it was always theorized that the chips included kexts for osx that might be removed to remove the footprint of the rom, sacrificing dual osx/os9 compatibility for simple os9 compatibility without having to solder a new chip
I often use LZARI to compress the "9" driver (SIM) and most of the FCode.
It's evil to have a self-modifying code, but it's even more evil not to have anything at all.
The 3124 code is compressed (this is why you won't see much dumping the ROM) and so is the Promise 20268/20269.
The 3124 code remains compressed, but it won't be copy-protected at all.
The reason is to prevent gentleman like our favorite seller from HK officially benefit from the new code, patching what is inside of the ROM.
The Promise code always has to be compressed because the space is ridiculously small.
What is sacrificed is in the first line the PC BIOS, the rest is as it has to be, but no cut (even the BIOS) is welcome.
The BIOS itself can be confusing because many have "software RAID" capability.
I think one should rather go with the (software) RAID from either Intel or SoftRAID.
And from all kind of RAID the easiest + safest is arguably the RAID 10, maybe 50 or 60.
I am using a pair of RAID-10 at both homes, both largely mirrored (except of course the latest stuff).
These RAID-10s are on NAS from Thecus, but I am looking forward to make Marvell SAS chips (inside of Thecus boards) work on "X" or just find the Thecus board with SImage 3132 chips, these would work if the Thecus is converted to a "Hackintosh".