the search for sata-os9 bootable firmware+card combination

[Protools5LEGuy]

Thats the holy grail if you can find that card, it uses the cheap as hell Via 6421A chip. Get that card and it's cheap sata cards for us all

I've been reading up on these cards and there are lots of reports of failures.

Where are those reports? Bad news if it has lots of reports of failures.

[max1zzz]

The via cards will have higher failer rate, but there cheep. Really cheap.

I can get them in the UK for around £5

I have had 3 of the PC via cards and only one ever gave me any problems, around once a month the controller would drop off the face of the earth, rebooting the server it was in brought it back online.

I would love to buy that SATA-IF150CM card, But my project budget is currently already allocated. But if someone was to buy the card i could dump the firmware from it

As for the MSATAII-12MAC, can you take a picture of that card? I always assumed it had a Sil3112 chipset on it, I am intrigued to hear ir is something different

[supernova777]

I just had a hunt through my old things and I've got a Mathey MSATAII-I2MAC brand new in the shrink-wrap.. I must have bought it years ago and not installed it. Softmap in Akihabara for Yen 4880, about 50 bucks.
If you could talk me through how to extract the firmware I'll give it a go. Do you want me to open it and take a pic?

i missed this post before



well to get the firmware off the card u have to use DOS in a PC motherboard with pci slots
am i right max??

theres many command line dos utilities for reading the contents of the bios chip to a file
few of us here could give more assistance as needed

[max1zzz]

I just had a hunt through my old things and I've got a Mathey MSATAII-I2MAC brand new in the shrink-wrap.. I must have bought it years ago and not installed it. Softmap in Akihabara for Yen 4880, about 50 bucks.
If you could talk me through how to extract the firmware I'll give it a go. Do you want me to open it and take a pic?

i missed this post before



well to get the firmware off the card u have to use DOS in a PC motherboard with pci slots
am i right max??

theres many command line dos utilities for reading the contents of the bios chip to a file
few of us here could give more assistance as needed

You should be able to, but it's not something i have much experience with. I just remove chips and stick them in my programmer now

[blemk]

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

this article somewhat confirms that this owc sata pci card does indeed
boot mac os 9!

if only we could find one:/

What do we need to do with it? I was lucky enough to spot one on ebay during my MDD G4 hunting about a month and a half ago. It works great with both OS 9 and all versions of OS X I have tried thus far (no drivers to install and no oddities in how devices are detected).

[supernova777]

https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/13557-sil3112-flashing-sata/page-6#entry252033

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1690231&page=5

any progress thebob?

[thebob]

My mathey isn't bootable.

Tried in a G4 and a G3 with os 9.2

[DieHard]

Thanks "thebob"... back to the drawing board

[supernova777]

wow.. that sucks 
can u offer any info on the controller chip?

[Protools5LEGuy]

What is the difference betwen Max1zzz cards and ACARD AEC-6290M?



Performance? Bootability?

[supernova777]

the 6290m i have one.
i posted benchmarks of it being used in raid0 almost a year ago
its a raid card that does hardware level raid mirror or stripe with 2 drives
and is mac os 9 comptible and bootable
its very rare now tho, and sold out - i literally got the last one from acard distributors..
i had asked them for one and they said there were none left and then they wrote me back some months later saying that they had found one when cleaning out some shelves.. and they sent it to me.

err wait.. the 6290m has no raid function and just gives the ports + bootability
it is the 6890m that i have. my mistake. u can tell by the lack of dipswitches on the card
in this white box next to the picture legend of the dipswitch settings

[supernova777]

i noticed harrymatic posted a 64k rom
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1690231&page=6

maybe max1zzz or someone else can test this?
i think he reduced the weibetech firmware

[MacTron]

i think he reduced the weibetech firmware

Yes, he reduced the Wiebetech firmware that hasn't Mac Os 9 support.

The SeriTek firmware is generally more compatible than the Weibetech firmware, it works with OS 9 ...

[supernova777]

yep i posted that before he replied
i was hoping he reduced the firmtek obviously 

[(S)ATAman]

Mathey Msata-13UMAC

Thats the holy grail if you can find that card, it uses the cheap as hell Via 6421A chip. Get that card and it's cheap sata cards for us all

And just to put this out there (i already mentioned this to  chrisNova777) if there is enough interest i could make a batch of the mac bootable Sil 3112 cards for perhaps £10 each

I have that card and the specs are open. Internally it looks a lot like the Silicon Image 3114 - 3112 - 680 family, of course the registers are different.
I am not sure, how big is the flash rom space (not per physical flash size, but by what is allowed).

Also, not sure about the performance. The 3114 performance is not very good on writes. In any case that card is in the pipeline.

[(S)ATAman]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Silicon-Image-SataLink-PCI-RAID-SATA-Controller-Card-Sil3112ACTG144-Ser523-Rev-B-/190979296009?pt=US_Computer_Disk_Controllers_RAID_Cards&hash=item2c7740cb09

this card looks interesting in that its 4 ports with the same chipset as the seritek 1s2 cards which are 2 port
but its also 64bit instead of 32bit

would love to have the chance to test to see if it might work in 9 or X in a power mac..
but i dont think im willing to risk the purchase:D

Got the three-chip version with six channels. The PCI-PCI-X bridge is non-transparent, can't see the 3112 chips.
Unless someone tells me, how to re-program the bridge, these are likely to be great as a fancy wall decoration or letter weight.

Apparently, some use transparent bridges - would be great to know, which ones.
I think, every card of this kind branded by Adaptec is a bad choice.
Mine is from Adaptec. Looking for a non-Adaptec solution.

Nice weather here in Alsace today, continuing on 3114 / 3112 / 680 (and by proxy, since it's so similar) with VIA VT6421A.

Don't misunderstand: the VIA chip is very different from Silicon Image - but the entire logic how it handles things is the same.
What is different is the location of registers (while handling them is the same).
Attention with VIA: there are many-many of them, dirt cheap on eBay. Most don't have any ROM, just a place for the socket.

Mine has a non-socketed SST 49LF004B.

https://datasheetspdf.com/pdf/506447/SiliconStorageTechnology/SST49LF004B/1

According the spec, it is a 4 Mbit LPC Firmware Flash, which boils down to 512KB ROM space - that has room for OpenFirmware, '9' SIM, BIOS, PPC "X" driver and even EFI for booting.

Hopefully, the card looking at the spec card seem to have 64KB ROM space only, do not understand why a 512KB ROM chip was put there.
64 would be enough for "9" and OpenFirmware only.

[IIO]

there are six channel cards?

more cowbell storage!

[(S)ATAman]

there are six channel cards?

more cowbell storage!

https://www.ebay.com/itm/283528628048?ul_noapp=true

This is what I bought (for £15, eBay shows the offer price, not the agreed upon price):
https://vod.ebay.com/vod/FetchOrderDetails?sspagename=STRK%3AMESO%3AVPS&itemid=283528628048&transid=2136562036018

Very well could be, I will have an other paperweight.

This guy (notice the country!)

https://www.ebay.com/itm/233241220316?ul_noapp=true

wants 5000 HUF + 1000 HUF for shipping to my family there. It's essentially an Adaptec card with very bad firmware.

But I think, having two paperweights already is enough. I told him, 3000 Fortints (ca. $9), he wants more of course.

These cards have Intel I/O processor, usually set in non-transparent mode.
If I would figure out how to make it transparent, that would be great.

[IIO]

holy crap, i really want to have one of those one day. why upgrade fom 2 to 4 when i can have 6?

the raid modes can hopefully be turned off.

[IIO]

eh, but it´s PCIe once more.