Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Guide to flashing PC SIL3112 SATA cards for Mac

harrymatic said:
Every card I have ever come across uses a 128K ROM chip - this almost certainly does as well. In the exceptionally rare event that it's using a 64K EEPROM though, I can put together a smaller ROM image for you.
Click to expand...

actually slight correction, most cards use a 1Mbit chip which equates to 125KB
according to google.. but im somewhat confused myself becausae
http://www.unitconversion.org/data-storage/megabits-to-kilobytes-conversion.html this site reports it as 128KB

harry
do u have experience reducing roms????
 
supernova777 said:
do u have experience reducing roms????
Click to expand...

Not really, it's just in this case there's a huge amount of empty space at the end of the ROM, making it really easy to shrink it down. What is it that you want to do?

Also with the megabit to kilobyte conversion, there are 8 bits in a byte so 1024 bits divided by 8 bits results in 128 kilobytes.
 
Last edited:
My turn at one of these. Flashed without incident but will not work in my QS 2002. I get the chime and hear my IDE drives spin up briefly. Then silence and a black screen. It looks very similar to others that have been posted here working so am flummoxed.

Tried in all available slots but still no joy.
 

Attachments

  • photo.JPG
    photo.JPG
    884.6 KB · Views: 1,003
weckart said:
My turn at one of these. Flashed without incident but will not work in my QS 2002. I get the chime and hear my IDE drives spin up briefly. Then silence and a black screen. It looks very similar to others that have been posted here working so am flummoxed.

Tried in all available slots but still no joy.
Click to expand...

A number of people have reported problems with using these cards in Quicksilver machines. I'm afraid at the monent there's not much that can be done. I really have no idea what causes the problem, given that it has been reported fully working in at least one Quicksilver G4.
 
Everybody, I have some exciting news. Over on the 68kMLA forums, there has been a search going on for some time for the firmware from a very hard to find SIL3112 card sold in Japan. It is 64k in size and supposedly works in OS 8 through OS X 10.5 (rumours of System 7 compatibility as well!). It should work perfectly in the Quicksilver machines. Today a member of that forum announced that they have the card and they are working on extracting the firmware, so hopefully there will be new firmware for anybody having problems to try out soon. :)
 
ATTN: eyoungren & harrymatic - Your Thoughts

Hello all, new member here.
Luv all the great PPC enthusiasm & info.

I own both a Quicksilver 2002 Dual 1GHz & a single cpu 800 MHz.
As per harrymatic's awesome info, I successfully flashed a cheapo PC SATA SIL3112,
but experienced the same "blackout, no boot" on my QS Dual that other QS owners posted about.
I only tried it in the QS Dual 1 GHz.
So I installed the flashed SATA card in my Sawtooth G4 and it works there perfectly so far.

Now this is what I'm wondering about:
Could it be that a stock QS AGP Vid card designed to power-up an Apple Studio Display
with its associated ADC (Apple Display Connector) circuitry is somehow interfering with the flashed PC PCI SATA card?
Both QS of mine have the stock Vid card with the elongated oval-shaped ADC connector and standard VGA.

Btw, I'm using the VGA connections of my Quicksilvers since I use standard LCDs, not any Apple Studio Displays.

If I read things correctly, it seems that eyoungren's QS set-up has non-ADC graphic cards (DVI & VGA instead),
possibly meaning he uses flashed PC graphics cards with specified taped-over pin-slot connectors,
the extra "blockage" step needed for flashed PC vid cards to work in ADC-designed PowerMacs.

So, maybe the Quicksilver users who don't use an Apple Studio Display with their stock Vid card could
tape-over the specified ADC pins of the Vid card & then the flashed SATA card would work?

Anyway, I thought I'd post my thoughts about this for feedback before I got off my lazy backside &
actually tried to tape-over the ADC pins of the QS vid cards.
I'll have to google for the taped pin instructions which I know is out there somewhere.

Thanks for reading & any feedback or correction of any misread information.
 
QSDP-User said:
If I read things correctly, it seems that eyoungren's QS set-up has non-ADC graphic cards (DVI & VGA instead),
possibly meaning he uses flashed PC graphics cards with specified taped-over pin-slot connectors,
the extra "blockage" step needed for flashed PC vid cards to work in ADC-designed PowerMacs.

So, maybe the Quicksilver users who don't use an Apple Studio Display with their stock Vid card could
tape-over the specified ADC pins of the Vid card & then the flashed SATA card would work?

Anyway, I thought I'd post my thoughts about this for feedback before I got off my lazy backside &
actually tried to tape-over the ADC pins of the QS vid cards.
I'll have to google for the taped pin instructions which I know is out there somewhere.

Thanks for reading & any feedback or correction of any misread information.
Click to expand...


I have a flashed PC card that I could try in my QS. Not particularly hopeful but will try.

[edit] Same result. Must be a firmware issue.
 
Last edited:
QSDP-User said:
Hello all, new member here.
Luv all the great PPC enthusiasm & info.

I own both a Quicksilver 2002 Dual 1GHz & a single cpu 800 MHz.
As per harrymatic's awesome info, I successfully flashed a cheapo PC SATA SIL3112,
but experienced the same "blackout, no boot" on my QS Dual that other QS owners posted about.
I only tried it in the QS Dual 1 GHz.
So I installed the flashed SATA card in my Sawtooth G4 and it works there perfectly so far.

Now this is what I'm wondering about:
Could it be that a stock QS AGP Vid card designed to power-up an Apple Studio Display
with its associated ADC (Apple Display Connector) circuitry is somehow interfering with the flashed PC PCI SATA card?
Both QS of mine have the stock Vid card with the elongated oval-shaped ADC connector and standard VGA.

Btw, I'm using the VGA connections of my Quicksilvers since I use standard LCDs, not any Apple Studio Displays.

If I read things correctly, it seems that eyoungren's QS set-up has non-ADC graphic cards (DVI & VGA instead),
possibly meaning he uses flashed PC graphics cards with specified taped-over pin-slot connectors,
the extra "blockage" step needed for flashed PC vid cards to work in ADC-designed PowerMacs.

So, maybe the Quicksilver users who don't use an Apple Studio Display with their stock Vid card could
tape-over the specified ADC pins of the Vid card & then the flashed SATA card would work?

Anyway, I thought I'd post my thoughts about this for feedback before I got off my lazy backside &
actually tried to tape-over the ADC pins of the QS vid cards.
I'll have to google for the taped pin instructions which I know is out there somewhere.

Thanks for reading & any feedback or correction of any misread information.
Click to expand...
I have exactly 1 flashed card. It's a Radeon 7000, PCI

My main card is a Radeon 9800 Pro, AGP and I have another card on the way which is a Radeon 9200 Pro, PCI. Neither of those cards are flashed. They are both Mac versions. I have three A1006 DVI/ADC converters that let me use a 22" Cinema Display and two 17" Studio Displays with my DVI/VGA video cards. I also have a 20" HDTV attached (VGA).

I'm not entirely sure what's happened to cause problems here. I never had any issue. I put my flashed SATA card in, connected the drives and booted right up. Maybe I just got very lucky in the particular card I chose. That's one of the reasons I linked to the auction, so others could get the same type of card even if that auction was over.

Granted, when I power on I have to wait a few seconds before my displays get signal and the Mac starts booting, but I have always attributed that to the fact that the Mac is busy searching the bus for non-existant IDE drives and the optical drive before it finds a bootable drive on the SATA card.
 
Thanks for the feedback weckart & eyoungren.

It sounds like taped-over pins of AGP Vid cards isn't the simple solution that I thought it could be.
 
A quick question if I may..

A quick question if I may..
With regard to flashing such cards, does it matter if the PC used to do it is running XP, and not 98SE?
Pardon my Windows naiveté!!

Many thanks
 
Thank you Intell for your swift response, and assurance on the matter. I was going to give a try anyway, but thought there was no harm in just checking first :)
 
Thanks for the info! I bought a PNY 1.5Gbps PCI card YEARS ago to upgrade a now long-since-gone PC that only had PCI no AGP. The Documentation says its 3114 (I THINK) but the Windows Driver is 3112. I used the mentioned Flash Image and a program on OSX to attempt the flash but never had any luck. I am currently in the stage of bringing my PowerMac MDD back to life and i will indeed try the flash in on a PC. I tried to flash a Radeon 9550 to a 9600XT and bricked the card.
 
Once Bitten...

Hi folks, I ran into the same chime but no boot problem with a pair of these, and now I'm feeling a little once bitten twice shy. I don't suppose anyone has a link to some confirmed working cards, or if anyone knows if these might work.
Much appreciated.
 
harrymatic said:
Have a look at this: http://www.applefritter.com/content/sil3512-flashing

The link in the post is long dead, but you can still get the flashing program from the Internet Archive here : http://web.archive.org/web/20110107124934/http://www.wiebetech.com/download.php?id=119

Unlike the SIL3112 flasher, this program works under OS X.

EDIT: Wait no, I just read that it doesn't work on Quicksilver Macs as you said.
Click to expand...

dont work. DOwnloaded the file DID the flashing and the BIOS and nothing the mac refuses to use the Ktext the BIOS and FIRMWARE did not stick to the card
 
That's because WiebieTech's flash tool supports only EEPROMs from SST, ATMEL, PMC, and WINBOND.
(Info from https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/20293-i-just-ruined-my-sata-card/?p=205859 )

But even if you've got the card with an EEPROM from one of those brands. It's likely you still can't use it to flash current cards. I think it's because these new cards use 5v chip instead of 3.3v like the cards from some years ago. These new (Sil3512) cards will show some ID in System Profiler as 0x6512 instead of 0x3512, just like the new Sil3112 cards will show up in some ID as 0x6112 instead of 0x3112.

Correction: the change from Subsystem ID number 3112 to 6112 and 3512 to 6512 is probably unrelated to the voltage of the flash chip. I've just found info about a card with a 3.3v chip (SST 39VF010) shows up as 6512, go figure.....
 
Last edited:
I'm interested in flashing this card with a Mac because I don't have a PC. And I want to flash it with SeriTek 1s2 firmware because I already have a flashed Sil3512 which can boot OS X.

With the knowledge from the same thread above (and https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/13557-sil3112-flashing-sata/ ) that the SeriTek supports only 3 chips and, luckily, one of them is PMC PM39LV040, which WiebieTech's flash tool also supports.

So I swapped a PM39LV040 chip in, removed the R25 resistor, bridged the R24 to get 3.3v. Inserted the card into my MDD 867 Dual and turned it on. The ID was changed to 0x3112, a good sign.

I tried many things. At last I flashed it successfully. Not sure what was the recipe. I placed the card in PCI slot #5, booted into 10.5.8 root Safe Mode and flashed it using file "ROMFILE.1S2" renamed to "WiebeSATA3112.bin" and "WiebeSATA3112.bios" to fool the flasher (I only used the WiebeSATA3112.bin). I suspect flaky PCI slots and bad seating caused major inconsistencies here since the machine is quite old.


Now it's on slot #4 and the SeriTek's updater recognized it and reflashed it fine. Booted OS 9 fine (the drives will be shown as SCSI). The drives connected to the card won't show in OS X System Profiler's ATA bus though. Which is normal even for the genuine card but Disk Utility takes care them fine, sleep fine too.


<Many thanks to dougg3 at 68kmla.org.>
 

Attachments

  • flashed_card.jpg
    flashed_card.jpg
    166.9 KB · Views: 2,054
  • Card Info.jpg
    Card Info.jpg
    113.1 KB · Views: 538
for this said:
I'm interested in flashing this card with a Mac because I don't have a PC. And I want to flash it with SeriTek 1s2 firmware because I already have a flashed Sil3512 which can boot OS X.

With the knowledge from the same thread above (and https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/13557-sil3112-flashing-sata/ ) that the SeriTek supports only 3 chips and, luckily, one of them is PMC PM39LV040, which WiebieTech's flash tool also supports.

So I swapped a PM39LV040 chip in, removed the R25 resistor, bridged the R24 to get 3.3v. Inserted the card into my MDD 867 Dual and turned it on. The ID was changed to 0x3112, a good sign.

I tried many things. At last I flashed it successfully. Not sure what was the recipe. I placed the card in PCI slot #5, booted into 10.5.8 root Safe Mode and flashed it using file "ROMFILE.1S2" renamed to "WiebeSATA3112.bin" and "WiebeSATA3112.bios" to fool the flasher (I only used the WiebeSATA3112.bin). I suspect flaky PCI slots and bad seating caused major inconsistencies here since the machine is quite old.


Now it's on slot #4 and the SeriTek's updater recognized it and reflashed it fine. Booted OS 9 fine (the drives will be shown as SCSI). The drives connected to the card won't show in OS X System Profiler's ATA bus though. Which is normal even for the genuine card but Disk Utility takes care them fine, sleep fine too.


<Many thanks to dougg3 at 68kmla.org.>
Click to expand...
Uhhhmmm…I flashed the card I linked to in my first post in this thread! :D

So far, it's the ONLY successful flashing I've done. :)
 
eyoungren said:
Uhhhmmm…I flashed the card I linked to in my first post in this thread! :D

So far, it's the ONLY successful flashing I've done. :)
Click to expand...

Is that the same?

I flashed it with a mac, you flashed it with a pc.

I flashed it using SeriTek's firmware, you flashed it using WiebeTech's firmware.
 
for this said:
Is that the same?

I flashed it with a mac, you flashed it with a pc.

I flashed it using SeriTek's firmware, you flashed it using WiebeTech's firmware.
Click to expand...
It's not the same, and that was my point.

It was a tongue-in-cheek joke intended to recognize what you did as superior to the little thing I did. :)
 
Last edited:
OK, I feel a bit too proud because I've just finished it a moment ago and still a little over my head....:eek:
 
for this said:
OK, I feel a bit too proud because I've just finished it a moment ago and still a little over my head....:eek:
Click to expand...
Near as I can tell you did a really cool thing, especially if the ROM you used is superior.

I'm crap with a soldering iron so swapping something in and removing something else for me would result in a ruined board.

So, totally cool what you did and respect to you for it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back