PATA-SATA convertor drive inaccessibility (was 7.0-CURRENT MCP55 PATA to SATA convertor problems on Asus M2N32 WS Pro)

[Mark Powell]

On Mon, 20 Aug 2007, Bernd Walter wrote:

> About your problem: there are SATA controllers out there that put two 
> SATA header onto the same channel. In this case the PATA bridging can't 
> work in that case, because they have to be alone on each channel. You 
> might want to try a single drive first and test all SATA ports. You have 
> to know that those converters are not making PATA drives into PATA, they 
> bridge PATA over SATA, therefor FreeBSD knows and can even control the 
> PATA transfer-mode.

Ok some further info.
   I can put a single PATA drive converted to SATA onto an MCP55 SATA port, 
with 6.2 on it. It will bootup detect drives and shut down ok. More 
importantly the BIOS will then properly detect all drives at restart i.e. 
no problems at all.
   With 7.0 I have found that with just a proper SATA drive connected or 
even no SATA drives at all connected, after 7.0 has run the BIOS cannot 
then detect any drives at restart. It just hangs. Something 7.0 is doing 
is screwing up this controller.
   So not only is 7.0 failing to probe PATA-SATA converted drives, it is 
also messing up the controller full stop.
   There seems to be something screwy in the 7.0 ata code?
   Many thanks.

-- 
Mark Powell - UNIX System Administrator - The University of Salford
Information Services Division, Clifford Whitworth Building,
Salford University, Manchester, M5 4WT, UK.
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