any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?

[macStuff]

i read just now that the 2SE4 card was based on the SIL3124 chipset - can anyone confirm this?
https://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-2se4/spec/
the 2se4 mentions mac bootability but is this OSX booting only? its been a long time since i visited these topics.. someone help me out

ok sorry ive just seen
 Self-contained Macintosh booting functionality
and thought this might have meant os9 aswell
but now i see in the documentation that it says osx 10.4 is the only os supported
https://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-2se4/spec/

Mac OS X version 10.4.0 or later (works best with 10.4.6 or later)

i see now this page is alot better to look at and answers alot of questions quickly:
https://www.firmtek.com/seritek/compat.php

[macarone]

My experience seems to be very different from others:

Sonnet cards did not boot either OS 9 or OS X. They were only useful for non-booting storage.

All Firmtek Seritek cards boot BOTH OS 9 and OS X.

BUT: you must buy the right card for your computer. PCI cards are NOT compatible with PCIe.

Some PCI-X cards are backwards compatible with PCI slots, but some are NOT.

But what Mac are you going to put the card into? I don't believe ANY Mac that will take a PCI-X card cannot be a G3 or G4, and will never boot OS 9. Has nothing to do with the card, and everything to do with the computer.

Sonnet was very popular at one time, but I found Seritek to be superior for SATA, and ATTO to be better for SCSI.

[macStuff]

the reason for me bringing this up is that its just come to my attention that the endless supply (so i thought) of SIL3112 cards on ebay seems to have dried up
either that or perhaps its just a fluke that noone has an active listing at this time,
im sure there are more in china sitting in a warehouse somewhere

macarone:
alot of what u just said rigth now is actually false; no offence;
sonnet cards DO boot os9; the Tempo Sata ones with the 1S2 firmtek firmware anyway;
i posted the page above showing which cards can boot os9
which the page lists as : 1eVE4, 1V4, 1eVE2+2, 1eSE2, 1S2, 1SM2

out of that list these can be broken down into 2 groups/variations;

group A: 1eSE2, 1S2, 1SM2  are both the same thing with differences re: internal vs external, the 1sm2 being a pc-cardbus port of the 1s2 ( i beleive same chip?)
group B: 1eVE4, 1V4, 1eVE2+2 are all similar cards with differences re: internal vs external

group A runs of SIL3112 chipset
group B runs off the vitesse vcs7174  chipset which i believe is actually an intel chipset in disguise; called the "Intel 31244 PCI-X to SATA Controller"

group A is *** 32bit PCI
group B is *** 64bit PCI-X (downward compatible with 64bit PCI)

[IIO]

Sonnet cards did not boot either OS 9 or OS X.

i also dont get it to work (and i dont really need it) - but officially they can boot into everything. not sure what to do to make it work (because i never had a good reason to try again)

Some PCI-X cards are backwards compatible with PCI slots, but some are NOT.
[...]
But what Mac are you going to put the card into? I don't believe ANY Mac that will take a PCI-X card cannot be a G3 or G4, and will never boot OS 9.

all seritek and sonnet sata 150 based expansions are officially supporting "any G3 or G4", and like you said even some later PCI-X cards. but to my knowledge none of them supports OS9 (and OS9 softraid modes for that matter), they will only run in OSX.

[macarone]

>i also dont get it to work (and i dont really need it) - but officially they can boot into everything. not sure what to do >to make it work (because i never had a good reason to try again)

Thanks for confirming this. I also actually only tried only one Sonnet card, and gave up on all of them.

I have several SeriTek cards, and each worked right out of the box, They boot OS 9, OS X, and they ALSO do "port multiplication", which is another thing the Sonnet card I had did NOT do.

I was trying to be helpful to those that are just trying to easily boot from SATA drives. I realize some prefer the cheapest solution even if it means modding pins and cables and flashing firmware. Same about the PCI vs PCI-X. Why get a PCI-X card for a PCI Mac, and hope it will work, when you can just get a PCI card that you know will work? Unless, of course the PCI-X card is guaranteed to be "backward compatible" and is cheaper too!

[macStuff]

guys;
please;
your comments are incorrect + not true;
please start your own thread;
i started this thread for a specific purpose to try to obtain a specific outcome; and that information is being obscured + detracted from by your guy's comments
which are totally irrelevant + factually incorrect in my opinion.

there is no macos9 booting card that supports port multiplication because it is not supported by the ***only two chipset that actually have firmware that supports booting mac os 9 (sil3112, or vitesse vcs7174)

the understanding of pci vs pci-x put forth in the comments above is also not accurate

Why get a PCI-X card for a PCI Mac, and hope it will work, when you can just get a PCI card that you know will work?

ask anyone who understands and the answer will be: speed, bandwidth, throughput, performance;
pci-x is 64bit and is downward compatible with pci-64bit; while normal pci is 32bit; are u even reading my posts???

Unless, of course the PCI-X card is guaranteed to be "backward compatible" and is cheaper too!

i would say from what i have learned + understand to be true is that ALL PCI-X is backward compatible with PCI. no exceptions.
referring back to a post i made years ago : http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=893.0
PCI 32bit/33MHz   133.33 MB/s  (most short pci cards)
PCI 32bit/66MHz   266.7 MB/s
PCI 64bit/33MHz   266.7 MB/s (most mac pci slots)
PCI 64bit/66MHz   533 MB/s
PCI 64bit/100MHz   800 MB/s
as u can see there is a great performance increase to be had from pci @ 64bit/33mhz  (266MB/s which is what u get from using a pci-x card in a g3/g4)
compared to a normal shorter pci card (133MB/s)
but this is not what i intended to be discussing here and not why i made this thread;

my goal in starting this thread was to ask if anyone has ever acheived OS 9 booting on any other addon hardware featuring a  chipset other than sil3112 (or VCS7174)  this may be possible by firmware programming hacks or Openfirmware hacks etc etc
BECAUSE there used to be tons of SIL3112 cards cheaply available from china on ebay; now there is NOT

as far as i understand it : the term + definition of "PCI-X" really moreso refers to the EXTRA bandwidth above 64bit/66Mhz that they made available beyond 533MB/s
rather then the actual size of the connector on the slot (which all g4's seem to have connectors that are the same length but do not go above 64bit + do not operate at 66mhz)

[refinery]

sonnet cards do boot os9, you just have to find the right version. they changed the hardware at some point in the production run. earlier versions work, later versions dont. Im currently using one in my beige g3 and it works fine with OS9.

[refinery]

i see this has dual SIL3112s....

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-4-Port-SATA-Raid-Controller-Card-PCI-X-64-bit-1-5Gbps-PBA-A97181-005-FS/183742631541?hash=item2ac7ea0e75:g:iWUAAOSwCrtcbHw~

[refinery]

and this...
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-SER523-Rev-B2-6-Port-SATA-150-PCI-X-Raid-Controller/232732729338?epid=2281232392&hash=item362ff39ffa:g:gi0AAOSwlMRa0MSs:sc:USPSFirstClass!85224!US!-1

[macStuff]

those are LSI controllers; seem to bridge two sil3112's together? but they dont have flash bios that can be reprogrammed as far as i can tell;

my idea was to try flashing a pb3124 with the sil3112 firmware; the pb3124 cards have socketted flashbios chips on them already so if it works it would be easy to order the correct brand/size and plop it in and reprogram no soldering required

[IIO]

sonnet cards do boot os9, you just have to find the right version.

mine doesnt even boot OSX. probably wrong operation.

[IIO]

Thanks for confirming this.

oh i didnt mean to confirm it. according to sonnet the tempo serial ata can boot both. i just dont get it to work because i dont care. my jumper settings are: 150 mode instead of 300, and nothing more.

[macStuff]

please ignore IIO's random non-productive comments; he doesnt know what hes talking about; clearly; the Tempo Sata card is a clone of the firmtek 1S2 and does not have jumpers nor capability for Sata300 speed; his understanding is confused;

[refinery]

those are LSI controllers; seem to bridge two sil3112's together? but they dont have flash bios that can be reprogrammed as far as i can tell;

my idea was to try flashing a pb3124 with the sil3112 firmware; the pb3124 cards have socketted flashbios chips on them already so if it works it would be easy to order the correct brand/size and plop it in and reprogram no soldering required

if one pops up cheap enough it might be worth experimenting with... I have run across RAID controllers in the past which allow you to disable their onboard bios, just presenting a pass-through adapter. still, even at that point I dont know if it would work since it would be expecting a mac firmware for the end controllers. but man... that would be nice. I actually found another one with a *third* SIL3112, allowing for six SATA ports. That would be killer.

[macStuff]

i wouldnt put much faith in those multiplexed sil3112 designs -- they are outside of the original firmware design.

if your goal is to create a working os9 booting card;
it has to be 2 ports only, Sata150.
it has to be SIL3112
it has to have a flash Bios chip that can be removed + resoldered/socketed to allow adding the correct size/type chip
and then finally it has to be programmed with flashrom (usually in a DOS based PCI machine, i used a 440bx pIII machine i believe)

so i doubt sil3124 will ever work because of its design being different from sil3112
so the other options im interesetd in hearing feedback about are: Sil3114 + Sil3512
*** i cant seem to find a block diagram for sil3112 atm if anyoen can find a similar diagram for sil3112 please post?

*** at the bottom of this post user renegade claims that he tried sil3512 and he reports that it will not boot; i assume he used the right flash chip for this aswell;(

[SDG]

so the other options im interesetd in hearing feedback about are: Sil3114 + Sil3512
*** i cant seem to find a block diagram for sil3112 atm if anyoen can find a similar diagram for sil3112 please post?

Dunno if this info helps but I'll offer it for what it's worth. I recently got a DA and like its close relatives, the QSes, it refused to boot with a SiI3112 2-port cardflashed with the SeriTek 1s2 firmware. That same card worked in other PowerMacs from the 9600 to the MDD without issue.

I had a PC 2-port SiI3512 card so put that in the DA. Under OSX, the card was recognised so I tried flashing it with the Wiebetech OSX-only firmware. Flashing would always fail with a 'bus error' message. I flashed the card in another PowerMac and it now boots OSX in the DA. Previous attempts in a QS with a SiI3112 card flashed with the Wiebetech firmware resulted in the same failure to boot as with the SeriTek firmware. My guess from this is that there are more differences between the SiI3512 and the SiI3112 cards than just the chip although both can operate with the Wiebetech firmware.

[IIO]

yes thats known, the dont work in QSs.

[macStuff]

Dunno if this info helps but I'll offer it for what it's worth. I recently got a DA and like its close relatives, the QSes, it refused to boot with a SiI3112 2-port cardflashed with the SeriTek 1s2 firmware. That same card worked in other PowerMacs from the 9600 to the MDD without issue.

ya its an electrical incompatibility with the pins on the card re: the ADC implementation of the QS i believe
i saw a thread last night from may 2015 where i ran into the same issue; i documented that my original purple pcb tempo sata card from sonnet worked fine in the QS but the cheapo flashed versions did not.. its nothing to do with the actual flash but rather those cheap sil3112 cards the way they were made re: pin config i think...
so  - its not the rom flashing that is responsible but rather the electrical design of some of the sil3112 card implementations; not all sil3112 are incompatible with QS only some; as u acn tell by observing the positioning of the components on the pcb there are many many many different versions of sil3112a cards

[macStuff]

even if they arent bootable. using a SIL3124 card in a macos9 machine can provide some serious benefit; the fact that it has 4 sata 150 ports means instantly adding 2 new SoftRaid Sets; or it could be one massive stripe of 4 SSD's (insane??) 

its a universal 64bit pci-x card (@33mhz) which means it gives a bandwidth of 266.7 MB/s to a G4 mac (literally double the normal bandwidth speed most normal 32bit mac compatible pci cards would (which would be 133MB/s @ 33mhz))
so its worth checking out; as there are no more Firmtek pci-x cards for sale it would seem

at the very least they could be used for running apps + data if they cant be booted from?
does anyone have any experience with a card with the 3124 chipset?
has anyone tried flashing one of these cards wit the 2se4 firmware? (which is OS X bootable)
has anyone tried flashing one of these cards wit the 1s2 firmware? (which is OS 9 bootable)

[Daniel]

To have an ATA chipset usable by Mac OS, it will need to have an ATA Interface Module written for it.

To have it be bootable, it will also need a Fcode ROM to make it be usable by Open Firmware.

Here's some documentation on Apple's ATA implementation (including how to write AIMs): http://mirror.informatimago.com/next/developer.apple.com/documentation/Hardware/DeviceManagers/ata/ata.html

Quite a few documents are relevent to Open Firmware:

• https://www.openfirmware.info/data/docs/of1275.pdf - main specification for OF
• https://www.openfirmware.info/data/docs/bus.pci.pdf - OF PCI binding
• https://www.devicetree.org/open-firmware/practice/interpos/interpos.ps - description of the interpose functionality used by NewWorld Macs

"Designing PCI Cards and Drivers for Power Macintosh Computers" is probably needed for both AIMs and Fcode. http://mirror.informatimago.com/next/developer.apple.com/documentation/Hardware/DeviceManagers/pci_srvcs/pci_cards_drivers/Designing_PCI_Cards_Drivers.pdf

And here is the datasheet on the SIL3124: http://www.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/pdf/218215/SILICONIMAGE/SII3124ACBHU.html.

The SIL3124 datasheet helpfully describes how to access the flash chip from PCI. Apple's PCI Driver Development Kit may be useful for that: https://www.staticky.com/mirrors/ftp.apple.com/developer/Development_Kits/PCI_DDK_3.0.sit.hqx.

Developing drivers for this seems doable. It just needs dedication from a good programmer. I suppose that may be hard to come across. I don't know the exact number of hackers working on the 9.2.2 reversing project, but I am pretty sure it is less than 10.