Undetected SiI 3112 PCI SATA Controller card

[Erik Trulsson]

On Sat, Mar 22, 2008 at 02:22:18AM -0700, Andrew Fremantle wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I've got a machine with an SiI 3112 based (Definately Silicon Image, I'm 
> 97% certain it was 3112) PCI SATA controller board in it. The board was 
> just installed, and is not working. I don't get a BIOS screen on startup 
> for it, but it is shown in the PCI device listing. The board is an ASUS 
> A7V, so it wouldn't at all surprise me if there's a problem with the BIOS.
> 
> This is all FreeBSD 6.3 has to say on the subject :
> pci0: <mass storage, RAID> at device 11.0 (no driver attached)
> 
> According to the ata(4) manpage, the ata driver is supposed to support this 
> chipset?

Yes, it is supposed to be supported.  It is also generally considered to be
one of the crappiest and buggiest SATA controllers in existence.
(It was also one of the first native SATA controllers to the market, which
helps explain why it was used so much anyway.)

> I found pciconf
> 
> pciconf gives the following output
> none1 at pci0:11:0:        class=0x010400 card=0x61121095 chip=0x21121095 
                                                         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Something is really wrong here.  For a SiI 3112 is should say
'chip=0x31121095'.  'chip=0x21121095' does not correspond to any known
chip.  If not even the PCI id is detected correctly then it looks like
something is wrong with the hardware - either the controller or the
motherboard.


> rev=0x02 hdr=0x00
>    vendor     = 'Silicon Image Inc (Was: CMD Technology Inc)'
>    class      = mass storage
>    subclass   = RAID
> 
> Is there a way to force the ata driver to treat this as an Si3112 and see 
> what happens? I can't imagine this makes a difference, but there's actually 
> 3 ATA controllers in the machine - The VIA chipset, an integrated Promise 
> Ultra/100, and now the SiI board.

You could go to sys/dev/ata/ata-pci.h and change the constant 0x31121095
into 0x21121095 and then recompile your kernel, and see what happens.
What will happen is most likely that some other problem will turn up with
that card, but you might get lucky (I just wouldn't count on it.)


-- 
<Insert your favourite quote here.>
Erik Trulsson
ertr1013 at student.uu.se