Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)

[dosdude1]

Hi dosdude1.
I found the firmware for SIL3114,
maybe you will be interested to see and try to flash the card.
Perhaps all 4 ports will work.

https://www.siig.com/download/search?keyword=SC-SA4M12

There's also another firmware for sil3512 but there is a  problem how to extract it from the archive...
https://www.siig.com/pub/media/files/drivers/0005/siig3512101updriver1.sit

I was able to successfully extract both ROM images. From my analysis, it appears there are no EEPROM ID checks in the drivers, however I could not test the Sil3512 ROM as I don't have a card with that chipset on hand. Both ROMs will fit no issues onto a 128K EEPROM. These ROMs contain only an OS X driver, so they will not work under OS 9, but are bootable and will work just fine under OS X.

[AtariMan]

Thanks a lot, I'll try it today.

[AtariMan]

I flashed 3114, all 4 ports work and everything is fine.
Dosdude1 You are a genius and a very good engineer!
Of course, in Mac OS 9 there is no boot,
although it sees the disk, but 4 ports in Mac OS X are also good.
Sil3512 has not yet flashed, I'll try later.
Thanks again for your work.
You are a very valuable person for the PPC architecture.

[eastone]

@dosdude1

Thank you very much! You are a great engineer! Btw, could you share the details of extracting the firmware and getting rid of those 20 bytes from the file? I am very curious how you did it

[smilesdavis]

I flashed 3114, all 4 ports work and everything is fine.
Dosdude1 You are a genius and a very good engineer!
Of course, in Mac OS 9 there is no boot,
although it sees the disk, but 4 ports in Mac OS X are also good.
Sil3512 has not yet flashed, I'll try later.
Thanks again for your work.
You are a very valuable person for the PPC architecture.

Thanks for the headsup i almost sold my sonnet

But pop in attach drive boots. Love it

[AtariMan]

I stitched 3512, everything is fine!

[eastone]

I found another updater on my hard drive for siig with sil3512. ReadMe says this is the firmware for cards working under mac os 10.2 and above. The previous firmware was for cards working under mac os 10.1 and above. I don't know if there is any difference between these firmware for systems from 10.2 up.

[dosdude1]

@dosdude1

Thank you very much! You are a great engineer! Btw, could you share the details of extracting the firmware and getting rid of those 20 bytes from the file? I am very curious how you did it

Well, upon initial analysis, I found that the actual firmware image was encoded inside the executable binary of the kext (that comes with the SIIG firmware update package). I put in a little bit of time to see if I could figure out how the encoding was done, but ultimately I decided the easiest method would be to just spoof the properties of the card in Open Firmware to just make the updater think the card installed was the appropriate SIIG card it was looking for. Once I did that, all I had to do was simply run the updater, and it flashed the card no issues (though I had to put a different EEPROM on the card for it to work, as the updater only works with two specific EEPROM types. Yes, I attempted to patch this, but it simply does not have the necessary implementation to flash most EEPROMs). Then I just dumped the card's EEPROM, and there we go, a flashable ROM image!

[smilesdavis]

and does it boot in os9?

[AtariMan]

and does it boot in os9?

Sil3112 Mac OS 9 and OS X bootable. Sil3114 and Sil3512 Mac OS X only.

[eastone]

I decided the easiest method would be to just spoof the properties of the card in Open Firmware to just make the updater think the card installed was the appropriate SIIG card it was looking for.

Thanks for the clarification! It sounds very simple if you know what to do Thanks again for your effort for our ppc community!

[chrisNova777]

so is the new goal to get the 4-port card sil3114's booting OS9???

[Borgmac]

Will continue to work on that and flash my first card.
Then I could have some time available...

I was writing this end of January and I had no idea it would take me more than one month to find a solution!
Let's start first with the disappointments:

• G4 Quicksilver does not boot with either SIL3112 or SIL3114 card. There could be a solution implying voltage, but I have not looked into that direction
• My others G4, AGP and Digital Audio, same problem
• After finding that G3 and G5 are OK with the card, launching flashrom in Linux was returning Error: No supported PCI device found, so I could not flash my card
• I will never be able to use my card as the EEPROM need a 12V signal to write on it, and the 12V is not available on the card, so need an EEPROM programmer or replace the chip...

And now the happy ending:

• I start to be able to play with Linux and understand better how to do what I need
• I have found a Linux distro with a Flashrom version that can recognize my cards
• Found a SIL3114 card that I should be able to flash

I have attached 2 files with the result of the checks that Flashrom is doing on SIL3112 and SIL3114. Just check the first 15 lines and the last 2.
You will see that flashrom is first detecting the SIL chip and then go through a long list of EEPROM to see if he find one on the card.

I will be back soon with some other news..

[Borgmac]

OK, I succeeded to flash the SIL 3114 card with SIL3114CTU and SST39Sf010A by using Linux Lubuntu 16.04 remix v2 on a PowerMac G5. Version of the Flashrom is  v0.9.9-rc1-r1942 on Linux 4.4.0-21-powerpc64-smp (ppc64).
Been able to startup G5 and G3 computers with only one SSD connected to the PCI to SATA card or by selecting it at the startup menu.


Will come back later on with detailed process to install and work with Linux to get to this result using only PowerMac computers.

[joevt]

OK, I succeeded to flash the SIL 3114 card with SIL3114CTU and SST39Sf010A by using Linux Lubuntu 16.04 remix v2 on a PowerMac G5. Version of the Flashrom is  v0.9.9-rc1-r1942 on Linux 4.4.0-21-powerpc64-smp (ppc64).
Been able to startup G5 and G3 computers with only one SSD connected to the PCI to SATA card or by selecting it at the startup menu.
Will come back later on with detailed process to install and work with Linux to get to this result using only PowerMac computers.

I made a version of flashrom that you can compile in Mac OS X 10.4 but I don't have a PCI card to test it with.
 https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/silicon-image-sil3112-flashing-easier-way-using-flashrom.7013/post-475781

If it doesn't work, then output from lspci from Mac OS X might be helpful:
sudo lspci -vvvnnxxx > PowerMac_lspci.txt

[ssp3]

How about posting a compiled executable for mere mortals?

[Borgmac]

I FINALLY got it figured out, well, sort of... I couldn't figure out what in my implementation was causing the issue, so I decided to make a new implementation, based off a different C implementation along with a (broken) Forth implementation I came across. With this decompression routine implemented, the USB probing issue stopped happening on my MDD! So now, finally, we have a fully working ROM that fits onto a 128K EEPROM! I have attached this new ROM below, along with my patched copy of the OS 9 SeriTek flasher tool with said ROM embedded, as well as the Forth source of the new decompression implementation.

Hi dosdude, I received the AM29F010, succeeded to solder it on the SIL3112 card and it is working perfectly in G5 and B&W G3 under OSX. Thanks again for this wonderful job.
I can see the card in OS9 (see attached picture) but I cannot boot in OS9 from the card.
I use the file attached to this post, is it the correct one, working in OSX and OS9?

[dosdude1]

I FINALLY got it figured out, well, sort of... I couldn't figure out what in my implementation was causing the issue, so I decided to make a new implementation, based off a different C implementation along with a (broken) Forth implementation I came across. With this decompression routine implemented, the USB probing issue stopped happening on my MDD! So now, finally, we have a fully working ROM that fits onto a 128K EEPROM! I have attached this new ROM below, along with my patched copy of the OS 9 SeriTek flasher tool with said ROM embedded, as well as the Forth source of the new decompression implementation.

Hi dosdude, I received the AM29F010, succeeded to solder it on the SIL3112 card and it is working perfectly in G5 and B&W G3 under OSX. Thanks again for this wonderful job.
I can see the card in OS9 (see attached picture) but I cannot boot in OS9 from the card.
I use the file attached to this post, is it the correct one, working in OSX and OS9?

Yes, that ROM should work in both OS X and OS 9. Just check your drive, and ensure it is formatted correctly with a good copy of OS 9 installed that you know boots on that machine.

[smilesdavis]

Hey so my sonnets are not worth 800 usd anymore? 🤣🤣

[dosdude1]

Hey so my sonnets are not worth 800 usd anymore? 🤣🤣

I would sure hope not...

[vectrex]

Hi everyone,

Attempting to use dosdude1’s modified seritek flasher in os9 to flash one of the black Sil3112 cards in a MDD.

The seritek program detects the card and agrees that the card must be updated, but as soon as I click the update button, my whole system freezes. The flash program says ‘erasing’ and then I am unable to force quit and I have to physically power the system off.

I waited a long time before hard resetting the computer in case there was something with the flashing that required a long amount of time, but at this point I am convinced the program is freezing and not doing anything.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

[dosdude1]

Hi everyone,

Attempting to use dosdude1’s modified seritek flasher in os9 to flash one of the black Sil3112 cards in a MDD.

The seritek program detects the card and agrees that the card must be updated, but as soon as I click the update button, my whole system freezes. The flash program says ‘erasing’ and then I am unable to force quit and I have to physically power the system off.

I waited a long time before hard resetting the computer in case there was something with the flashing that required a long amount of time, but at this point I am convinced the program is freezing and not doing anything.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

That means that the SeriTek tool doesn't like the EEPROM that's installed. Does your card have an AM28F010 EEPROM? If so, unfortunately, you cannot flash that EEPROM on the board, as it requires 12V for erasing and programming, which only can be done externally using an EEPROM programmer. Alternatively, you can replace the EEPROM on the card with a 29 or 39 series EEPROM, such as an AM29F010. These are programmable with only 5V, so these can be programmed on the board, and will work with the patched SeriTek utility. I really don't understand why these really cheap Chinese Sil3112 cards are now shipping with AM28F010 EEPROMs, but it's extremely annoying.

[ssp3]

I really don't understand why these really cheap Chinese Sil3112 cards are now shipping with AM28F010 EEPROMs, but it's extremely annoying.

This is common practice in Chinese manufacturing - substituting parts for whatever is in the parts bin at the moment, counterfeit parts including.

It has burnt many western companies that have either moved their manufacturing over there or are ordering their sh*t and re-branding it. Most have someone over there to do QC. But, as soon as you turn your back...
To paraphrase Forrest Gump - "Chinese [insert anything here] is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get.”
* It's not CHN bashing, I'm speaking from my own and people I know experience.

[Borgmac]

Yes, that ROM should work in both OS X and OS 9. Just check your drive, and ensure it is formatted correctly with a good copy of OS 9 installed that you know boots on that machine.

It is working very well. I probably had yesterday some issue with the booting of the B&W G3.
Try again today with 2 different partitions of an Inland SSD and it does boot without any issue.

[vectrex]

Confirmed, both cards are using an AM28F010 EEPROM. Thanks for clarifying.

These were the ones I had purchased (EEPROM is not covered over like the picture illustrates) so I guess buyer beware for anyone else looking to purchase:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/194886253367

That means that the SeriTek tool doesn't like the EEPROM that's installed. Does your card have an AM28F010 EEPROM? If so, unfortunately, you cannot flash that EEPROM on the board, as it requires 12V for erasing and programming, which only can be done externally using an EEPROM programmer. Alternatively, you can replace the EEPROM on the card with a 29 or 39 series EEPROM, such as an AM29F010. These are programmable with only 5V, so these can be programmed on the board, and will work with the patched SeriTek utility. I really don't understand why these really cheap Chinese Sil3112 cards are now shipping with AM28F010 EEPROMs, but it's extremely annoying.

[V.Yakob]

Question(!)
I know that such cards do not work in QuickSilver, and it seems that there is an option to fix it by replacing the voltage regulator (U2). Who knows for sure in which other models such a problem manifests itself?

And so, it's been some time since I started studying the operation of the SATA controller SIL3112 on Quicksilver. And today, finally, I have an answer.
A few months ago, we discussed it with FBz by email, and he sent me an interesting post on macrumors.
I made an additional modification of the board since the last post -- replaced the voltage regulator with "FS8860 33C"
After that, QS starts without problems with SIL3112 installed and boots Mac OS 9. 

As a result, I checked this twice modified board in 3 computers: Power Macintosh G3, PowerMac G4 Quicksilver, PowerMac G4 MDD.

[redstudio]

same situation.. weeks ago I bought 3 boards excited to be able to update them via software. Arrived yesterday they mount the AM28F010. I have the eprom programmer, can I disassemble these eproms, update the software and reassemble them? or do I need different eproms? is the firmware compatible with AM28F010 eprom ? let me know, thanks

[Borgmac]

same situation.. weeks ago I bought 3 boards excited to be able to update them via software. Arrived yesterday they mount the AM28F010. I have the eprom programmer, can I disassemble these eproms, update the software and reassemble them? or do I need different eproms? is the firmware compatible with AM28F010 eprom ? let me know, thanks

As I do not have a programmer, I replaced the AM28F010 by AM29F010 and flash it on the computer.
But if you have a programmer that can supply the 12V for flashing the AM28F010, that should be ok.

[Borgmac]

As a result, I checked this twice modified board in 3 computers: Power Macintosh G3, PowerMac G4 Quicksilver, PowerMac G4 MDD.

Thanks a lot for this very good job, I will certainly try!

[dosdude1]

same situation.. weeks ago I bought 3 boards excited to be able to update them via software. Arrived yesterday they mount the AM28F010. I have the eprom programmer, can I disassemble these eproms, update the software and reassemble them? or do I need different eproms? is the firmware compatible with AM28F010 eprom ? let me know, thanks

Yes, once flashed with the patched/compressed ROM externally via EEPROM programmer, the card will indeed work perfectly fine with the AM28F010. It's just very unfortunate and annoying that these cheap cards are now shipping with the AM28F010... Otherwise this wouldn't be an issue.

[redstudio]

nothing.. I disassembled the AM28F010.. I put in the programmer, installed Rom downloaded here.. everything seemed in order.. flashed and checked everything is fine.. I soldered it doesn't work.. I don't understand.. it's not first time flash rom..always went well..has anyone tried this method? eventually I have new AM29LV040B Chips..could they be good to be mounted directly and flash on 3112 card with software?

[dosdude1]

nothing.. I disassembled the AM28F010.. I put in the programmer, installed Rom downloaded here.. everything seemed in order.. flashed and checked everything is fine.. I soldered it doesn't work.. I don't understand.. it's not first time flash rom..always went well..has anyone tried this method? eventually I have new AM29LV040B Chips..could they be good to be mounted directly and flash on 3112 card with software?

I've personally tested my patched ROM with AM28F010, and I can guarantee that it does work. Just check your soldering; chances are that's the issue. Also make sure you read the chip content back and ensure it was actually flashed successfully.

If you do install an AM29LV040, then yes, you will then be able to flash via software.

[redstudio]

You are right. defective welding..difficult because contact is below..however successful. works. great job everyone!

[FBz]

                          Converted SATA SiL3112 Controller with AM29F010 VS. StarTech adapter with same 128 GB Inland SSD

[DieHard]

Thank you FBz !

Real numbers, this is great !

OK, so the quick math tells us that in an MDD...

Part / Whole * 100
72.66 / 82.24 * 100 = 88.35%

So, it's safe to say that the lowly PATA/SATA adapter actually runs at about 88.35% as fast as the PCI sata card in the real world; or better said... the SATA PCI will give a performance boost of about (100-88.35) 11.65%.

Now don't get me wrong a boost of 11.65% is awesome, but we should also note that SATA card eats up PCI bandwidth to achieve that extra 11.65%, so I'm just saying for some people who fill their G4s with ProTools cards, or PCI audio interface cards with DSP cards (Powercore, UAD-1) then the IDE to SATA adapter may still be the best option since it's on a separate bus... just saying

[V.Yakob]

Now don't get me wrong a boost of 11.65% is awesome, but we should also note that SATA card eats up PCI bandwidth to achieve that extra 11.65%, so I'm just saying for some people who fill their G4s with ProTools cards, or PCI audio interface cards with DSP cards (Powercore, UAD-1) then the IDE to SATA adapter may still be the best option since it's on a separate bus... just saying

Any productivity growth from 5% can already be considered significant.
As our FBz testing showed, my SATA-PATA bridges on the JM20330 controller are slower, so at first it seemed to me that the performance gain was greater.
But I agree with you, if the user needs to use many or all of the PCI slots on PM, then the best practice is to use the bridge, even on the JMicron controller.
Again, if the user needs to connect large partitions in Mac OS 9, the only possible option is to use a PCI card. As you probably remember, as an experiment, I connected an HGST disk with one 1 TB partition.

In any case, dealing with this issue has been interesting over the past few months. 

[IIO]

2TB volumes work fine with the cheap green adapters, but what you dont have without PCI solutions is multiple ATA controllers.
in the case of MDDs you can double and in the case of quicksilvers you can triple your internal storage with 1 additional 2-port IDE or 4-port SATA card, which is why a proper (and available) 4-port SATA card would be awesome to have.

to be honest, i bought a sonnet in 2005 mostly because i did not know about cheap adapters. but then later i was happy for the additional storage it allowed.

[Borgmac]

As our FBz testing showed, my SATA-PATA bridges on the JM20330 controller are slower, so at first it seemed to me that the performance gain was greater.

I made some tests with SIL 3114 and I was quite surprised to see that SIL 3114 is slower than SIL 3112 AM28F010 replaced by AM29F010 flashed with new flashrom from dosdude1. I thought I read somewhere that SIL3114 based cards were supposed to be faster than SIL3112.



It looks like the Sinloon adapter has still some good days to live...

In any case, dealing with this issue has been interesting over the past few months. 

Same for me, it gave me the opportunity to lear Linux on PowerMac and to solder my first chip!

[chrisNova777]

its the year 2032...
diehard.. still refuses to die...
still emphasisizing for you to not over-use your PCI BUS!! ehehehe
MACOS9! FOREVERRRRRR

whos gonna do the benchmark of two ssd's on two seperate PCI cards in RAID0 stripe
PCI BUS is trembling in fear

in all seriousness tho, if the sil3114 wont boot, couldnt there still be a way to force it to boot with an OF command?

[DieHard]

its the year 2032...
diehard.. still refuses to die...
still emphasisizing for you to not over-use your PCI BUS!! ehehehe
MACOS9! FOREVERRRRRR

OK, Chris, you got me there

Still reminds us of the old debates... hehe

I am sure, as stated an 11% increase is very beneficial, and that for the majority of users, I admit, SATA PCI card is the way to go; I am only mentioning this for the users that might not have a chassis and are using the slots for core/farm cards or the users that have (2) or more DSP cards and an interface PCI card.  DAW users are the ones that need to weight it all, even you, if you decide to add (2) or more cards with your MotU PCI card will see the light, audio pops and clicks are a real thing when you max out the PCI bus and then use it to write data.  I had to personally test and load up G4s back it the day, and it was a factor, even though, I know you like to ignore that, but hey, everyone can experiment and make their own choices, I am just putting it out there for those who google their way here and are going for an old DAW.

[chrisNova777]

my SIL3112 card has the winbond w29C011AP-15 thats 128k right?

for me personally -- re ssd its not even about the benchmarks its about the actual real world feel of feeling that the system is more responsive
that is what i experienced the first time i got the sonnet tempo sata card (purple one)

it definately was a huge thing, back in the late 90s + early 2000s .. but the disk performance was total shit compared to now
mechanical vs ssd theres no comparison in seek/access/wait times

[n8blz]

I FINALLY got it figured out, well, sort of... I couldn't figure out what in my implementation was causing the issue, so I decided to make a new implementation, based off a different C implementation along with a (broken) Forth implementation I came across. With this decompression routine implemented, the USB probing issue stopped happening on my MDD! So now, finally, we have a fully working ROM that fits onto a 128K EEPROM! I have attached this new ROM below, along with my patched copy of the OS 9 SeriTek flasher tool with said ROM embedded, as well as the Forth source of the new decompression implementation.

Please tell me you made a video of you doing this!!

[IIO]

did you notice? huge pricedrop for consumer SSDs.

2 TB SSDs are now below €100, about where 1TB models were 4 weeks ago.

for massive data writing jobs or for archival puposes (i.e. in the cupboard) you still need HDDs, but for everyhting else you have no longer any excuses.