I know this is probably a wierd question, but....
I just got a pair of 80GB SATA disks, and a Silicon Image 3112 based controller. I've tried 2 boards with them now, and I get lockups on booting. One board was an Asus P6NP5 which locked before it even tried to boot. The other is a cheapo Celeron board which boots OK from CDs that dont use floppy emulation (ones that do lock up). It also sort of starts off the 80GB drives. GRUB (a linux boot loader) will load it's MBR portion, but then locks trying to continue to the next part.
The board Im using now is one that locks in the BIOS if you enter numbers for the hard disks that add to more than 65535MB. Could this be a problem? Does the system BIOS still ask for drive sizes/geometries from offboard controllers? What I really want to know is would the fix for using larger IDE disks on the onboard controllers also fix this?
Older boards and a pair of 80GB SATA disk....
If you can't mod it, it's not worth owning.
All I can say is that I've very recently updated my add-on 3112 SATA card to the latest available firmware, and it works perfectly now...
The firmware and flasher are available from www.siliconimage.com
The firmware and flasher are available from www.siliconimage.com
Is the 3114 stuff the right stuff? I cant see 3112 anywhere on the silicon image site, which I remember being a problem when I looked for updated for my other 3112 card.
If you can't mod it, it's not worth owning.
Thanks ajzchips. I'll give that a go when I get home tonight. Hopefully it's the fix.
I've never seen that area of their site before... I guess it was silly of me to assume that "download center" meant they had all their files there
I've never seen that area of their site before... I guess it was silly of me to assume that "download center" meant they had all their files there
If you can't mod it, it's not worth owning.
I really regret buying this crappy cheapo SATA card now.... The flash chip on it us not supported by the SI flash tool. And of course the cheapo manufacturer doesnt have anything on their site. The card is made by ST Labs (www.st-lab.com) just so we all know.
Does anyone know how I might flash the Holtek HT27C010 chip on this card? The chip is soldered on too to make life even more painful.
Also, the system BIOS fix didnt help. Unfortunately.
Does anyone know how I might flash the Holtek HT27C010 chip on this card? The chip is soldered on too to make life even more painful.
Also, the system BIOS fix didnt help. Unfortunately.
If you can't mod it, it's not worth owning.
No chance a 27C010 is no flashchip this is a normal Eprom.
Time for desoldering ...
If it has a window it can be earased with UV-Light and burned in a special programmer, if not it is one time programmable and not updateable. Then you have to replace the chip.
PS: IF you have 4.2.47 you should ignore it because i have not found differences to 4.2.50 (both works with a pair of 160GB Spinpoint)
PPS: The SATA harddiscs should not entered in the normal mainboard setup. The Sil Bios add this at boottime to the system
Time for desoldering ...
If it has a window it can be earased with UV-Light and burned in a special programmer, if not it is one time programmable and not updateable. Then you have to replace the chip.
PS: IF you have 4.2.47 you should ignore it because i have not found differences to 4.2.50 (both works with a pair of 160GB Spinpoint)
PPS: The SATA harddiscs should not entered in the normal mainboard setup. The Sil Bios add this at boottime to the system
Reading the original post, the best I can suggest for now is:
1) Without the card present and without any HDDs present, will the BIOS allow you to boot properly from floppies or CDs? If you can boot of CDs or floppies at this point then maybe the card or HDDs is introducing a conflict or some kind of compatibility problem.
2) If the mainboard BIOS limits HDD detection to 64GB, then the board sounds fairly old. Make sure the PCI revision required by the card is supported by the mainboard, and check for any other card/mainboard compatibility issues you can think of.
3) If the HDDs have been used before, you may want to consider backing up anything off them that you require, and then giving them a thorough O/S format and removing the partitions off them. Do this on another system which allows you to boot correctly with those drives installed. Sometimes data on the disks can cause conflicts with the configuration of another system.
I think number 1 or 2 of the above is more likely than number 3. I have not personally tried installing S-ATA disks on older systems, but I wish you success in this.
1) Without the card present and without any HDDs present, will the BIOS allow you to boot properly from floppies or CDs? If you can boot of CDs or floppies at this point then maybe the card or HDDs is introducing a conflict or some kind of compatibility problem.
2) If the mainboard BIOS limits HDD detection to 64GB, then the board sounds fairly old. Make sure the PCI revision required by the card is supported by the mainboard, and check for any other card/mainboard compatibility issues you can think of.
3) If the HDDs have been used before, you may want to consider backing up anything off them that you require, and then giving them a thorough O/S format and removing the partitions off them. Do this on another system which allows you to boot correctly with those drives installed. Sometimes data on the disks can cause conflicts with the configuration of another system.
I think number 1 or 2 of the above is more likely than number 3. I have not personally tried installing S-ATA disks on older systems, but I wish you success in this.
1) Yes, With no SATA card or disks, I can boot CDs and floppies on either board I have.
2) Both boards are fairly old. One is a Pentium Pro board. The other a cheap Celeron board.
3) Brand new disks. I did get Debian installed on them using one board, but GRUB locks as it attempts to start.
Tomorrow I might try again with LILO and see if it starts. It's going to be a server, so it wont be booted very often... Actually, now that I think of it, maybe an ISOLINUX CD would suffice as a boot method.
2) Both boards are fairly old. One is a Pentium Pro board. The other a cheap Celeron board.
3) Brand new disks. I did get Debian installed on them using one board, but GRUB locks as it attempts to start.
Tomorrow I might try again with LILO and see if it starts. It's going to be a server, so it wont be booted very often... Actually, now that I think of it, maybe an ISOLINUX CD would suffice as a boot method.
If you can't mod it, it's not worth owning.
OK, I've now tried an additional board... An EPOX MVP3G5. This also uses the Award 4.51 BIOS, and it also locks up, so Im thinking that there is some kind of incompatibility between the Award 4.51 BIOS and the card.
As a crazy thought.... Would it be totally foolish (as opposed to just a little foolish) to try flashing an Award v6 BIOS for some other board onto one of these boards? Apart from the obvious it wont boot possibilty, what other likely outcomes would there be? Could it work?
As a crazy thought.... Would it be totally foolish (as opposed to just a little foolish) to try flashing an Award v6 BIOS for some other board onto one of these boards? Apart from the obvious it wont boot possibilty, what other likely outcomes would there be? Could it work?
If you can't mod it, it's not worth owning.
Found a board that works... It has a 4.51 Award BIOS too, but oddly it allows drive sizes up to 2 TB to be entered.... Why didnt Award change the version numbers when they made changes to the code?? 
I'm hoping to pull the main BIOS code out of the image for the board it worked for and make an image up with the extra contents from the board I wanted to use.
Edit: I've given up now before I got to doing any BIOS hacking... A friend has said he think's he might be able to get me an old box (but newer than these) from one of the places he works for.
Thanks to the people that made suggestions and also to those that didnt but at least tried to think of possibilities.
I'm hoping to pull the main BIOS code out of the image for the board it worked for and make an image up with the extra contents from the board I wanted to use.
Edit: I've given up now before I got to doing any BIOS hacking... A friend has said he think's he might be able to get me an old box (but newer than these) from one of the places he works for.
Thanks to the people that made suggestions and also to those that didnt but at least tried to think of possibilities.
If you can't mod it, it's not worth owning.
