BSD & Gaming

SO… I cooked up a fresh install of PCBSD on my laptop and everything was great except for one issue, the system could not see the secondary drive. Normally that’s no problem since it is a WinXP ntfs drive. I seldom boot up XP, but on occasion it is helpful if I can read that drive and access the data.

I looked around the net and found some answers for my SATA problems.

Following the instructions I found I ran the following commands:

# pciconf -w -b pci0:0:31:2 0×92 0xff
# camcontrol reset 1
# camcontrol rescan 1

All of a sudden it worked I could see both my hard drives.

<Hitachi HTS541612J9SA00 SBDOC7DP> at scbus0 target 0 lun 0 (pass0,ada0)
<>                                                                     at scbus0 target -1 lun -1 ()

<FUJITSU MHW2120BH 00400013> at scbus2 target 0 lun 0 (ada1,pass5)
<>                                                         at scbus2 target -1 lun -1 ()

However I did not know this was going to affect me in other ways. Once I enabled the second hdd, my system took a performance hit and everything had a slightly sluggish feel. I really noted the performance hit when I fired up WINE and launched Fallout3, it was horrible the game was so lagged out it was unplayable.

I don’t need to access the second hdd that bad so I said to hell with it and returned the settings back to where they were. As soon as I did everything speeded up and the game worked fine.

Here’s my question… is there anything I can do that would allow access to the second hdd but not lower performance?

As far as settings go everything is stock BSD 8.1 out of the box and #pciconf -lvbc shows the following ICH8 controller information:

isab0@pci0:0:31:0:      card=0xff001179 chip=0×28158086 rev=0×03 hdr=0×00
vendor     = ‘Intel Corporation’
device     = ’82801HEM (ICH8M-E) LPC Interface Controller’
class      = bridge
subclass   = PCI-ISA
cap 09[e0] = vendor (length 12) Intel cap 1 version 0
features: SATA RAID-5, Mobile, 4 PCI-e x1 slots, SATA RAID-0/1/10
atapci0@pci0:0:31:1:    card=0xff001179 chip=0×28508086 rev=0×03 hdr=0×00
vendor     = ‘Intel Corporation’
device     = ’82801H (ICH8 Family) Ultra ATA Storage Controllers’
class      = mass storage
subclass   = ATA
bar   [10] = type I/O Port, range 32, base 0x1f0, size  8, enabled
bar   [14] = type I/O Port, range 32, base 0x3f4, size  1, enabled
bar   [18] = type I/O Port, range 32, base 0×170, size  8, enabled
bar   [1c] = type I/O Port, range 32, base 0×374, size  1, enabled
bar   [20] = type I/O Port, range 32, base 0x18a0, size 16, enabled
ahci0@pci0:0:31:2:      card=0xff001179 chip=0×28298086 rev=0×03 hdr=0×00
vendor     = ‘Intel Corporation’
device     = ‘Mobile SATA AHCI Controller’
class      = mass storage
subclass   = SATA
bar   [10] = type I/O Port, range 32, base 0x18d8, size  8, enabled
bar   [14] = type I/O Port, range 32, base 0x18cc, size  4, enabled
bar   [18] = type I/O Port, range 32, base 0x18d0, size  8, enabled
bar   [1c] = type I/O Port, range 32, base 0x18c8, size  4, enabled
bar   [20] = type I/O Port, range 32, base 0x18e0, size 32, enabled
bar   [24] = type Memory, range 32, base 0xf7504000, size 2048, enabled
cap 05[80] = MSI supports 4 messages enabled with 1 message
cap 01[70] = powerspec 3  supports D0 D3  current D0
cap 12[a8] = SATA Index-Data Pair

If any guru out there can help with this puzzle I’d be grateful !!

I’ve been pretty lazy about updating my laptop with the latest version of PCBSD v8.1 and only got around to it the other day. I decided to go with a clean install this time since I had done an upgrade on previous occasions keeping everything intact. I figured the system could use a good cleaning since I tend to be a pack rat with all sorts of downloads. The fresh install forces me to do decide what is worth keeping out of the junk I accumulate.

The setup was flawless, I chose to do mine from a USB flash drive and had no problems getting everything working the way I wanted. The PBI files for the software I use are really convenient since ports can kill some serious time, not to mention the potential frustration when ports get borked up from conflicts.

I’m a happy camper with my fresh install of PCBSD (FreeBSD 8.1) and loving it so far! My laptop is getting to be a bit outdated however my resources for anything new are non-existent and it gets the job done. Plus it has just enough muscle to play most games with decent graphics so I really cannot complain.

Laptop Specs:

Toshiba X205-S9349
Intel Core 2 Duo T7100 1.80GHz
Nvidia 8600M GT
2Gig Ram

Just watched the new show on AMC called The Walking Dead. It was great, one of the best zombie stories I’ve seen in a while. The show seems more focused on the characters and in building a real storyline instead of repeated scenes of meaningless zombie slaughter.

I’ve never read the comic series it is based on, but I’m definitely inspired to check it out. Here’s hoping they build a decent enough following to keep it on air with enough profit to keep the quality up.

If you haven’t seen it yet head over to hulu.com and watch it now!

I recently bought Dawn of War II on Steam. I haven’t kept up with gaming news and information much at all in the last few years so  I was surprised to find how different DoW2 was than the first release. There’s no base building, you get a handful of squads instead of armies, and the game is primarily focused on the campaign mode of play. Also, there’s no skirmish mode and you are limited to the Space Marine faction, the other races are not available unless you play online or choose the last man standing mod…. Meh to that.

I personally don’t care to go back and replay campaigns once I have gone through them, there are no surprises so to me it’s no fun, because of that and no skirmish mode option I won’t get much replay value out of the game. It’s ok though …I can get my W40K fix by going back to DoW: SoulStorm.