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

[macStuff]

thanks for adding that info;
honestly i think theres a much larger pay off in getting something liek thsi working rather then trying to invent a 9.3
i just dont get the fascination with trying to invent a new version of the os that never was;
when theres much more realistic goals that could be set; and achieved with massively better outcome for all;

i know from first hand experience its very easy to achieve speeds above 188MB/s with these longer PCI-X cards because of their 64-bit /33mhz operation; the Acard 6885M card that i have is the fastest card i have and its based on ATA133 simply because of the 64bit/33mhz bandwidth it offers above and beyond the normal 32-bit/33mhz cards; the sil3124 cards are available in great number under 10$ in the usa; WITH SOCKETED FLASH CHIPS usually of the 040 variety from what i could see; this is a huge oppourtunity if people can wake up and smell the coffee;

[Daniel]

Will all of the cards that use a chipset function identically?

If someone were to write a driver for one particular card that uses sil3124, would it be likely that other cards will also work?

[macStuff]

high possibility of YES i would say
based on the SIL3112 track record anyway

the firmtek 1s2 firmware was a special case scenario because of it being written to incorporate its advanced "Copy protection" technique -- but if firmware exists for the Sil3112 i dont see why a talented programmer who knew what he was doing couldnt duplicate the bootability for another chipset (sil3124) and even create multiple different size ROM's (that would be able to flash to other sil3124 cards that have soldered flashrom chips instead of socketed) and to include or not include the injected OS9 / OSX Kernel extensions that are embedded within the firmware. or make seperate firmwares (to lower the size) for os9 seperate + osx seperate rather then have them combined into one "catch-all" product the way firmtek did.

re: writing a driver;
im fairly certain a sil3124 card right now; if any of us had one; would "work" when booted in os9... as a data drive but not a boot drive; if you tried to boot from it i dont think it would find the tbxi toolbox image + boot; but who knows! there might even be a way to use the openfirmware environment to force a boot from the card in similar fashion to how people were ablet o force usb2 drive booting; without even editing firmware or re-flashing.

i havent confirmed that the sil3124 function as data drives in os9 without any "driver" or special "Re-flashing" but i would love it if someone else could test + report back on their findings; if noone else does id liek to get my hands on some of these cards to test  while they are for sale for 10$ on ebay; i have a strong suspiscion the reason that the sil3112 supply has dissappeared was because of "Harrymatic" posting on macrumours site about flashing the weibetech firmware.. which requierd no re-soldering or re-chipping which the end result was a sil3112 card that boots in osx, not os9; anyway the sil3112 cards seem to be SOLD OUT  so there needs to be a new solution located. theres people trying to sell tempo sata sil3112 that is compatible on the QS in os9 for 400$ on ebay right now

[Daniel]

Darthnvader's technique of loading fcode drivers from disk probably works for sata cards too, so you could test a driver without flashing if you cared to.

Judging by their respective datasheets, the  sil3112 and the sil3124 seem to have totally different architectures and internal registers. I personally wouldn't try to crossload firmware from them. If SATA II is very different from ATA, then I think it very unlikely that any existing ATA Interface Modules work with the sil3124. I lack the relevent knowledge to tell, but it at least seems that way from the wikipedia entries on SATA and ATA.

[macStuff]

the chipsets may be different; but the code pertaining to making it bootable; would be the same; at least some parts of it;

also if u look at the block diagram; it shows that the sil3124 supports both sata150 + sata300; and also supports atapi (SATAOptical Drives)
also not that the block diagram doesnt say SIL3124 but rather SiI3124 (small lowercase i, large uppcase i, often mistook for a lowercase L)

port multiplier support was definately not in siI3112
this block diagram is kind of misleading tho it looks like itsm ore talking about the capabilities of each port rather then specific ports intended use

[macStuff]

like i said before i wanted to try to do a file compare and isolate the start/end points within the firmtek 1s2 firmwaer
where the 2 embedded extension/kexts are

as its been established; theres 1 for macos9 and 1 for osx; 2 seperate extensions/kexts placed within the firmeware itself that get extracted + injected int the os9 + osx operating systems to enable boot;

i havent been using my ppc machines the last few years but before that i remember looking at this i thought i had extracted the kexts from an osx system (panther? or tiger? ppc) and wanted to do the same; to isolate the file that ti produces;  a great start would be to extract the individual files to use as a source to then compare to the firmware rom to isolate the start/end points of the files within the firmware; to get the files that get extracted have to do a littel sleuthing on os9 + osx and get copies of both extracted files and attach them here for reference

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=4995

is there any other people here that are willing to try to help with this?> that are booting from SIL3112 cards with the firmtek firmware?

[macStuff]

another card that has the sil3124 chipset:
Addonics ADS3GX4R5-E
https://www.addonics.com/support/user_guides/host_controller/ads3gx4r5-e.pdf
the documentation claims that it requires osx Panther or Tiger "for the driver (SiI3124 0.42.4.pkg.zip) to work properly"
"The SiI3124 0.42.4 Macintosh driver supplied with the Addonics
ADS3GX4R5-E SATA host adapter is designed to provide SATA port
multiplier compatibility on all four ports with an Apple PowerMac G4 or G5
running Mac OS X 10.3.x or 10.4.x. The driver is not designed for use with
individual SATA hard drives in a direct connect configuration."

strange. i guess this was for corporate use?

There are a variety of SATA PM enclosures that will work with the
ADS3GX4R5-E host adapter using the SiI3124 0.42.4 Macintosh driver.
Addonics provides a Storage Tower that includes a 5X1 Port Multiplier that
will work with this host adapter (model ST5X1PM). It can be found here:
http://www.addonics.com/products/raid_system/ast4.asp
Many other vendors also sell SATA PM enclosures that are compatible with the
ADS3GX4R5-E host adapter using the SiI3124 0.42.4 Macintosh driver. Some
examples include the Sonnet Fusion 500P, DAT Optic Sbox-P and the
WiebeTech SilverSATA V.

https://www.addonics.com/support/user_guides/host_controller/ads3gx4r5-e%20mac.pdf

Need Single Drive Support?
If you need to support single hard drives (direct connect) with the
ADS3GX4R5-E host adapter it can be done using the Sil 3124 1.1.0 Macintosh
drivers found here:
http://www.siliconimage.com/support/supportsearchresults.aspx?pid=27&cid=3&ctid=2&osid=3&
https://web.archive.org/web/20070205094149/http://www.siliconimage.com/support/supportsearchresults.aspx?pid=27&cid=3&ctid=2&osid=3&

SV-HBA3124-4 Mac OS X (10.3.x and 10.4.x) Driver 1.1.0
Email:   [email protected]
Web:   www.steelvine.com

this claims to be for a product called the SV2000; which it looks like is an ESATA enclosure with 5 bays? port multiplier?

full product description here:
http://www.scsi4me.com/silicon-image-sv2000.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20041010024128/http://www.steelvine.com/products_sv2000.htm
https://web.archive.org/web/20020603233500/http://www.siliconimage.com/home.asp
https://web.archive.org/web/20020613190652/http://www.siliconimage.com/products/storage.asp

is there anyone on this forum that has a Sil3214 card?
i think protools5leguy said he bought one by accident years ago (2SE4)
anyone else? im just wondering if theres a generic Sil3214 driver for macintosh (osx)
any chance of trying to test this driver? support could be "built in" to osx aswell?

[macStuff]

finally found that document that matches the others i was posting at the beginning of this thread:
https://web.archive.org/web/20050530123537/http://www.verbatim.com.au/technotes/SiI-PB-0023.pdf

unfortunately not much useful info to be gained there lol

[macStuff]

not sure what this is:
http://dosdude1.com/files/macstuff/PCISataROMs/

[Daniel]

It's presumably a valid whatever-the-format-that-non-open-firmware-expansion-roms-use. An option rom maybe? I have no idea.

It's definitely completely useless for our purposes. It isn't fcode.

[Protools5LEGuy]

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.

Just in case nobody mentioned, every sonnet tempo ATA card I have (ATA66 cards and one of them couldn`t work in leopard and/or drives bigger than 120G) are seen as SCSI card by Mac OS 9.

I still see the cheaper and more compatible and bootable setup those old sonnet tempo ATA with 4 ATA to SATA converters. At least on my rev.1 G3 B&W.

I am sorry to be a little offtopic but the SCSI/Mac OS 9 thing had to be said.

[macStuff]

in macos there is two different modules there is the AIM (ATA interface manager) and the SIM (Scsi Interface manager)
itjust shows up as a scsi device becasue the programmer chose to interface the device thru the SIM rather then the AIM
with regard to interfacing the PCI card to the OS, driver + firmware programming

Daniel: i didnt download the file i just came across it by accident actually

[Daniel]

I just found a very fun bug in certain types of sil3124 cards.

The one I have, and probably all other 32-bit sil3124 cards, is completely unusable on 64-bit pci systems. For reference, this is the one I have: http://www.syba.com/index.php?controller=Product&action=Info&Id=864.

The 64-bit bus, talking to the 64-bit sil3124 chip, says that 64-bit data accesses work. But the card itself is only 32-bit: the extended data lines aren't connected to anything.

The sil3124 tries to use 64-bit accesses whenever possible.

So when the sil3124 tries to transfer data itself, such as when reading or writing data from the disk, a full 50% of the data is sent over data lines that aren't even connected to anything.

64-bit accesses can't be turned off on the sil3124 itself, so it seems the only fix (aside from messing with the pci pins themselves, which seems dangerous) is to simply not plug 32-bit sil3124 cards into 64-bit pci busses.

64-bit sil3124 cards are completely unaffected, so this is just one more excellent reason to use those.

[Protools5LEGuy]

in macos there is two different modules there is the AIM (ATA interface manager) and the SIM (Scsi Interface manager)
itjust shows up as a scsi device becasue the programmer chose to interface the device thru the SIM rather then the AIM
with regard to interfacing the PCI card to the OS, driver + firmware programming

Most probably the ATA inplementation on Mac OS 9 is slower than the SCSI one.

Unless someone prove me wrong.

MDDs should have a better ATA inplementation, but I guess the SCSI path should have advantages.

IIRC some utilities only work with SCSI drives

[DieHard]

I am not sure if XPostFacto can help us (since I am unsure if it has specific cards it can recognize), but this is interesting

You Can Boot OS 9 from It

Even more curious to my feverishly racing mind, I made a interesting discovery in my various experiments. Once the OS X installer has formatted the 320 GB SATA, Mac OS 9 can be installed and booted from any HFS or HFS extended volume upon that drive.

Very weird, but I negotiated a compromise out of this curious mess. I made the first partition on the 30 GB PATA hard drive my OS X boot volume, and the second remaining as the 10.3 installer image.

The 320 GB SATA became four partitions representing data, data copy, Mac OS 9 boot, and miscellaneous. The first two partitions are 139.9 GB in size, the Mac OS 9 partition 4.9 GB, and the miscellaneous partition is a healthy 13 GB. For whatever reason, the OWC 2+2 SATA PCI card can boot into Mac OS 9 or X from the PATA drive, but only Mac OS 9 from the 320 GB SATA Seagate (perpendicular storage) hard drive.

Unfortunately, I don't have any other SATA drives on hand to test whether this problem is related to the Seagate SATA hard drive, endemic to all SATA drives on Old World Mac systems, or some other quirk with my setup. However, if one were to understand the limitations, even Old World Macs can benefit from the low cost and flexibility of the OWC 2+2 (Internal/External) SATA PCI card in comparison to competing SATA cards. Also, Low End Mac readers will benefit from not having to go through all these hoops, as I have already done so for any interested party.

Here is the full article

http://lowendmac.com/thompson/06/1117.html

[refinery]

I have repeatedly run across drives, particularly SSDs, in my SATA card trials that would not boot OS9 if formatted within OS9, but if formatted in OSX with "install OS9 drivers" enabled, boot perfectly fine. My suspicion has always been that there is some kind of difference in the SATA protocol from the ATA protocol that OSX was updated to work with that isnt present in the ATA implementation in OS9. Keep in mind that 9.2.2 was released a full two years before SATA drives even hit the market.

[macStuff]

interesting find re 32bit 4port cards
i always had the instinct to avoid those 4 port 32bit PCI cards
obviously they were made by someone who didnt know what the hell they were doing

[macStuff]

I have repeatedly run across drives, particularly SSDs, in my SATA card trials that would not boot OS9 if formatted within OS9, but if formatted in OSX with "install OS9 drivers" enabled, boot perfectly fine. My suspicion has always been that there is some kind of difference in the SATA protocol from the ATA protocol that OSX was updated to work with that isnt present in the ATA implementation in OS9. Keep in mind that 9.2.2 was released a full two years before SATA drives even hit the market.

keep in mind there are many different versions of the "drive setup" application;
not sure where one would refer to to look up these revisions;
def not wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_Setup
going back even further it was called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_HD_SC_Setup

some other finds on google:
http://www.mac-im-netz.de/macfaq/macfaqdaten/minifaqs/dspg.html
http://www.euronet.nl/users/ernstoud/drvsetup.html
https://kb.iu.edu/d/ahgo
http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/drive-setup-131
it sure would be good to have a page on macos9lives specializing on the different versions of drive setup
it seems like an important post to add + to document the differences

im pretty sure a later version allows u to partition 1 drive into few different partitions just the way disk utility works; i had done research on this yeras ago but i forget everything now lol

this also makes me wonder if it might be better to format using 3rd party device such as FWB hd toolkit? https://www.macintoshrepository.org/1220-fwb-hard-disk-toolkit-4-x

i remember reading that the guy who did the firmtek firmware also worked for FWB for a period of tiem specializing in IDE/ATA drives

[MacTron]

im pretty sure a later version allows u to partition 1 drive into few different partitions just the way disk utility works; i had done research on this yeras ago but i forget everything now lol

Also, as Mactron noted... Drive Setup 2.1 removed the ability to multi-partition FW external drives... so simply use the older Drive setup 1.9.2 with 9.2.2 when needed that feature for FW drives...

Drive Setup 2.1 May have even more limitations than we know at first.

[macStuff]

i cant find any place to dowload any version of drive setup coming up in google results
try and see; theres no place to download this anywhere anymore

correction:
its in this thread:
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=2369.0

but not very easy to find; for anyone looking

drive setup 2.1 is linked on macrepo
https://www.macintoshrepository.org/689-drive-setup-2-1-2002-

it makes most sense to have some type of download archive that collects all smaller utilities like this; all versions; to be posted here on downloads board; like macos9lives system utils collection etc; but the admins are too busy