Looking for a motherboard with lots of SATA ports, supported in 6.2-STABLE

[Constantine A. Murenin]

On 01/07/07, Ravi Pokala <rp_freebsd at mac.com> wrote:
> I am leery of any SATA controller that I've never heard of, and I feared
> that perhaps this was something I already knew from work and didn't like.
> Some googling suggests it's actually a JMicron controller that is decent and
> fairly well supported by 6.2-STABLE. Can anyone confirm that?

Yes, JMicron controllers are a pretty standard feature of most modern
Intel-based boards. Mine works without any problems:

...
atapci0: <JMicron JMB363 SATA300 controller> port
0xbc00-0xbc07,0xb880-0xb883,0xb800-0xb807,0xb480-0xb483,0xb400-0xb40f
mem 0xff6fe000-0xff6fffff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci3
atapci0: [ITHREAD]
atapci0: AHCI Version 01.00 controller with 2 ports detected
ata2: <ATA channel 0> on atapci0
ata2: [ITHREAD]
ata3: <ATA channel 1> on atapci0
ata3: [ITHREAD]
ata4: <ATA channel 2> on atapci0
ata4: [ITHREAD]
...
ad6: 157066MB <Hitachi HDS721616PLA380 P22OAB3A> at ata3-master SATA300
acd0: DVDR <ASUS DRW-1814BL/1.10> at ata4-master UDMA66
...

> I do find it odd that they would use discrete chips for the NIC and extra
> SATA ports, when the chipset contains both.

Mainboard manufacturers usually like to offer Parallel ATA, which is
not available in newest Intel chipsets, hence there is a need for an
external chip. I guess, Serial ATA comes as a bonus with such external
chips, and also provides the user with more choice on which controller
to use.

Also, I don't think ICH8 southbridge has integrated Ethernet
networking capabilities -- these are usually added as an external
chip, connected by PCI Express, as the following diagram illustrates:
<URL:http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/g965/prod_brief.pdf>.

Cheers,
Constantine.