SIL3112 Mass Storage Drivers!

[darthnVader]

I have, with the help of @joevt/imic/Daniel/whoisthisguy, and Apple's somewhat confusing documentation on 'NDRV's, created a Classic Mac OS( not Mac OS X Classic Mode ) driver for Sil3112 SATA.

These drivers will not make a drive connected to the Sil3112 bootable in the Classic Mac OS, it is meant to be a Mass Storage Driver and you do not need it for a card the already has the FirmTek 'NDRV' in ROM.

Driver #1 is for a generic Sil3112 with a PC Bios on it.

Driver #2 is for a Sil3112 with the WiebeTech Firmware on it.

Driver #3 is for a Sil3112 with a reduced SerilTek/Firmtek Firmware on it.( I have reduced the firmware to 82k but have not found the EPPROM ID check to bypass it. )

THESE ARE ALPHA LEVEL DRIVERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Don't use them on drives with mission critical data until you have tested them and you are sure enough to trust them. I take no responsibility for loss of your data.

Driver #2 and #3 will allow you to use the StartupDisk Control Panel to boot OS X on New World Macs that support it without XPOSTFACTO. XPostFacto has a bug with the "device_tyoe" ATA from the WiebeTech firmware, it should not effect the Startup Disk Control Panel. There is a workaround if you need to boot OS X with the WiebeTech firmware using XPostFacto.

These drivers will not enable you to boot versions of OS X, that is a function of the cards firmware! But they will enable you to select and boot versions of OS X that are supported by the OS X Driver in your cards Firmware for the Mac OS Startup Disk Control Panel( versions that support OS X ) Basically the Mac OS Startup Disk Control Panel for OS 9.x. It also enables the use of XPostFacto to boot OS X with cards that have the correct firmware( WeibeTech/FirmTech ).

You will not be able to boot OS X from a card with a PC Bios, this Driver does not support that.

What has been tested:

Mac OS 9.2.2 Powermac 9600
Mac OS 7.6.1 PowerMac 9600

Known Bugs:

ATAPI devices will causes a long boot hang as the driver loads and probes the ATAPI device.

ATAPI devices seem to lack DMA, very slow, but my test of copying a 732MB file from DVD to HD did not result in any system hangs or data corruption. It's just damed slow( a known issue with FirmTek on the Mac OS ).

Hard Drives connected don't always Auto Mount( Use Drive Setup to mount drives ).

What needs to be done:

Create custom Icons for our driver.( You can help with this! )
Combine all three drivers into one Extension.( I'm working on it! )
Fix DMA? for ATAPI devices( It's complicated! )
Figure out why some Hard Drives don't auto mount.( I'm working on it, but you can help by reporting the vendor and device for your drives that do or don't auto mount! )

Limitations:

Mac OS 7.5.2 and greater should support partitions up to 2TB for drives formatted HFS/HFS+.( untested ).
Requires a Free PCI Slot.

Untested:

Mostly everything.

[IIO]

icons are on their way.

[Greystash]

Amazing work!!! 

[MacTron]

Thanks a lot. 
Another great job!

[IIO]

...

[darthnVader]

...

Thanks, looks great, I'll update the downloads soon with your custom icons.

Anyone have any feedback on how the drivers are working?

I noted with the Wiebe Driver that disks didn't want to mount via drive setup on my Beige G3, so still some work to do there.

[tunedbytad]

would love to test this.
I have a bench MDD 1.25 ready to test
It currently has a Sonnet Tempo Sata card with M.2 Sata Samsung 850s to benchmark against.

Plz, give me a solid link to what Sata card the driver purchase  / mate to the drivers and I will report back.

[superseth]

I have an Adaptec card that I suspect will work with this and a copy of 9.2.1 on a Sawtooth I am rebuilding right now. I downloaded the zip for the PC bios but the extension comes through as a simpletext file. Is there a good way to extract it with the resource forks working? I have been away from the classic mac world for 15-20 years so things are a bit fuzzy.

[IIO]

if a zip can be unstuffed without loosing resource forks depends on how it was made. the files above must be unzipped under OSX or you end up with only the readme.

[threeJane]

I don't like speaking and mostly observe from the shadows, but I need to say thank you. The work people on this forum do directly helps me and my family, who live with and use a Power Macintosh every day. You make that computer better than it was in the past.

[joevt]

Since this thread is pinned, I thought I should note that dosdude1 has done some work with the firmware to reduce the size of the embedded NDRV (for OS 9) so that you might not need to exclude it from the firmware to make it fit on a 128K ROM chip.
 http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,306.msg50427.html#msg50427

A 64K ROM may be possible by excluding the mkext (for OS X). Then the kexts included in the mkext would need to be added to OS X somehow. I don't think I've heard of a SIL3112 card with 64K ROM chip though.

[darthnVader]

Since this thread is pinned, I thought I should note that dosdude1 has done some work with the firmware to reduce the size of the embedded NDRV (for OS 9) so that you might not need to exclude it from the firmware to make it fit on a 128K ROM chip.
 http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,306.msg50427.html#msg50427

A 64K ROM may be possible by excluding the mkext (for OS X). Then the kexts included in the mkext would need to be added to OS X somehow. I don't think I've heard of a SIL3112 card with 64K ROM chip though.

The .kext files for the 3112 are added to OS X, just not in the standard location in the /System/Extensions. I'll have to check the path......