USB 3.x controller cards

AmigaOne X5000 platform specific issues related to Linux only.
User avatar
xeno74
Posts: 9348
Joined: Fri Mar 23, 2012 7:58 am

Re: USB 3.x controller cards

Post by xeno74 »

Roland,

Could you please test the stable longterm kernel 5.10.113 with your USB3 card?

Thanks,
Christian
http://www.amigalinux.org
http://www.supertuxkart-amiga.de

Running Linux on AmigaONEs can require some tinkering.
Roland
Posts: 825
Joined: Tue May 02, 2017 7:23 am

Re: USB 3.x controller cards

Post by Roland »

xeno74 wrote: Wed May 11, 2022 5:36 amCould you please test the stable longterm kernel 5.10.113 with your USB3 card?
Sorry but I already returned the card... There was also other problems as it seemed to occasionally disturb the initialization of other expansion cards, and that kind issues are usually difficult to solve (swapping cards did not help).

But I will soon get an other card. I will report how it works...
- Roland -
Roland
Posts: 825
Joined: Tue May 02, 2017 7:23 am

Re: USB 3.x controller cards

Post by Roland »

I got now a new USB 3 controller: Silverstone EC04-E (https://www.silverstonetek.com/product. ... 39&area=en). It has the Nec 'Renesas' chip, and there are two external USB 3 ports, and an internal 31 pin USB 3 socket which can be connected directly to the front panel ports of Fractal Design Core 2500/3500 cases. Power input is via Sata type connector.

The card is recognized without problems by (at least) the latest the 5.10 kernel, and thus the root file system can be loaded from USB media after Kernel has been loaded from BootSD.

Some boot times (from X5000's boot menu to desktop), tested with Adélie Linux:

Code: Select all

Interface   Max. speed	Media			Boot time
USB 2	 480 Mbit/s	Datatraveler 3.0	2 min 47s	
USB 3 	 5G			Datatraveler 3.0	1min 40 s
Sata 3	 6G			Seagate SSD 6G	40 s
(The seek time of a Kingston Datatraveler USB stick is much longer than that of a SSD disk - that's why the latter one is clearly faster!).

With "Disks" tool (Ubuntu) I got these speed test results:

Code: Select all

Kingston Datatraveler 3.0 32 GB (20x 10MB samples), Silverstone USB 3 controller
		NTFS		EXT4
Read 	93.8 	93.2	MB/s
Write 	5.9		8.1	MB/s
Access 	0.72 	0.72	msec

Kingston Datatraveler 3.0 32 GB (20x 10MB samples), X5000 USB 2 controller
  		NTFS		EXT4
Read 	36.0 	36.2	MB/s
Write 	4.9 		3.3	MB/s
Access 	1.10 	1.07	msec
Last edited by Roland on Fri May 13, 2022 7:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
- Roland -
User avatar
xeno74
Posts: 9348
Joined: Fri Mar 23, 2012 7:58 am

Re: USB 3.x controller cards

Post by xeno74 »

Hi Roland,

Thanks for testing! :-)

Are you satisfied with the kernel 5.10.113?

I will update it from time to time.

Cheers,
Christian
http://www.amigalinux.org
http://www.supertuxkart-amiga.de

Running Linux on AmigaONEs can require some tinkering.
Roland
Posts: 825
Joined: Tue May 02, 2017 7:23 am

Re: USB 3.x controller cards

Post by Roland »

xeno74 wrote: Fri May 13, 2022 2:38 pm Are you satisfied with the kernel 5.10.113?

I will update it from time to time.
Yes, that is solid and works ok for me! I do not have currently any hardware which would need features from the newer main versions.

Thank you for keeping it up-to-date!-)
- Roland -
Roland
Posts: 825
Joined: Tue May 02, 2017 7:23 am

Re: USB 3.x controller cards

Post by Roland »

Roland wrote: Fri May 13, 2022 9:47 am I got now a new USB 3 controller: Silverstone EC04-E (https://www.silverstonetek.com/product. ... 39&area=en). It has the Nec 'Renesas' chip, and there are two external USB 3 ports, and an internal 31 pin USB 3 socket which can be connected directly to the front panel ports of Fractal Design Core 2500/3500 cases. Power input is via Sata type connector.

The card is recognized without problems by (at least) the latest the 5.10 kernel, and thus the root file system can be loaded from USB media after Kernel has been loaded from BootSD.
I have noticed serious problems with the Silverstone EC04-E board, when using it with a "Veloce GD-25612 external HDD SATA enclosure (USB 3.0)". Trying to write larger files (hundreds of MBs) on the external disk fails. Either the copying is halted prematurely ("Error splicing file: Input/output error "), or the copied file is corrupted and cannot be read.

After these unsuccesfull writing operations the external disk/partition is also often unmounted by the system and cannot be anymore remounted - a reboot is needed. A few times even the target partition has become corrupted, and I have had to use 'ntfsfix' to repair it.

I have tested this with two SSD disks from different manufacturers (Seagate Barracuda 120 and Crucioal MX500), no difference.

Using the 'mem=3500M' boot parameter does not have any effect in this case! Only if I force the external drive into USB2 mode (by using an USB2 extension cable) writing to the disk seems to work normally.

Is there any way to correct this problem...? I have used the latest available 5.10 kernel, but the problem is seen also with 5.19.

Code: Select all

~$ dmesg | grep -i xhci
[    3.838573] xhci_hcd 1000:07:00.0: failed to load firmware renesas_usb_fw.mem, fallback to ROM
[    3.842683] xhci_hcd 1000:07:00.0: xHCI Host Controller
[    3.846712] xhci_hcd 1000:07:00.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
[    3.856114] xhci_hcd 1000:07:00.0: hcc params 0x014051cf hci version 0x100 quirks 0x0000001100000410
[    3.869061] usb usb1: Product: xHCI Host Controller
[    3.873310] usb usb1: Manufacturer: Linux 5.10.124_A-EON_X5000 xhci-hcd
[    3.891480] xhci_hcd 1000:07:00.0: xHCI Host Controller
[    3.895978] xhci_hcd 1000:07:00.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2
[    3.900518] xhci_hcd 1000:07:00.0: Host supports USB 3.0 SuperSpeed
[    3.919622] usb usb2: Product: xHCI Host Controller
[    3.924533] usb usb2: Manufacturer: Linux 5.10.124_A-EON_X5000 xhci-hcd
- Roland -
User avatar
xeno74
Posts: 9348
Joined: Fri Mar 23, 2012 7:58 am

Re: USB 3.x controller cards

Post by xeno74 »

Hi Roland,

Could you please test this controller with older kernels than 5.10? (For example 5.9, 5.8, 5.7, 5.6, 5.5, 5.4 etc)

Downloads: www.supertuxkart-amiga.de

Thanks,
Christian
http://www.amigalinux.org
http://www.supertuxkart-amiga.de

Running Linux on AmigaONEs can require some tinkering.
Roland
Posts: 825
Joined: Tue May 02, 2017 7:23 am

Re: USB 3.x controller cards

Post by Roland »

xeno74 wrote: Thu Aug 04, 2022 2:13 pm Could you please test this controller with older kernels than 5.10? (For example 5.9, 5.8, 5.7, 5.6, 5.5, 5.4 etc)
I tested all those through, first by trying to load the rootfs from the external disk... No succes :-(. Closest was 5.5 which at first trial booted to the desktop but then switched immediately to black screen (later boot trials were unsuccesful). When I then rebooted from an internal hd (still with kernel 5.5) and tested to copy large files to the external disk, it failed as with 5.10.

It is peculiar that when I tested another USB3 card (from Delock, with ASM chip set), it showed similar symptoms to Silverstone with the very same enclosure/SSD disk, but by using the 'mem=3500M' boot parameter it worked normally! Thus, the issue with Silverstone must be somewhat different...
- Roland -
User avatar
xeno74
Posts: 9348
Joined: Fri Mar 23, 2012 7:58 am

Re: USB 3.x controller cards

Post by xeno74 »

Do you use rootdelay in the boot arguments?

— Christian
http://www.amigalinux.org
http://www.supertuxkart-amiga.de

Running Linux on AmigaONEs can require some tinkering.
Roland
Posts: 825
Joined: Tue May 02, 2017 7:23 am

Re: USB 3.x controller cards

Post by Roland »

xeno74 wrote: Fri Aug 05, 2022 5:42 am Do you use rootdelay in the boot arguments?
Yes, and I have now used very long values while testing this issue. The problem seems not to be that the external disk could not be found. There appears usually cascades of ext4 warnings and errors while reading the root filesystem, and in those rare cases when the boot process reaches the desktop, the system starts soon to hickup, at least after I have tried to copy some large file to the external disk.

Are there any parameters which could be given to USB controllers/drivers, to adjust how they sync with the system...?
- Roland -
Post Reply