SiI3112 SATA controller problems - status

[Robert Watson]

On Sun, 30 Nov 2003, Joe Marcus Clarke wrote:

> On Fri, 2004-01-30 at 09:43, HaggeL wrote:
> > Hi Guys :)
> > 
> > Sorry if i waste your time. I®m a freeBSD noob and need some help.
> > I want to install freeBSD in januar and have some problems. I want to
> > buy me a new harddrive, a serial ATA one, because i got the "Silicon
> > ImageR Sil 3112A-Controller" onboard (Asus A7N8X Motherboard). I
> > didn®t find a driver in the Hardware Notes of FreeBSD 5.1, and on the
> > Producer homepage are only ready Linuxkernels avaible
> > (http://12.24.47.40/display/2n/searchDirect/?searchString=Sil+3112A&searchType=allwords&searchby=keywords&r=0.8157617).
> > So can anyone tell me if i can get a SATA disk run? I don®t want to
> > boot from it, just read and write. Buying a new disk only for windows
> > use is wasted money
> 
> We're having a pretty lengthy discussion about these controllers on this
> list right now.  I suggest you read the archives.  Bottom line, the
> controller is supported, but it's problematic.  The ATA maintainer has
> working controllers, but there are those of us that experience data
> corruption, and at least one user that can't use his drive at all when
> connected to said controller. 

I believe a workaround was recently committed to improve behavior on older
cards using that chipset.  Specifically the following change to
ata-chipset.c: 

    revision 1.48
    date: 2003/11/28 19:01:28;  author: sos;  state: Exp;  lines: +6 -2
    Workaround for errata on early versions of the sii3112.
    
    Approved by: re@

Does this make any difference in your configuration?

Robert N M Watson             FreeBSD Core Team, TrustedBSD Projects
robert at fledge.watson.org      Senior Research Scientist, McAfee Research