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[(S)ATAman]

This is a very much tested "b4" build, extensively tested.
It will / should work with either regular PC or FirmTek cards.
It should "overtake" the FirmTek driver or take the control over a regular PC card, both 3112 and 3114.
In the theory it matches the 680 ATA cards as well, but I did not test it, SATA has higher priority.

The minimum OS is "Tiger".

Please tell me how it works, once we have everything addressed, the minimum OS will be Jaguar.
The max. OS is 10.14.4, Apple made some changes to notarization and in order to work with 10.14.5 - 10.15.x I need to change the installer.

[smilesdavis]

ive found a silicon image SATA3114-A01, big chip reads Silicon Image SteelVine, Sil3114CTU, will this driver make it work on OS 9?

[Protools5LEGuy]

SATA man is alive, thanks god.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/guide-to-flashing-pc-sil3112-sata-cards-for-mac.1690231/page-18?post=31958880#post-31958880

DieHard, he needs help to relogin

[Protools5LEGuy]

DieHard, he needs help to relogin

Ataman Honcho Honchev

    Today at 3:46 AM

    Add bookmark
    #433

Just got an e-mail from MacOS 9 Lives. Somehow I can't log in there, but Ataman Honcho Honchev is the same as (S)ATAMan. Since 1999 or even earlier. ;-)

Apologies for using this forum for "MacOS 9 Lives" messaging - but there is some web site problem there for me.
Hope they fix it. They know my e-mail, it's still the same.

I disappeared from MacOS 9 Lives for a while because first of "long" COVID (I got rid of THAT virus-bug, but it wasn't easy) first, than due concerns regarding my than-employer. Now there are no concerns. ;-)

Apologies to "MacOS 9" guys, I promise to be a good boy and much more diligent.

[Protools5LEGuy]

From MacRumors, after a smilesdavis question (S)Ataman said:

   

smilesdavis said:
    is the hong kong seritek clone safe to order, does it work on a g4 with os9?

No, because I am going to finally register my firmware what I wrote with authorities in my country - and toast that guy from Hong Kong for good. I am in Europe since a while. And finally, the firmware is now mine, mine, mine.

The good news: working (again) to re-write the code and unify the 3112 / 3152 / 3114. MacOS9 included.
Started earlier - but ultimately wanted to play safe and did not wanted to conflict with than-employer.

Other good news: there seem to be a smaller batch of 3124. These are unfortunately PCI, not PCI-X.
However, 3124 has no problem with sleep on Quicksilver. Going to write the MacOS-9 driver but maybe it won't support port multipliers on "9", just only on "X" as everyone knows.

All recent 3112, 3114 and 3152-s need a similar regulator that what we had back in the FirmTek days.
Otherwise no sleep on QS. Unless you re-solder the regulator.

My idea of the neat 16-bit Macronix chip on SeriTek/1SE2 turned to be a major piracy-roadblock: not a single 1SE2 was pirated. Unfortunately the Chinese manufacturers now fell back to cheap EPROMS and cheap regulators.

Hint: anyone who want to make a "pirated" SeriTek/1S2 work in Quicksilver better to get a soldering iron, a MIC29150 3.3V Regulator and a lot of luck. And ask me nicely before you do.

I have many more plans, hope I have all the energy.
 

Then he said

    Ataman Honcho Honchev said:
    And ask me nicely before you do.

Explanation: if you take the risk, remove the old regulator and solder the new one... and ask me to use my firmware and drivers for your own benefit and to spread and to appreciate my work: that's OK, feel free (and if we ever meet- you ow me an espresso).

However if you steal it for business and even mask the "SeriTek" on the screenshot in your auction... and you sell hundreds if not thousands cards yearly for at least $55 profit / card (without even taking care of QuickSilver Mac and soldering a new regulator) - than it's not only not OK, but I am going to report that case to the police.

Then

The difference between the 3112 and 3114 is some errata regarding a microcode bug in 3114, also affecting the 3512.
Back than I had to restrict writes on the 3512 (that's the cardbus card) being active on one channel only.
That did work (kind of), but we never got the official report from our Silicon Image contacts.
Probably because they either resigned or were laid off. The usual brainless operation of a brainless corporation...
(When the workers are fired to let the managers manage each other).

In any case I probably know now what is the workaround - the only problem that I don't have a PCI-based 3512.

So going to test the 3114 first and than let's see, what happens with 3512.

Otherwise I have the documentation and 3114 is by no means more difficult than, say, Vitesse.

Currently working precisely on 3114, but the way I don't need to handle million versions (like external, internal, 3112, 3114, 3512) on both "9" and "X".

The next will be probably the 3124 for "9". If anyone experiences bugs with the current FirmTek boot process involving 3124 on macOS X, please report it here or on " '9' lives " or both.

[Protools5LEGuy]

I have to consult with the open source Linux driver to see, how they manage the DMA.
It very well could be, the manual has some inconsistence and / or my understanding was not good.
According the description in the reference manual 3124 has one of the weirdest set of API-s with certain elements of SG list playing a "kangaroo" role. I had weeks of head scratching how to implement these "kangaroo"-s, the worst was in Open Firmware. But as I recall from the before-COVID-weeks when out of curiosity I looked at the 3124 Linux driver - there was no trace of "kangaroo". Same about 3132, it has the same internal as 3124 (just being a PCIe).
It never worked for FirmTek properly - so out of frustration I just double-buffered everything, avoiding the "kangaroo".

That worked... except that my 3132 driver was dog slow. Time to look again.

   

flyproductions said:
    Yes, that i can confirm! Only one of the ports, the lower one at the card's rear end, seems to work.

I mean, SIMULTANOUSLY. I.e. both ports should work - but writes never happen the same time.
When two drives are in RAID-0 and you write to that RAID from the PowerBook G4, one port will silently wait until the other port does not finish the actual transaction. This is transparent to the end-user, except that the performance is quite worse than expected (and defeats the purpose of the RAID-0).
Such thing happened only on 3512 and we had 3512 only inside of cardbus card. So I was thinking that this problem is related to cardbus controller. Probably I was wrong.


I have a G4 notebook in my other home as well as the FirmTek 3512 cardbus card. Will test it later on. So far, the suggested workaround was already implemented, but I am not ready to test yet (today).

If everything is right, the new 3114 driver for "X" will be ready to debug next week.
The "9" driver is already written, but I will start with "X" on the 10.5.8 and dual-proc G4 MDD 1.42 (400 FW, the original processor was upgraded).

Why I am starting with 10.5.8? Because that setup is the easiest for two-machine debugging via FireWire.
I have two machines with the "Stealth" serial port for "9", just lazy to set everything up. Maybe that will come as well.

The development itself is done under 10.13.6 (probably will move to Ventura this year) under Parallels, Parallels has a Snow Leopard VM. I like that because I am browsing, e-mailing, etc. on a relatively up-to-date system while the development is on a VM inside that system. These days a 43" TV is 200 Euro at "Norma" opposite the e.LeClerc, so I am happy.

With fwkpfv I can see all the driver output from the 10.5.8 inside a terminal window on the 10.13.6

Not sure how to deal with the "Stealth" port of "9" yet... I am sure there is a hack to get the data from serial port of "Stealth" to the USB.
 

Anyone knows the internal code names for Silicon Image 3512 and Silicon Image / CMD 680?

The original Silicon Image internal code names for two of their first gen. SATA ASIC-s are:

"Athena" (3112)
"Taurus" (3114)

For the second gen.:
"Sable" (3124)

I am thinking to name the corresponding drivers matching the internal code names.
Before these code names appeared in the "model" property generated by Open Firmware driver.

Even I don't remember what, say, "WhoNowsTek/1SD4KE-M24" could mean, LOL.
So going away from "internal" (no hot-swap) vs. "external" (hot-swap) and from differentiating how many internal or external connectors that card has.

Maybe, say, use "Athena2" versus "Taurus4" versus "Sable4" naming, the last digit indicating the number of SATA channels?

[Protools5LEGuy]

It seems he needs help to use the Stealth port (serial I guess) to a debugger or that he is lazy to redo it. But at the end he states:

Why I am starting with 10.5.8? Because that setup is the easiest for two-machine debugging via FireWire.
I have two machines with the "Stealth" serial port for "9", just lazy to set everything up. Maybe that will come as well.

The development itself is done under 10.13.6 (probably will move to Ventura this year) under Parallels, Parallels has a Snow Leopard VM. I like that because I am browsing, e-mailing, etc. on a relatively up-to-date system while the development is on a VM inside that system. These days a 43" TV is 200 Euro at "Norma" opposite the e.LeClerc, so I am happy.

With fwkpfv I can see all the driver output from the 10.5.8 inside a terminal window on the 10.13.6

Not sure how to deal with the "Stealth" port of "9" yet... I am sure there is a hack to get the data from serial port of "Stealth" to the USB.

[chrisNova777]

sataman hasnt posted since 2020? has anyone spoken with him? hope he didnt get taken out by covid  i want my promise cards mod'd :/

[ssp3]

He's posting over at macrumors now. Did anyone managed to pi$$ him off here?

[IIO]

He's posting over at macrumors now. Did anyone managed to pi$$ him off here?

no, he was very busy and when he wanted to come back he had problems logging in. they are sorting this.