode 1|Mode 2|Mode 3|Mode 4|
| timing parameters | nsec | nsec | nsec | nsec | nsec |
+----+----------------------+------+------+------+------+------+
| t0 | Cycle time (1) (min) | 600 | 383 | 240 | 180 | 120 |
Transfer rate MB/s | 3.3 | 5.2 | 8.3 | 11.1 | 16.6 |
Modes 0 .. 2 are included in ATA spec, PIO mode 3 and 4 in
ATA-2.
+---------------------------------------------------------+
| Single word DMA | Mode 0| Mode 1| Mode 2|
| timing parameters | nsec | nsec | nsec |
+----+---------------------------------+-------+-------+-------|
| t0 | Cycle time (min) | 960 | 480 | 240 |
| Transfer rate (calculated) MB/s | 2.1 | 4.2 | 8.3 |
+------------------------------------+--------+--------+
| Multiword DMA | Mode 0 | Mode 1 | Mode 2 |
| timing parameters | nsec | nsec | nsec |
+-----+---------------------------+--------|--------|--------|
| t0 | Cycle time | 480 | 150 | 120 |
| Transfer rate (calculated) MB/s | 4.2 | 13.3 | 16.6 |
DMA mode 0 is included in ATA spec, mode 1 and 2 in ATA-2.
Page 5
Some notes
----------
IDEINFO was compiled with BC++ 3.1 using 286 intructions. XT or
8-bit interfaces were not even considered, so you should have a
286 or better to use this program. Currently IDEINFO tries to
read idedrive.0 .. idedrive.99 files with R parameter. I hope
that 100 files is enough for a while. Increasing it would slow
it down or extensions would have to be in sequence. The line
# of secs/interrupt_: 64[47]Current setting 16 [59]
apparently tells also if OS/2 (2.1, 2.11) IBM1S506.ADD will
support /SMS parameter. Word 59 has a validity bit and if it is
not set "Current setting" will not be displayed and IBM1S506.ADD
ignores /SMS. There are some drives that have validity bit set
but still IBM1S506.ADD ignores /SMS but the only such drive I
have encountered is Seagate ST3391A.
I am not sure about which last status values (displayed when
adapter is not found) mean that there is no device responding. I
have seen 7fh on EISA bus machine and OS/2, ffh on others. If
you see some other value there is propably something using that
address.
Credits
--------
Great help in getting started was the source code of:
DUG_IDE : Provides IDE disk info on both drives in the system
Version 1.0
Copyright (c) 12 Jan 1993 by Doug Merrett - All rights reserved
Linux 1.1 kernel sources were also consulted.
Me
---
Copyright (c) July 1994 by Raimo Koski - All rights reserved
Postal Address: Uudenmaantie 23 K 3
20720
Finland
I can receive Internet mail with address:
raimo.koski@mikropc.fi
You can also try Fidonet with address:
2:222/70
Page 6
Changes, additions
-------
8/29/94
Checked that ATA-2 rev. F caused no changes. The original
version of ideinfo was based on ATA-2 rev. c. Added PIO mode 4
and MW DMA mode 2 to this document. Source remains the same.
11/15/94
Found a bug! PIO 4 and 5 were not reported correctly. Yes, there
are PIO 4 drives commonly available. Some cosmetic changes.
Raised timeout value. Only one person has complained about
ideinfo not finding a drive. Hope the problems have not been
common. The worst case seems to be fast CPU, slow drive and two
drive IDE bus. If you encounter this problem, simply run ideinfo
again. You can also read the drive that is not found with
ordinary means (say DIR or something) and then try ideinfo
again. Seems that ideinfo is not resetting drives properly. I
should look at this sometime but it is not so important. Use
your operating system (actually it usually calls BIOS to do
this) to do resetting. Say DIR or similar.
Had a possibility to test a drive with 108 sector/interrupt
support. OS/2 WARP II used 16. Seems that OS/2 never uses more
than 16 and if the drive can't accept that then OS/2 can use 8
also. I haven't seen other values with OS/2.
