Support for SAS/SATA non-RAID adapters

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 11:05:45AM +0000, Pete French wrote:
> > better driver for this marvell chip. If someone gets to port it to
> > FreeBSD, the card may be pretty decent choice for those who have PCI-X
> > slot on-board.
> 
> I have PCI-X and just purchased an unbranded card based
> on the SiL3124 chipset, as I was only using SATA 1 before.
> I didn't expect much, but it's actually suprisingly fast.
> Certainly a lot better than I expected - I've only had it
> a week, but so far I would recommend it.
> 
> Mind you, this is my first real forray onto the world of non-SCSI
> controllers so if I just bought a nightmare chipset with loads of
> known issues then please tell me :-)

I tend to avoid Silicon Image as a result of their 3112 snafu.  I'm
"generally" not that impressed by their 3114 and 3512 chips either, but
the 3112 problem is severe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Image_Inc.#Product_alerts

The 3124 and later revisions are supposedly decent, but I've avoided
them due to their history (I stick to Intel ICHx controllers + AHCI and
don't bother with hardware RAID).

Avoiding SIMG is difficult though, since they're used on most consumer
and/or residential products, and are even more common when it comes to
external hard drive enclosures (USB, Firewire, or otherwise) or similar
devices.  But it's the 3112 you have to watch out for.

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                   jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |