Re: sili(4) on Sparc64 (Blade 100)

On 10/28/10 5:42 PM, Eric Huiban wrote:
> Le 20/10/10 04:28, Nick Holland a icrit :
>> On 07/04/10 13:56, E. L. Evans V wrote:
>>
>> sorry, took me a while to get around to experimenting with this...

Thanks!

I've left most of the prior quoted intact down below, may be a bit wordy
fr list, but for continuity's sake I suppose.

I have tried several cards based on chipset recco's:

A VIA6421 (is PATA and SATA)
A SILI3512 (is SATA)

Both controllers appear to be seen at boot, neither will format a drive.
 OpenBSD sees a drive, and allows partitioning, but formatting fails,
with messages that suggest the sometimes common "too big a drive" problem.

I am using a 1.0T drive.

I know the drive is good based on use elsewhere, as well as using a
AHA2940 combined with a SATA-SCSI adapter in the desired system, a Blade
100.  The 2940 will see it, and use it, but due to cabling issues I
cannot use that arrangement on an ongoing basis.

I have also ordered a SILI3112, which has not yet arrived.  UPS
delivered my last package to the water-filled ditch at the end of the
driveway, and ever so nicely signed for it for me too.  How kind! <g>
Perhaps I'll have a 3112 soon, perhaps not.

I am looking at a different approach, one to include this SAS/SATA
controller:
http://www.cpusolutions.com/store/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=1649&idcategory=401#details

With this I could boot and run from a SATA drive, I think?

Thoughts and suggestions are welcome, with thanks.

Regards & Thanks



[expand internal storage in a Blade 100]


>>> The firmware for the internal native PATA controller is of course
>>> limited to 120G.
>>
>> something is, it isn't the firmware.  Firmware limits don't matter after
>> boot.  And yes, there is a 128g issue on the blade100, it seems, not
>> just the U5/U10.  Apparently, you knew that, I had to find out for
>> myself. :)

Yes, it seems there is a large drive issue.


>>> I am looking to add one or more additional large disks internally and I
>>> do not need to boot from them.
>>>
>>> Some reading suggests that a Silicon Image PCI (or PCI-E ?) adapter to
>>> use sili(4) may or should work.  Of course I'm limited to PCI on this box.
>>>
>>> I am using a SYBA SD-SATA2-2E2I PCI SATA II Controller Card PCI-X/PCI
>>> SATA card sporting a Silicon Image 3124 device.  I have tried the card
>>> in the upper and lower slots, and tried both internal drive connectors
>>> on the card.  The Blade has OBP 4.0.45 currently.
>>
>> hm. That sounds similar to a very bogus card I picked up recently.
>> "6-Port SATA II 150", SiL 3114CTU chip.  I'm not even going to mention
>> the RAID part, which I knew was bogus, but just about everything else
>> was, uh, "creative".  The "II" after the word "SATA"?  Doesn't mean
>> SATA-II.  Pure SATA1.  Thus, the 150 is more "right".  Six port?
>> uh..sure.  Only four can be active (four internal, or four internal and
>> two external), but there are six ports (somewhere on the box, it did say
>> "Four channel").
>>
>> However, it works.  pciide, though, not sili.
>>
>>> Pre and post hardware installation inspection (manual and diff) of dmesg
>>> and eeprom -p output doesn't show anything new or unidentifiable.
>>>
>>> I cannot at the moment test the card elsewhere, so I suppose I've a duff
>>> card or I've misread and it simply isn't supported.
>>>
>>> Has anyone done something similar as I am attempting?
>>
>> actually, just did.
>> Had a 1.5TB SATA disk inside my U10.
>> It did NOT work with the SiL chip card, just like yours, it just didn't
>> show up in my dmesg.
>>
>> HOWEVER, an older VIA-based card did show up and work just fine.
>>
>> My guess (and I want to highlight the word "guess") is that the U10 is
>> maybe an older PCI bus standard.  I've seen this before, an early wi(4)
>> card I had would work in only one or two systems I had at the time with
>> a newer PCI bus, on the older machines, it just didn't show up.  I've
>> also seen this on other cards in the U10, some just don't show up.  I'm
>> pretty sure Sun never planned on a lot of the things I put in them, so I
>> don't think it is a firmware compatibility issue.
>>
>> After having some curious problems with the U10, I've moved the
>> controller and drive to my blade100, and sure enough, the card is
>> recognized by OpenBSD, and the drive is working seemingly well...
>> (and so far, the U10 is behaving itself with the SATA card out of it.
>> Too early to say "cause!".)
> 
> I just did the same retrofit on one of my U10... first by adding a 256Mb
> compact-flash for the boot & root and two sata disk managed by softraid
> and two sata racks without disk-tray (open the door, put your bare disk
> in there, lock the door).
> 
> the via SATA PCI controler is not so bad (2 sata port, 1 pata) and
> really cheap but second port activation apparently needs some fiddling
> in the configuration register within pciide sources when using 4.6 (and
> i didn't had time for this). This chip is aimed to PCI 2.2 but
> compatibilty with PCI 2.1 seems correct. I needed two controlers to
> setup the configuration...
> 
> I replaced the two via controler by a sil3112 PCI controler with 2
> internal SATA connectors ( a bare one with no commercial fancy on it but
> with a visualy "clean" circuit board) : everything runs smoothly with
> this. PCI compatibility is not an issue here in my case.
> 
> dmesg extract (you'll notice my lazyness, i still don't have moved the
> swap partition to sd0b) :
> 
> pciide0 at pci1 dev 3 function 0 "CMD Technology PCI0646" rev 0x03: DMA,
> channel
>  0 configured to native-PCI, channel 1 configured to native-PCI
> pciide0: using ivec 0x7e0 for native-PCI interruptwd0 at pciide0 channel
> 0 drive 0: <TOSHIBA THNCF256MMA>
> wd0: 1-sector PIO, LBA, 244MB, 500736 sectors
> wd0(pciide0:0:0): using PIO mode 2
> pciide0: channel 1 disabled (no drives)
> ppb1 at pci0 dev 1 function 0 "Sun Simba PCI-PCI" rev 0x13
> pci2 at ppb1 bus 2
> pciide1 at pci2 dev 3 function 0 "CMD Technology SiI3112 SATA" rev 0x02: DMA
> pciide1: using ivec 0x7d8 for native-PCI interrupt
> pciide1: port 0: device present, speed: 1.5Gb/s
> wd1 at pciide1 channel 0 drive 0: <Hitachi HDS721050CLA362>
> wd1: 16-sector PIO, LBA48, 476940MB, 976773168 sectors
> wd1(pciide1:0:0): using BIOS timings, Ultra-DMA mode 2
> pciide1: port 1: device present, speed: 1.5Gb/s
> wd2 at pciide1 channel 1 drive 0: <Hitachi HDS721050CLA362>
> wd2: 16-sector PIO, LBA48, 476940MB, 976773168 sectors
> wd2(pciide1:1:0): using BIOS timings, Ultra-DMA mode 2
> softraid0 at root
> scsibus0 at softraid0: 1 targets
> sd0 at scsibus0 targ 0 lun 0: <OPENBSD, SR RAID 0, 003> SCSI2 0/direct fixed
> sd0: 953879MB, 512 bytes/sec, 1953545985 sec total
> bootpath: /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3,0/disk@0,0
> root on wd0a swap on wd0b dump on wd0b