Recommended SATA controllers

[Rick C. Petty]

On Mon, May 21, 2007 at 10:28:49PM +0200, Ben Stuyts wrote:
> 
> I'd vote against a TX2 or SIL3112 based solution on FreeBSD-6:
> 
> TX2: I can't get my system to boot with the TX2plus card, as BTX  
> crashes. (Reported here, but unfortunately no solution found.)
> 
> SIL3112: My mainboard (GA-8KNXP) has an onboard SIL3112 controller,  
> and it is useless. It locks up randomly.

I recommend almost the opposite-- the Promise TX4 cards seem pretty nice,
and under moderate loads I don't see any problems.  However, I still
haven't located the issue with dropped drives being able to be reprobed.

As far as the Sil3112 chips go, I'm using them everywhere and they work
quite well.  Sometimes less is more.

I suspect those random lockups are related to the mainboard and not the
chip itself, but others have reported problems with these chips-- I have
yet to witness any of the reported problems.

-- Rick C. Petty