[nsp] ATA flash problem

[Jon Lewis]

I think I just ran into CSCdu55250 on a 7206 (non-vxr) with NPE225 and a
128mb CF disk.  I was in the middle of tftping a new image to it when the
tftp failed and I got an ATA_Status time out error.  Now the router no
longer sees the card.  Show file systems, show ver, etc. no longer
indicate the presence of the card.  The router is in a remote POP...so
before I go or send someone, is it possible simply ejecting and
reinserting it will 'fix it'?...not that I'm crazy about the idea of
relying on it now for future boots.

Has anyone else run into this when using CF disks and CF/PCMCIA
converters?  Is it really only an issue with 48mb and 128mb cards?...i.e.
if we go with say 64's or 256's we won't run into this issue?...or since
it's resolved in 12.2(4)BW2, perhaps if/when we eventually move to 12.3
(I'm considering c7200-js-mz.123-9.bin) it won't be an issue?
Interestingly, the router is currently running 12.1(5)T15, which is not in
the list of "All affected versions".




* CSCdu55250

Platforms with faster CPUs may fail to boot if the IOS image is being
loaded from a 48 MB or a 128 MB ata-disk PCMCIA card. When this happens
this error message will be displayed, where "x" is a digit, and the
platform will return to the ROMMON prompt:
ATA_Status time out waiting for x

This occurrence of this problem is usually random and intermittent.

This problem has only been seen when booting from 48 MB and 128 MB
ata-disk PCMCIA cards. Cards of other capacities have not shown this
problem. Linear flash PCMCIA cards do not show this problem.

This problem is caused by random and intermittent internal noise on the
ata-disk card which causes it to occasionally respond slowly to a read
request when loading an IOS image. The problem occurs on platforms with
fast CPUs because the amount of time which the system waits for the
ata-disk card to return the data is less than on slower platforms.

Workaround: This problem can be avoided by booting the IOS image from
another device. Alternatively, a different ata-disk card can be tried, or
a linear flash PCMCIA card could be used.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
 Jon Lewis                   |  I route
 Senior Network Engineer     |  therefore you are
 Atlantic Net                |
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