sil3112a SATA Controller, current status

[Søren Schmidt]

Garance A Drosihn wrote:

> I am trying to pin down problems "FAILURE - WRITE_DMA timed out"
> in a new PC that I have.  I had some local shop build this for me,
> and apparently there were "a few" miscommunications in what I
> thought I asked for, and what they actually built.
> 
> The machine ended up with two SATA controllers:
>    atapci0: <SiI 3112 SATA150 controller> -- on the motherboard
>    atapci1: <VIA 6420 SATA150 controller> -- on a PCI card

I think its the other way around, the VIA chip is part of the 
motherboard chipset, the SiI is a "loose" PCI compatible chip.

> The hard disk is connected to the PCI card.  Would that be more
> reliable quality hardware than the SiI3112?

I'd say so.

> Also, the disk is a Western Digital WDC WD1200JD-00GBB0/02.05D02
> 120-gig drive.  I *thought* I was ordering a Seagate drive, but it is
> quite likely that there was some confusion on that.  Would that Western
> Digital SATA drive be a problem?  I do have a Seagate Barracuda 7200.7
> hard drive that I could use (after shuffling a few things around).

 From observation I'd say that those drives that are native SATA devices 
has significantly less problems than those that arent.

-- 

-Søren