On Tue, Aug 23, 2005 at 09:56:18PM -0600, Scott Long wrote:
> fbsd wrote:
> >Hello All,
> >
> >For 5.4, FreeBSD AMD64 (and i386) is not able to recognize my diamond-max
> >160G SATA drives on a Supermicro 6024H-T / X6DHT-G board with the default
> >Marvell H2 SATA ctrl'r. There are SATA drivers for RH, FC3 and Windows
> >from Supermicro:
> >ftp://ftp.supermicro.com/driver/Diskimag/Adaptec/Marvell/H2/
> >
> >Is there any way to get FreeBSD to run on this machine? It runs on
> >windows so it does not appear to be hardware or BIOS config.
> >
> >It's a dual XEON (Nocona) 3.2G board with the Intel E7520 chipset.
> >
> >Thank you,
> >Sejo
> >
>
> Marvell does not release programming specs for their SATA chips, nor do
> they sell them for use as stand-along SATA controllers. The drivers
> that are on the Supermicro site are for Adaptec's software RAID solution
> that uses the Marvell chips. These drivers are binary only,
> unfortunately. It's a shame, because the Marvell chips are actually
> pretty good. My challenge for someone to reverse engineer them is still
> open.
Yeah -- we had a very similar experience with a machine based on the
X6DHP-TG board (which is pretty much the same as the X6DHT-G, just a
different form factor to permit using dual PSUs in a 1U server).
There's no support for the Adaptec Marvell RAID. Supermicro claim
that FreeBSD 5.x /is/ supported though -- at:
http://www.supermicro.com/support/resources/OS/E7520Compatibility.cfm
but you have to read that very carefully indeed in order to realise
that the FreeBSD 5.x support is claimed only when using the SATA
connectors on the ICH5R Southbridge.
On the other hand, if you need no more than two hard drives in the
machine, and you don't need hardware RAID, then those are pretty nice
boards. gmirror(8) works very well indeed to make a mirrored system
drive.
Cheers,
Matthew
--
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 8 Dane Court Manor
School Rd
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Tilmanstone
Tel: +44 1304 617253 Kent, CT14 0JL UK
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