FirmTek Pirate from Hong Kong on eBay

[(S)ATAman]

Guys,

This guy is a pirate / parasite of FirmTek, selling over-priced knock-offs:

https://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=local338&ftab=AllFeedback

Some glorious examples on his auction list, with FirmTek card names blacked off.

This is of course legacy stuff and I don't mind if people help themselves, in particular that I can't call in 2020 FirmTek fully functional as it was in it's best days.
But one thing is to share and enjoy helping the community, the other thing is to scavenge for profit from someone's else hard work.

It was a hellish work to create the drivers - and to be honest, creating macOS SIM is more tough with less support from Apple than creating a KEXT.
The most tough was probably the FCode Port Multiplier support of 3124.

And behold, there it is, pirated for profit:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/4-Port-SATA-II-PCI-X-Controller-Card-Apple-PowerMac-G4-G5-OS-X-Bootable-SSD/254460735285

Please notice on the screenshots how badly the copy was made: he just photoshopped the FirmTek product name out.

What do you think should I do? I contacted the seller, in "response" he blocked me from buying.
So he knows well, his actions are not welcomed. Contacting eBay is of course an option.
Hope they will punish him by suspending his account.

But on the other side maybe it is not practical for the future. A knowledgeable seller in HK is more practical than his eBay account being suspended.

What he does is clearly underhanded, not even giving the credit to the authors he steals his "merchandise".
That has to be stopped, he should at least say some sort of "thanks".

Clearly, I won't mind if the older work is shared and "unlocked". But not such an underhanded way.

[(S)ATAman]

More from the same. As our great poet Mayakovski did say:
"Одного поля ягодицы" (pardon my bad French), see the first picture.

The rest is from the auction

https://www.ebay.com/itm/2-Port-SATA-PCI-Controller-Card-Apple-Macintosh-PowerMac-G3-G4-G5-SSD-OSX-OS-9/264403383346

The bad photoshopping is where I start to have doubts: he is not merely a pirate (that's OK).
He is a very careless pirate. And "ягодица" (that bad French keeps coming!).

[IIO]

i am almost tempted to buy one.

from a user perspective a badly manufactured, pirated chinese fake card is worth these 49 dollars, because it is better than not beeing able to find any other ones.

maybe the author of the firmtek software should "ask" him for a special offer. he should be ok with 250 for 10.

[(S)ATAman]

i am almost tempted to buy one.

from a user perspective a badly manufactured, pirated chinese fake card is worth these 49 dollars, because it is better than not beeing able to find any other ones.

maybe the author of the firmtek software should "ask" him for a special offer. he should be ok with 250 for 10.

Hab' eine mit austauschbaren ROM umsonst... aber erst Promise UATA-100/133. Dann SImage 680, dann 3124. Silicon Image 680 ist sehr kompatibel und sehr günstig.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/IDE-ATA133-RAID-Controller-2-Kanal-PCI-Karte-h553/300608518112
Wenn nicht anders, ich werde den Verkäufer aus HK kaputtmachen: billiger als "umsonst" geht auch bei Mac ROM nicht.

[IIO]

das beste wäre sicher den einfach machen zu lassen und ihm 3,75 für die firmware in rechnung zu stellen. hong kong ist ja kein rechtsfreier raum. aber bei so einer kleinserie lohnt sich das vermutlich nicht wirklich. für PKH in der ersten instanz bist du sicher zu reich.

aber ich habe nicht vor jemandem ratschläge zu erteilen wie er mit sowas umgeht. ich wurde auch schon "beklaut" ohne kontaktaufnahme - gleichzeitig bin ich selbst ein kleiner pirat. ein weg mit solchen widersprüchen klarzukommen ist sie zu ignorieren, wenn man sie nicht mehr auflösen kann.

kapitalismus ist eh nur eine übergangslösung... allerdings bin ich ein verfechter des urheberpersönlichskeitsrechts. (und das ist alles andere als widersprüchlich, das passt sogar sehr gut zusammen.)

ist halt einfach nur so, dass ich seit 9 monaten so eine karte suche (falls meine sonnet irreparabel ist, ich resette die erst wenn ich einen ersatz im schrank habe) und niemand eine für mich hat.

so eine future-retro PCI-X karte, die von g3 bis g5 überall geht, und sogar in classic bootet, wäre natürlich der hit.

[(S)ATAman]

das beste wäre sicher den einfach machen zu lassen und ihm 3,75 für die firmware in rechnung zu stellen. hong kong ist ja kein rechtsfreier raum. aber bei so einer kleinserie lohnt sich das vermutlich nicht wirklich. für PKH in der ersten instanz bist du sicher zu reich.

aber ich habe nicht vor jemandem ratschläge zu erteilen wie er mit sowas umgeht. ich wurde auch schon "beklaut" ohne kontaktaufnahme - gleichzeitig bin ich selbst ein kleiner pirat. ein weg mit solchen widersprüchen klarzukommen ist sie zu ignorieren, wenn man sie nicht mehr auflösen kann.

kapitalismus ist eh nur eine übergangslösung... allerdings bin ich ein verfechter des urheberpersönlichskeitsrechts. (und das ist alles andere als widersprüchlich, das passt sogar sehr gut zusammen.)

ist halt einfach nur so, dass ich seit 9 monaten so eine karte suche (falls meine sonnet irreparabel ist, ich resette die erst wenn ich einen ersatz im schrank habe) und niemand eine für mich hat.

so eine future-retro PCI-X karte, die von g3 bis g5 überall geht, und sogar in classic bootet, wäre natürlich der hit.

https://www.ebay.de/itm/Dawicontrol-DC-4300-4-Ports-4x-SATA-II-RAID-Controller-Card-PCI-X-BS041007-Karte/163805407600
(3124)

https://www.ebay.de/itm/Lindy-51127-Tarjeta-y-adaptador-de-interfaz-PCI-X-4-x-SATA-II-FM/113866319674
(3124), pay attention to the older SAS connector!

[IIO]

and how do you know if something might be working with OS9? or in certain models of G4? :/

i will only go for stuff which i dont have to flash, solder and test myself. plug and play, like a mac should be.

however, my main mistake searching components seems to be to search ebay only on the .de TLD.
seems many offers which are only on other sites would also ship to germany.

[IIO]

btw i just notice that i should probably ask somebody like YOU about the weirdness in my card. until now nobody could help. sending you a screenshot tomorrow.

[(S)ATAman]

and how do you know if something might be working with OS9? or in certain models of G4? :/

i will only go for stuff which i dont have to flash, solder and test myself. plug and play, like a mac should be.

however, my main mistake searching components seems to be to search ebay only on the .de TLD.
seems many offers which are only on other sites would also ship to germany.

Flashing will be definitely required (by software). In particular for "9". On "X" we can get away, but still desirable on the PowerPC systems.
The way it going to happen:
- there will be a driver (for "X") and a "9" / "X" universal executable, i.e. "flasher".

On i386 and x64 the entire thing will work without flashing, just by placing the driver where it does belong to.
On "9" the flashing will be mandatory.

There won't be i386 / x64 boot ability for now because I don't want to start with learning UEFI. That will come later if necessary.
For the rest the boot ability can be ensured by (software) flashing.

BTW: the current PMP code (be it "X" or O.F.) found in 3132 / 3124 was never updated for later PMP-s, all of them have channel enumeration bug.
This is a different bug than what is in the 3124, it's just that the number of channels is being shown one less, than expected according the standard.

As a result some trivial external drives (the tri-interface of OWC for instance) do not work at all: these external one-drive enclosures have a hidden port multiplier and it shows incorrect number of channels. These enclosures did not exist at the time SImage and myself wrote the two competing "X" drivers.

The chance SImage does update their driver is pretty much zero.

I will try it to do this year. Looking at the clock it's not a very long deadline.
The flasher is aimed to flash pretty much everything I know and there won't be any lock in the "X" driver.

Our "friend" in HK will lose his great business with these two third-party SImage cards probably sooner, than he sees the fireworks of 2020.


But be careful: no 3124 does support MacOS-9 natively yet, "SIM" for 3124 to this day never existed.
The reason is that by the time the 3124 was made, not only "9" was pretty much out, but even the sign for PowerPC was all over the wall.

Thus, no one did invest time and to be honest... with proper tools the situation today is much better.

As far as these cards: the most important is the size of the ROM. I will update this thread with the absolutely minimal ROM size requirement.

[(S)ATAman]

btw i just notice that i should probably ask somebody like YOU about the weirdness in my card. until now nobody could help. sending you a screenshot tomorrow.

Hope a bug to be killed. I love dead bugs.

[(S)ATAman]

seems many offers which are only on other sites would also ship to germany.

Seems than many sellers either don't ship to me or charge megaEuro with megaBucks.
The biggest clown of fee-Bay was an Italian seller with EUR 85 shipping charge within EU for one Promise ATA card and an additional 45 Euro for second ATA cards.
He was the champion.

I asked him what does he think, he tried to convince me that three Promise Ultra-133 ATA cards for 100 Euro shipping included is a great deal and made such a drama, I was really impressed.

I screwed up my only Sonnet card, need several more cards to recover it.

Until these arrive I will hopefully release the updated 3124 "X" driver with the FCode, fixing the new port multiplier support and removing any lock, so people can software-flash them.

How it will happen:

- You buy any 3124 card you like, provided it has large enough (how large will tell!) ROM.
- If your goal is just to use it under "X" and be bootable, you can use pretty much any 3124. All ROM-s are at least 64KB.
The mandatory BIOS and the FCode should fit into 64KB. The mkext property (compressed kext for "X") is 98KB without being embedded into FCode.
After embedding it will "grow" into probably 128KB. So it looks like the minimum for "X" + BIOS + FCode in the ROM does require 256KB.

For "9" + BIOS + FCode it would be less, but the "9" SIM wasn't made yet.

- Once you have the card, you install it and reboot the computer.
- Under "9" **** NOT READY YET **** you should run the flash utility and reboot.
- Under "X" you will need to install the soon-to-be-provided driver, reboot once more and (maybe) flash.
Since there is no UEFI for that card *** YET *** it won't be bootable under i386 / x64 *** YET ***.
So you won't need to flash under Intel architecture, you can use the card straight.
For "X" under PowerPC flashing is desirable because it adds bootability.

As I see, there is a demand for SIM, so time-depending I will add SIM.

[(S)ATAman]

OK, the first build since well over 10 years!

Sorry, took longer than anticipated and the driver manual loading is clumsy.
That will change. As of current, the ROM size has to be 512KB, that will change, too.

Tried to comply with my New Year resolution, even if the HK NewYear was missed.

So hopefully you have a Silicon Image 3124 controller with large ROM (any).
And you want to pirate the FCode with the MacOS X driver!

Now it is simple. Start with installing the "virgin" controller with Windows / DOS BIOS.
I did not check what kind of ROM chips I support, but Winbond was always a special case better to avoid.
(different programming. Nothing wrong with Windbond, it's my fault - back than I was lazy to test everything and I did not like the API-s)
So please better no Winbond, but if you have a spare you may try.

I do have MX, Winbond (will tray it tomorrow), SST, ATMEL.

You will see three files:

- SeriTek2SE4Flasher, this works on PowerPC only.
- FT_ATA_Sil312E.kext
- Sil3112DeviceNub.kext

First, we need to tell the system that there is an ATA device nub.
The simplest:

1) sudo cp -r  /Volumes/SeriTek2SE4Flash/Sil3112DeviceNub.kext /tmp
(the system will ask for admin password)
2) sudo cp -r /tmp/Sil3112DeviceNub.kext /System/Library/Extensions

Loading the kernel extension temporarily:
3) sudo cp -r /Volumes/SeriTek2SE4Flash/FT_ATA_Sil3132E.kext /tmp
4) sudo kextload /tmp/FT_ATA_Sil3132E.kext

After few seconds the Silicon Image 3124 controller is operational.
Do not attach any drives to it, proceed with flashing.

As it finishes, you are ready and are bootable on the "X".

Warning: because of huge gap (11+ years!) the building is not trivial, I don't remember everything.
So after hours and hours I build on "Tiger" pretty much the same what that "gentleman" in HK did steal.

You are welcome to steal... but there is one little thing, actually two.

- Because I build on Tiger, that thing runs on Tiger and Leopard only, no Panther.
The build what was "official" back than runs also on "Panther".

- There is a change in the driver: if you look at the driver description as it is in Apple System Profiler you will see, that now it's free to use.
Under one condition: it's not for commercial resale.
So you hack for yourself a few controllers for your enjoyment and amusement... you can sell them - but you can't sell them for living.

This is a fairly early driver, I will update it in coming weeks.

[chikorita157]

I know this an old thread, but I tried buying one of these cards, mostly out of curosity. No, they do not work with Mac OS 9 although it claims to be a Firmtek card. Sneaky. Trying to boot into a Mac OS 9 partition on my PowerMac G3 Blue and White ended up with a floppy disk icon with a flashing question mark. My genuine FirmTek card and my ACard Sata PCI card does not do this and boots into Mac OS 9 fine. But yes, I filed a Item not as Described claim, but the seller is giving me a hard time, but I know I will get my money back, eventually since he needs to accept the return eventually before they step in.

Also, this is what the pirated card looks like. I find it funny how a sticker is stuck on top of the flash chip. It makes it obvious that it’s not a 512 kb EEPROM chip required to fit the firmware.

TL;DR: Just get a genuine Firmtek/ACard card if you can or just use a IDE to SATA adapter if you don’t care about having drive capacities over 120 GB or you using a PowerMac G4 MDD or later model Quicksilver. This is not a viable solution.