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Guide to flashing PC SIL3112 SATA cards for Mac

ojfd said:
(s)Ataman, I see from your screenshots that you're using 2GB of RAM.. Wasn't there various problems in OS9 with more than 1.5GB RAM installed?
Click to expand...
Thanks, yes, the 2GB RAM is a questionable thing.
I completely overlooked that, but maybe my mistake can turn out to be helpful: I need to eliminate bugs and test certain extreme things.

For now I removed one memory stick reducing the RAM to 1.5GB.

If I see no problems with SoftRAID (and similar) I will put that stick back and re-test everything with 2GB.
 
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Ataman Honcho Honchev said:
Thanks, yes, the 2GB RAM is a questionable thing.
I completely overlooked that, but maybe my mistake can turn out to be helpful: I need to eliminate bugs and test certain extreme things.

For now I removed one memory stick reducing the RAM to 1.5GB.

If I see no problems with SoftRAID (and similar) I will put that stick back and re-test everything with 2GB.
Click to expand...
it might not be the amount of RAM, 2GB in OS 9 is AFAIK fine, Mac OS will just not be able to use more then 1.5GB of it

BUT I have found out that not all SDRAM sticks are created the same, and for example my sawtooth with its stock 450Mhz 7400 CPU worked just fine rock-solid stable with a lot of my SDRAM sticks, but when I upgraded to my 2Ghz 7448 CPU, it basically rejected about half of my SDRAM sticks in my stock

so I went and ordered 4 fresh brand new PC133 512MB sticks and this solved all stability problems, been rock solid since (I went with PC133 just for the extra headroom and there was no difference in price)

you can read about my Sawtooth upgrading adventures here :) https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/powermac-g4-fun-part-2.2246307/


so I would verify that all your RAM sticks are good first, before doubting yourself
 
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DearthnVader said:
I and many others had issue with the regulator the HK Pirate uses that are supposed to make the PowerMac G4 Quicksilver compatible with this PCI Card.

Some people do not have these issues, so I have not been able to figure way some people don't have issues.

I checked that all the connections were good in the regulator mod, and they seemed to be, but the issue was tho I could sometimes format the connected SATA SSD's they just didn't really work reliably. Thus they were really unusable.

I had a dead 3112 card with the standard regulator so after trying other drives and cables I just switched the regulator from the dead card and now the card is 100% reliable tested in a PowerMac 9600, PowerMac G3 Beige, PowerMac G4 MDD, and PowerMac G5 PCI.

It does not work with my PowerMac G4 QS, as we already know it needs the regulator mod.

The SSD's I'm using are the cheap but fast SSD's you can get off eBay:( not my auction )

www.ebay.com

Netac Internal SSD 256GB Solid State Drive SATA III 6GB/s lot | eBay

P ackage include: Netac 256GB internal SSD 1. Backwards compatibility with SATA 2.0 devices. Storage temperature: -40 ° C-85 ° C. Read Speed: Up to 500MB/s. Write Speed: Up to 400MB/s. TRIM: Support (Requires system support).
www.ebay.com

They work really well but the PCI Bus and model of Mac do make a difference in the speeds. The Mac's that are faster work faster, but I don't really get near the 133MB/s in peak drive speeds for a PCI card. I think the best peak speeds I've seen were in the G5 at about 90MB/s.

There is always overhead.
Click to expand...
What card exactly did you get to work with the 9600/Beige and other OldWorld machines? Which 3112 cards are known to work and not work with those?

Thanks!
 
pc297 said:
What card exactly did you get to work with the 9600/Beige and other OldWorld machines? Which 3112 cards are known to work and not work with those?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
In last few weeks I lost a lot of time to re-validate the "post-SeriTek" drivers.
The drivers are basically new, but I am keeping the old versioning, so the first version made after nearly 20 years will be 6.0.0.

If anyone likes to call that "SeriTek" is fine, but now the name of the SeriTek/1S2, SeriTek/1SE2, SeriTek/1SEM2 is "SImagic2" or "SImagic2LP", where "LP" stands for "Low Power", i.e. the Silicon Image 3512 chip.

I did try (quite a) few cards on the market, including the never-released SeriTek/1S4 series (aka SImagic4, based on Silicon Image 3114)... and lost a lot of time.

The biggest problem is caused by many inexpensive "noname" SSD-s, my anti-favorite is the "(Intenso)®"
I don't think "(Intenso)®" is sold in the US. But unfortunately it is all over Germany and Eastern Europe.

Sadly, it is not much cheaper than, say, "WD Blue".

But "thanks" to it's flawed microcode (many errors on read, I am using SoftRAID 2.22 and a pair of brand-new Intenso-s) I was able to fine-tune the error handling and time-out functionality of my driver. Something I wished to do 20+ years ago but never dared to.

This is the only positive about "(Intenso)®". You can "thank" them for at least a month delay in the driver release.

I think that Micron, Samsung, WDC, Seagate, Lexar, Patriot (etc-etc) SSD drives are the cheapest.
The failed no-name SSD drives are the most expensive.
 
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Aftedr spending some more sleepless nights with "(Intenso)®": the drive is actually not that bad!
It was a nicely hiding bug in the driver.

Way back than in SeriTek/1S2 and SeriTek/1SE2 I poured sticky and thick paint over that bug without understanding why it is there.

In SImagic2 I removed the paint. And guess what, the bug came alive.

And after few more weeks now in SImagic2 there is an other layer of the paint over it.

With a major difference: I know why it is there. This is a "feature" of the MacOS "9" design. :(

Basically, we can easily arrange in "X" that certain parts of the code will be guaranteed single-threaded and won't be interrupted. The single-threaded part is of a lesser problem - but problems could happen in a RAID-ed situation.
That is: while on one channel I receive "SIMAction" call, the other channel creates a hardware interrupt.

Now that bug is gone again - while keeping the performance way above SeriTek level.


Side-effect:

1) "(Intenso)®" is white-listed.
2) I am going to switch to ATAPI tests soon. Something like IOMega REV drives, Travan tapes and such.

Tape drive support under Mac was always a problem.
Anyone remembers how a great program called "Retrospect" went from good to bad?
 
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Hi there!
Just wanted to share my thought process and what I have done in case it helps anyone.

As I mentioned somewhere in this post, I have a PowerMac G4 MDD 1.25Ghz dual processor.
I have OS9 installed on a SATA SSD drive connected to the ATA100 bus using an adapter, which works perfectly fine.
I also have a couple of other SATA SSDs for Tiger and other purposes. I bought a SATA PCI card from the HK pirate, so I could connect those other two SSDs.

The problem was that sometimes the SATA PCI card worked, sometimes it didn't.
Tried with shorter and safer SATA cables, as well as to re-flash the card in OS9 using the firmware dosdude repacked; it didn't help, same issue I'm afraid.

Fortunately, I had a couple of inexpensive SATA PC vanilla PCI cards (with their original firmware). One of them is/was a 4-port, while the other is a 2-port. It turns out that the 2-port one has the AM28F... EPROM which requires 12-volt to flash it, meaning you cannot write a new image using only your computer.
While the (now defunct) 4-port came with a AM29F... (flasheable)... So, it was swapping time! see below.


IMG-6031.jpg


IMG-6030.jpg



After getting the AMF29 CMOS on the 2-port SATA SiL3112, I plugged it in an "vintage" PC that runs MS-DOS and flash it with the firmware dosdude re-packed.

So far, I have probably powered off, and back on my G4 like 15-20 times. It has worked every single one without any issues. I guess the voltage regulator the HK pirate uses (29150) doesn't work very well with my PowerMac. Maybe, there are other changes that I'm not aware of.

All of this experience helped me to realize it can be done easier and better. I bought a few 1, 2 and 4mbit EEPROMs that are pin compatible with what these PCI SATA cards expect, and a PLCC to DIP adapter. Now I can flash the firmware using my EEPROM programmer that I normally use to flash Kickstart Amiga ROMs, I guess it has now another purpose :)

Looking forward to get the new firmware/drivers ATAMAN is building!
I also have a VIA PCI SATA card waiting for it ;)
 
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kahunalx said:
Hi there!
Just wanted to share my thought process and what I have done in case it helps anyone.

As I mentioned somewhere in this post, I have a PowerMac G4 MDD 1.25Ghz dual processor.
I have OS9 installed on a SATA SSD drive connected to the ATA100 bus using an adapter, which works perfectly fine.
I also have a couple of other SATA SSDs for Tiger and other purposes. I bought a SATA PCI card from the HK pirate, so I could connect those other two SSDs.

The problem was that sometimes the SATA PCI card worked, sometimes it didn't.
Tried with shorter and safer SATA cables, as well as to re-flash the card in OS9 using the firmware dosdude repacked; it didn't help, same issue I'm afraid.

Fortunately, I had a couple of inexpensive SATA PC vanilla PCI cards (with their original firmware). One of them is/was a 4-port, while the other is a 2-port. It turns out that the 2-port one has the AM28F... EPROM which requires 12-volt to flash it, meaning you cannot write a new image using only your computer.
While the (now defunct) 4-port came with a AM29F... (flasheable)... So, it was swapping time! see below.


View attachment 2230421

View attachment 2230420


After getting the AMF29 CMOS on the 2-port SATA SiL3112, I plugged it in an "vintage" PC that runs MS-DOS and flash it with the firmware dosdude re-packed.

So far, I have probably powered off, and back on my G4 like 15-20 times. It has worked every single one without any issues. I guess the voltage regulator the HK pirate uses (29150) doesn't work very well with my PowerMac. Maybe, there are other changes that I'm not aware of.

All of this experience helped me to realize it can be done easier and better. I bought a few 1, 2 and 4mbit EEPROMs that are pin compatible with what these PCI SATA cards expect, and a PLCC to DIP adapter. Now I can flash the firmware using my EEPROM programmer that I normally use to flash Kickstart Amiga ROMs, I guess it has now another purpose :)

Looking forward to get the new firmware/drivers ATAMAN is building!
I also have a VIA PCI SATA card waiting for it ;)
Click to expand...
- I am right now in "König"(sberg), RU.
So it will be few extra days when I am back to either FR or HU.
The current state: the (S)ATA part is more-less finished, the new ATAPI is in the way.
The goal is to make at least IOMega Rev work.
- While in RU, looked at these VIA cards. Königsberg is not Moscow, the selection is not that great.
The first shop we visited today had Apacer SSD-s for ca. $9 (guess, what happened, LOL). But no VIA cards.
Finally I registered with AVITO (the local kind of eBay).

How was the border? The biggest problem was.... The car I drove had a different plate, not the usual US.
So the car plate and passport did not match. That was extra +15 min on the Polish site ad and other +15 min on the RU site. Otherwise nothing extra. Annoying is that credit / debit cards from the US do not work, but we knew that.

The selection of all kind of goodies (usually from China) is amazing. The prices, too (see the 120GB Apacer SSD for 800 Rbl).
That was the SSD I need for older G4 or PowerBook G4: M.2 SATA, fitting the usual 44 PIN PATA box with M.2 connector inside. These old pre-QS G4-s have a limited ATA driver, capable of addressing up to 128GB only.
That M.2 SSD for 9 Bucks is not a bad deal. And I know that Apacer is more-less OK.

So the work on the driver will continue in about 10 or so days.

Until that have to work hard to get my original passport back, sorry about it. I know that the timing is not the best one - but I have only one year left to fit into a certain government-allowed category. After that it will be much more difficult.

And these authorities are a very serious business. But hey, living with three passports and having the blessing from all the three countries is not bad.
 
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Back to FR. Turned out, all my regular "9" drives were left in HU.
Luckily, there was one SSD with 9.2.2 and 10.2.8 in FR - so cloned it today.

Many things arrived from the US, among them two NVidia cards.
None of the AMD cards I know does behave well with MacsBug.
NVidia is fine.

The current status: need to finish the update of ATAPI code, the best test drive is IOMega REV.
Hope by end of the July...
 
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Hey Ataman,
Hope you had a great summer!

Since we are in September (time flies!) I wanted to check if you had any spare time over the summer for this project to perhaps make any progress.

Thanks!
 
I guess that's a no... :(

If you are still around, please let us know if there is anything we can do to assist!
In my case, I can do some testing, if that's helpful.

Thanks!
 
Hi when trying to flash my sil3112 pci sata card i am encountering this issue.
1st i dont know which flash memory i should chose.
Second i chosed 3 sst 39sf010 and the system blocked to the line sil3112 version 1 without any response only running something or doing nuthing. Thx to help me. For info i used free dos to flash my card sil3112

Thx for you help.
 

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simba55555 said:
Hi when trying to flash my sil3112 pci sata card i am encountering this issue.
1st i dont know which flash memory i should chose.
Second i chosed 3 sst 39sf010 and the system blocked to the line sil3112 version 1 without any response only running something or doing nuthing. Thx to help me. For info i used free dos to flash my card sil3112

Thx for you help.
Click to expand...
What EEPROM does your card have on it?
 
simba55555 said:
How coule i check that? Where to verify this info?

Thx for your answer
Click to expand...
It's usually the second biggest chip on the board. Sometimes with a SATA sticker over it. You just need to look at the chip number stamped on it. If you have a Windows computer, it should show the chipset during POST on bootup.

41moImd6BvL._AC_SY450_.jpg
 
Hello Weckart,

Really sorry for being so late to answer your question.
Just took a photo for you.
Thanks a lot in advance for your help. I now have time to continue to migrate my power mac g4 to sata

Thx
 

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dosdude1 said:
Yeah, that’s an AM28F010. It will either need to be desoldered and flashed externally with an EEPROM programmer, or replaced with a 29 or 39-series EEPROM that can be flashed on-board.
Click to expand...
OK thx for your answer.
would you have a website to buy the good eeprom directly integrated to the sata pci card.
I wont risk to desolder and component.
 
dosdude1 said:
Yeah, that’s an AM28F010. It will either need to be desoldered and flashed externally with an EEPROM programmer, or replaced with a 29 or 39-series EEPROM that can be flashed on-board.
Click to expand...
Hi, dosdude1! One doubt: If I replace this EEPROM with a brand new 29 or 39-series, is yet possible to flash it on-board, using the utility? System will be able to flash it with an empty EEPROM?
 
harlleysathler said:
Hi, dosdude1! One doubt: If I replace this EEPROM with a brand new 29 or 39-series, is yet possible to flash it on-board, using the utility? System will be able to flash it with an empty EEPROM?
Click to expand...
Correct, you can flash a new blank EEPROM just fine. Also, be sure to move the little resistor to the other position if using an “LV” 3.3V EEPROM, as the original EEPROM runs at 5V.
 
simba55555 said:
OK thx for your answer.
would you have a website to buy the good eeprom directly integrated to the sata pci card.
I wont risk to desolder and component.
Click to expand...
You can buy any of the the three compatible eeproms online but you will have to desolder the old one and solder the new one on yourself. The only alternative is to pay too much for an already altered card on eBay whenever they come up for sale.
 
weckart said:
You can buy any of the the three compatible eeproms online but you will have to desolder the old one and solder the new one on yourself. The only alternative is to pay too much for an already altered card on eBay whenever they come up for sale.
Click to expand...
Would you have any link to buy one eeprom please?
Or an ebay link to buy the good complete card?

Thx in advance
 
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