ATA controller cards supported by FreeBSD

[Andrew MacIntyre]

On Mon, 29 Sep 2003, Dan Strick wrote:

> Does FreeBSD support any PCI ATA controller cards other than those
> made by HighPoint and Promise?  Everything else that I can identify
> in the ATA section of the HARDWARE.TXT file seems to be a CPU support
> chipset.
>
> I am confused by the HighPoint model numbers listed.  HPT370, HPT372,
> and HPT374 are RAID controller ICs.  The Rocket133 ATA controller card
> made by HighPoint uses the HPT302 IC, which is not listed in the
> HARDWARE.TXT file.  (Is it too new?  Is it not supported?)
> Given that HighPoint sports a FreeBSD logo on its web site, I would
> expect broader hardware support.
>
> I am also a little confused by the Promise products listed in the
> HARDWARE.TXT file.  Every single FastTrak or TX2000 product listed
> on the Promise web site is a RAID controller.  The only ATA controller
> from the HARDWARE.TXT file described on the Promise web site is the
> Ultra-133 TX2.  The other Ultra-xxx products are presumably old and
> discontinued.
>
> Summary: with the *single* exception of the Promise Ultra-133 TX2,
> every single supported ATA controller listed in the HARDWARE.TXT file
> is either old/discontinued, a chipset, or actually a RAID controller
> and not an ATA controller.
>
> This can't be right.  Surely FreeBSD supports a bunch of PCI ATA
> controller cards.  What/Where are they?
>
> If I took the HARDWARE.TXT file literally, I would also have to
> conclude that FreeBSD did not support a single ISA ATA controller
> card.
>
> I must have missed something really obvious and important.
> Can someone point me in the right direction.

I believe that CMD 64[789] based PCI controllers are supported (I had one
running on a 4.7 system anyway).

AFAIK, the Highpoint controllers can be used for JBOD - you just don't
define an array.  Ditto for many Promise controllers, though driver
support is more patchy.  FreeBSD 5's ATA code also supports Intersil (I
think; may have the mfr name wrong) based controllers.

Regards,
Andrew.

--
Andrew I MacIntyre                     "These thoughts are mine alone..."
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