Re: ATA anomaly Question

[Bill Hacker <wbh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Gabriel Ambuehl wrote:

> Bill Hacker schrieb:
>
> > The 'opportunity' is that, AFAIK, not all drivers are available and 
> > ata(4)
> > is no longer 'universal' enough....
> >
> > 'conventional' IDE/ATA ata(4) driver, as shipped with FreeBSD-4.11
> > anyway - seems to cover the Sil, most HPT, *claims* to cover most 
> > Promise.
> > That driver is as common as fly poop - it's everywhere.
> >
> > High Point RocketRAID 18XX & SATA, per FreeBSD 5.3,  want: hptmv(4)
> > - DragonFlyBSD STABLE doesn't include that, though ata(4) seems to
> > serve just fine.
>
> The RocketRAID 1820 is a weird piece of hardware for all I've read. It 
> seems to be some mix between software and hardware RAID and all in all 
> probably nothing you really care about (except if you need 8 plain SATA 
> channels on a small piece of PCB).
>
> > Promise 'SuperTrak' want: pst(4) - DragonFlyBSD STABLE doesn't include 
> > that,
> > and the Fastrak-150 TX-2 plus are 'invisible'.
> That is because Supertraks are a wholly different animal than Fastraks. 
> Supertrak is what people generally call hardware RAID (I know you have 
> your own views about the issue).

Not just me, mate. Find me an onboard CPU, SPC, 'I/O processor'
or gate-aray-implemented state-machine, a hardware XOR gate
array, BIOS setting for 'patrol interval' and the ability to rebuild
a broken mirror with the MB CPU or RAM *missing*,
. .. and I'll call it 'hardware RAID'. Otherwise, it's 'virtual',
or 'pseudo'.  Puedo' is an imitation, and 'virtual' means
 'the next word is a lie'.

> Supertraks are in the same general area 
> as 3Ware is, i.e. the OS doesn't mess with the generation of the RAID, 
> it doesn't actually see it, either. It's just one big disk to the OS.

Mayhap with 8 port and such ($$) but for sure NOT with
the lowly S-150 TX2 Plus it isn't.  And that 'marketig exercise'
has been tested on *several* OS, as you may recall - now back
in its shipping box again.  Nothing on the PCB but PDC20371,
BIOS, Crystal, 2 3T VR's and 5 capacitors.

By comparison you could salvage enough parts from an ASUS
DA-2100 to build an entire PC. 486-DX4-120, 64 MB of ECC FPM
RAM, BIOS, Dallas NVRAM, twin NCR875, twin XOR++ gate arrays,
and over a dozen other IC's. Even a beeper...
. .have to find a SCSI keyboard and parallel dumb terminal though  ;-)

That antique *will* rebuild w/o being attached to a working MB, BTW.
Just give it SCSI drives and power....

> As for Sil, talk to FreeBSD's Soren Schmitt (AKA ata guy ;-) about that 
> piece of c***.

 - or Daniella Engebert.  Her drivers handle it better still - along
with nearly every other IDE/ATA on planet Earth, and in one
single binary, rarely needing the defaults changed.

As with Realtek, it's hard coding, and frustrating, but once done,
a lower-cost for millions of folks on tight budgets.

We should all be at least as thankful for the code created
to drive bad chips as good ones...  they are the majority.

Bill