Mac OS 9 Lives

Classic Mac OS Hardware => Storage => Topic started by: macStuff on May 11, 2019, 09:23:55 PM

Title: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: macStuff on May 11, 2019, 09:23:55 PM
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/
Quote
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
Title: Re: boot on sil3124?
Post by: macarone on May 12, 2019, 01:11:19 AM
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.

Title: Re: boot on sil3124?
Post by: macStuff on May 12, 2019, 11:16:00 AM
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)


Title: Re: boot on sil3124?
Post by: IIO on May 12, 2019, 01:19:25 PM
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)

Quote
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.
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: macarone on May 12, 2019, 02:51:01 PM
>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!


Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: macStuff on May 12, 2019, 02:53:34 PM
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
Quote
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???
Quote
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)
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: refinery on May 12, 2019, 06:05:50 PM
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.
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: refinery on May 12, 2019, 06:11:27 PM
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~
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: refinery on May 12, 2019, 06:13:26 PM
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
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: macStuff on May 12, 2019, 07:11:45 PM
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
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: IIO on May 13, 2019, 10:41:43 AM
sonnet cards do boot os9, you just have to find the right version.

mine doesnt even boot OSX. probably wrong operation.
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: IIO on May 13, 2019, 10:43:57 AM
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.
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: macStuff on May 13, 2019, 10:51:26 AM
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;
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: refinery on May 13, 2019, 01:07:52 PM
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.
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: macStuff on May 13, 2019, 05:48:18 PM
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 (https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/45375-sil3112-flashing-sata/&tab=comments#comment-521922) 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;(

(http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=1924.0;attach=1225;image)
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: SDG on May 14, 2019, 07:10:47 AM

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.
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: IIO on May 14, 2019, 03:45:00 PM
yes thats known, the dont work in QSs.
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: macStuff on May 14, 2019, 04:36:43 PM
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

Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: macStuff on May 17, 2019, 07:26:55 PM
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)
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: Daniel on May 18, 2019, 08:03:59 AM
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 (http://mirror.informatimago.com/next/developer.apple.com/documentation/Hardware/DeviceManagers/ata/ata.html)

Quite a few documents are relevent to Open Firmware:

"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 (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 (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 (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.
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: macStuff on May 18, 2019, 10:10:58 AM
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;
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: Daniel on May 18, 2019, 11:33:51 AM
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?
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: macStuff on May 18, 2019, 04:01:00 PM
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

Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: Daniel on May 18, 2019, 04:37:53 PM
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.
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: macStuff on May 19, 2019, 10:45:02 AM
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)
(http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=4967.0;attach=6256;image)
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
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: macStuff on May 23, 2019, 09:11:36 PM
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?
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: macStuff on May 25, 2019, 12:23:18 AM
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?

Quote
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& (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& (https://web.archive.org/web/20070205094149/http://www.siliconimage.com/support/supportsearchresults.aspx?pid=27&cid=3&ctid=2&osid=3&)

Quote
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?
(http://www.scsi4me.com/images/SV2000-1.jpg)
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?
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: macStuff on May 25, 2019, 12:42:45 AM
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 (https://web.archive.org/web/20050530123537/http://www.verbatim.com.au/technotes/SiI-PB-0023.pdf)
(http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=4967.0;attach=6323;image)
unfortunately not much useful info to be gained there :D lol




Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: macStuff on June 19, 2019, 10:20:15 PM
not sure what this is:
http://dosdude1.com/files/macstuff/PCISataROMs/
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: Daniel on June 20, 2019, 05:52:39 AM
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.
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: Protools5LEGuy on June 20, 2019, 06:19:37 AM
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 (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 (https://www.openfirmware.info/data/docs/of1275.pdf) - main specification for OF
  • https://www.openfirmware.info/data/docs/bus.pci.pdf (https://www.openfirmware.info/data/docs/bus.pci.pdf) - OF PCI binding
  • https://www.devicetree.org/open-firmware/practice/interpos/interpos.ps (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 (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 (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 (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.
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: macStuff on June 20, 2019, 07:14:45 AM
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
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: Daniel on June 20, 2019, 07:55:41 AM
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 (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.
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: Protools5LEGuy on June 20, 2019, 08:12:32 AM
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
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: DieHard on June 20, 2019, 11:29:01 AM
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

Quote
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
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: refinery on June 20, 2019, 04:59:35 PM
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.
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: macStuff on June 21, 2019, 04:55:57 AM
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
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: macStuff on June 22, 2019, 05:03:27 AM
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
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: MacTron on June 22, 2019, 06:39:38 AM

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.
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: macStuff on June 22, 2019, 06:43:27 AM
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 :D
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: DieHard on June 22, 2019, 10:47:10 AM
Quote
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 :D

It may seem that way, but quick forum searches are usually are better, if we start making separated downloads for stuff included in the OS; we are going to get even more convoluted.
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: macStuff on June 23, 2019, 03:55:18 AM
drive setup is a pretty important thing; especially when alot of people are trying to properly format their SSD's
pretty mcuh anyone using os9 in 2019 is probably installing an SSD

anyway good thing i have my own site to post things on; right? :)
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: refinery on June 23, 2019, 09:24:43 PM
well i think the safest bet is really just tell people if they're gonna use SSDs with OS9 that they need to format them with a minimum of OSX 10.4... That has been my method and its worked for me 100%... All my desktop OS9 machines are using dual SSDs now. I run retrospect and they start up once a week and duplicate themselves to the second drive since im paranoid about them going bad since there's no TRIM enable for OS9.
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: DieHard on June 24, 2019, 12:05:30 PM
well i think the safest bet is really just tell people if they're gonna use SSDs with OS9 that they need to format them with a minimum of OSX 10.4... That has been my method and its worked for me 100%... All my desktop OS9 machines are using dual SSDs now. I run retrospect and they start up once a week and duplicate themselves to the second drive since im paranoid about them going bad since there's no TRIM enable for OS9.

Six years since my 1st OWC SSD and not one issue :)
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: IIO on June 24, 2019, 02:28:23 PM
starting with SSDs here this week.
ordered a bunch of evo 840, one will go in the audio G4.
which means that i have to connect one of the HDs to the 33 bus for now ... humh.
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: refinery on July 12, 2019, 05:02:33 PM
apparently the adaptec 1205sa uses a 3112 chipset?
i found this forum post where a guy talks about modifying Silicon Image drivers to include the adaptec PCI device IDs and it works:
https://www.techspot.com/community/topics/adaptecs-1205sa-users-heres-what-i-sent-to-adaptec.27250/

these cards pop up on ebay a lot, there's one right now as low as $9.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Adaptec-ASH-1205SA-FAB-Host-Controller-SATA-Controller-Card-Fully-Tested/153516582938?epid=1304118779&hash=item23be4d281a:g:nx8AAOSwN5Fc9XPp
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: SDG on July 20, 2019, 03:10:15 PM
apparently the adaptec 1205sa uses a 3112 chipset?

these cards pop up on ebay a lot, there's one right now as low as $9.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Adaptec-ASH-1205SA-FAB-Host-Controller-SATA-Controller-Card-Fully-Tested/153516582938?epid=1304118779&hash=item23be4d281a:g:nx8AAOSwN5Fc9XPp

Looking at that card, the main problem I can see is that there is a differently shaped bios chip. I'm assuming it's the long narrow one alongside the processor chip. I can't see how it is possible to get one of the three required eeprom chips on it to flash it with the SeriTek firmware that can boot OS9.  That is assuming the design of the card is electrically compatible with the SeriTek firmware as it looks somewhat different from most I have seen.
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: (S)ATAman on December 08, 2019, 02:34:00 PM
All FT cards and all Sonnet cards sourced from either ACard or FT do boot MacOS 9.x.
Under two conditions:

1) The card has to have PCI or PCI-X interface. Obviously, the cards with PCIe do not boot MacOS 9.x.
If someone can hack the 2005 G5 to boot MacOS 9.x that would not help either because these PCIe cards do not have Open Firmware bootstrap code.
2) The drive in question has to have a generic MacOS 9.x SCSI mass storage driver partition. Without that partition the drive will be seen by Disk Utility only, but won't show up. That partition can be installed by the usual Disk Utility and it's siblings (FWB, ATTO, LaCie, etc). If not, there are some system extensions which are a generic SCSI mass storage driver in disguise - these will usually work, too. YMMV.

The only notable exception from the rule above are the PCI-X cards from Sonnet based on Marvell 88SX.... chipset.
These aren't bootable on either macOS X or MacOS 9.x

And some interesting addition: the originator of probably fastest first generation PCI-X SATA was Vitesse, not Intel. Even more - there was as I remember an other company who engineered these chips, than Vitesse acquired it, than Intel did partner with Vitesse. They made SATA based on some existing technology which had nothing to do with SATA and delayed. At the end Sonnet was p***ed off and turned to Marvell. But they wanted the Vitesse originally. That was sad.

Ultimately the Marvell turned to be the best choice before AHCI swallowed everything.

AHCI is really a good standard - what made G5 and all pre-Intel Macs difficult to expand was the fact that the best that-time AHCI controller (Marvell 88SE923x) had only two PCIe lanes and the architecture of 2005 G5 made it impossible to use it there.

I am guilty that I did not try that Marvell controller in an earlier G5 or G4. But since it is a PCIe controller, I would need a "bridge". The cost of proper 64-bit wide bridging would be prohibitive.

This is why there is no AHCI controller on G4.

For G5 there is a single choice, based on Marvell 9128. Unfortunately the performance of 9128 is very disappointing.
For good or bad, I did not try others like ASMedia because only Marvell AHCI controller had FIS-based switching for Port Multipliers. ASMedia stuck to command-based switching. But... in the fact, the Marvell 9128 is barely better, I can't address within the same PMP more, than two drives the same time. Which makes the FIS-based switching on 9128 rather a theoretical benefit.

I wish there would be a 4-channel PCIe SATA AHCI chip, but there isn't. The on-board SATA controller of 2005 G5-s is very-very dated.
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: (S)ATAman on December 08, 2019, 04:01:04 PM
Update: now I became unsure about the SImage 3124. I am 100% sure it is bootable, but don't remember (sorry, seniority moment) does it feature the proper SIM driver for MacOS 9.x or not. Hold on.

Update/2: Oooops, never did it. So don't look for Mac OS 9.x SIM inside of SImage 3124 ROM because it's not there.
Seniority moment. Only Open Firmware + PPC macOS-X driver is there, next to the BIOS. Apologies. But at least it's bootable, even from port multiplier (on PowerPC machines). 100% sure never did EFI because I am not that smart (yet). Maybe later... who knows. Do not held your breath back.

With SIP disabled the x64 binaries should work even in Catalina, provided it's a 3124 with a PCIe bridge. I did see some - but there is no single reason to use 3124 on PCIe machines if there is Marvell 88SX7042 (or even Marvell 88SE923x) and these cards aren't expensive.

Answering the original question:

1) 7174 does have SIM for sure.

2) Obviously, I do have 3114 SIM. It was never released because the performance was not really what I did dream about.

3) Unfortunately there is no 3124 SIM and never was made. I wasn't remembering correctly, it was long ago.

4) 3124 is a huge pain in the neck to program and I am not sure, the number of the second-hand cards and the demand would justify the efforts. The chip has also a fatal flaw. That flaw is that under certain circumstances (I don't remember exactly) it will confuse drives within the port multiplier. It will think that the drive in, say, bay number two is the one in the bay number five or v.v.
I do not recall, SImage would ever fix it, they tried to cover that bug with a very thick paint.

Under such circumstances 7174 is probably the best performing SATA card for MacOS 9.x - but unfortunately it's supply is very limited to say the least.
But hey, if the demand is there, 3124 SIM can be made. But it is not an easy task.
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: DieHard on December 11, 2019, 12:31:43 PM
Thank you (S)ATAman,

that was a great read !

Those "history" lessons are always insightful :)
Title: Re: any other chipsets other than sil3112 able to boot OS 9? is sil3124 possible?
Post by: (S)ATAman on December 14, 2019, 12:03:36 PM
By the way: just noticed the "Steelwine" being mentioned. It was made by Silicon Image and it has their port multiplier inside, intent to be sold by LaCie.
It had some limited RAID capabilities - but if you look inside, there is no backplane. Not many were sold for various reasons.

Besides the lack of the backplane the power supply wasn't very good. I still have two of these, the box was thrown away and I tried to recycle the power supply to test some SATA drives with a 9300-class SAS controller. No good, the SATA-III drives dropped out and protested. Changed the power supply: everything was fine.

Stay away.


Now please take a look at this:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Promise-VTrak-J610f-16x-SATA-SATA-JBOD-Enclosure-mit-Fibre-channel/254448833373

Than buy this:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/LSI-Logic-LSI7204EP-2-port-4Gbps-FC-PCI-E-Controller-Card-Apple-Card-XSAN/303194611515

For G4 and such, maybe this:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/LSI-LSI7202XP-Apple-Dual-Channel-Fibre-PCI-X-DP-Mac-Xserve-W-Fiber-Cables/332631100211


I have really trouble to justify Silicon Image 3124 with grave bug inside of Port Multiplier firmware if there is something like above - in abundance.