SiI3112 Controller Question

[Garance A Drosihn]

At 1:51 PM -0800 3/30/06, Richard P. Koett wrote:
>Some quick questions:
>
>1) Are these SiI3112 controllers any good?

They suck.
They are horrible.
They are very cheap to buy -- and are overpriced after
you add in all the aggravation they provide.

Don't waste your time on them.  Buy a real SATA
controller.  (disclaimer: I am only commenting on
their SATA controllers)

>I have the option of using a HighPoint HPT372 instead
>but was planning to use that elsewhere.

Unfortunately I don't know enough to comment on other
alternatives.  I dumped my SiI3112 SATA controller
and bought a real controller as made by Promise, but
there are probably a number of other good options.

>2) Would upgrading to something newer than 5.4-RELEASE
>help with this issue?

It will probably help.  That doesn't mean you will have
a reliable controller, it just means that 6.x includes
more work-arounds for the myriad bugs in these super-
cheap controllers.  Some of these work-arounds result
in performance penalties.

Just my opinion, of course...  YMMV.

-- 
Garance Alistair Drosehn            =   gad at gilead.netel.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute    or  drosih at rpi.edu