Hello. Sorry for late answer, but i hope my information will help
other people with right choice.
First of all there were a lot of bootable adapters with support of
UltraDMA at the market
(even in Russia, where i live) at the March of this year, when topic
author experienced problem
with "bare" passive adapter. Very strange that Duncan found this ugly
cheap "Syba SY-IDE2MC-4A",
although Google says me somehow that this adapter supports UDMA mode (?!).
How-to for newcomers:
1) Choice SD card, as the standard is quite simple and supports IDE
specifications, check info that your
card can work in DMA mode;
2) Before to pick adapter in your local store, check information about
model that they sell via Google.
Be sure to see words like "bootable", "UltraDMA". There are a lot of
topics in different forums in the internet
about this subject. Some of PIO adapters can achieve UDMA with wire
soldering mod. Don't be in hurry and
try to figure what you need;
3) Carefully read Google and/or machine PROM's firmware manual. Take a
note that Sun's firmware called
OpenBoot, not BIOS :) You should search for something referring to
"OpenBoot PROM commands" in case of
SPARC 64 architecture. In my case i spent some time to figuring right
boot device path in OBP but than set
it as default and it's sucessfully boots from it.
In my case i sucessfully use IDE2UCF1-x-01 and IDE2UCF1-D-01 from
Espada. Adapters that missing "U" code
in Espada productions line working in PIO mode and requires hardware
mode as i mentioned before.
Mine are both UDMA capable, they differs only in cage backplane missing
or included. Both of are single-card.
There are dual-card per channel capable also.
I don't know why topic starter is afraid to spend money, as they i got
mine only for $12 USD per singe in
non-cheap shop.
My dmesg as well (boot path at the end of log may help you, i use boot
device at channel 0 as master device):
Note for Ultra-DMA 4
OpenBSD 4.4 (EPILEPSY) #4: Mon May 10 10:17:19 MSD 2010
poreb...@home:/usr/src/sys/arch/sparc64/compile/EPILEPSY
real mem = 1073741824 (1024MB)
avail mem = 1030692864 (982MB)
mainbus0 at root: Sun Fire V100 (UltraSPARC-IIe 500MHz)
cpu0 at mainbus0: SUNW,UltraSPARC-IIe (rev 1.4) @ 500 MHz
cpu0: physical 16K instruction (32 b/l), 16K data (32 b/l), 256K external (64
b/l)
psycho0 at mainbus0: SUNW,sabre, impl 0, version 0, ign 7c0
psycho0: bus range 0-0, PCI bus 0
psycho0: dvma map 6000-7fff, iotdb 1278000-12f8000
pci0 at psycho0
ebus0 at pci0 dev 7 function 0 "Acer Labs M1533 ISA" rev 0x00
"dma" at ebus0 addr 0- ivec 0x2a not configured
rtc0 at ebus0 addr 70-71: m5819
power0 at ebus0 addr 2000-2007 ivec 0x23
lom0 at ebus0 addr 8010-8011 ivec 0x2a: LOMlite2 rev 3.11
com0 at ebus0 addr 3f8-3ff ivec 0x2b: ns16550a, 16 byte fifo
com0: console
com1 at ebus0 addr 2e8-2ef ivec 0x2b: ns16550a, 16 byte fifo
"flashprom" at ebus0 addr 0-7 not configured
alipm0 at pci0 dev 3 function 0 "Acer Labs M7101 Power" rev 0x00: 74KHz clock
iic0 at alipm0
"max1617" at alipm0 addr 0x18 skipped due to alipm0 bugs
spdmem0 at iic0 addr 0x54: 256MB SDRAM registered ECC PC133CL2
spdmem1 at iic0 addr 0x55: 256MB SDRAM registered ECC PC133CL2
spdmem2 at iic0 addr 0x56: 256MB SDRAM registered ECC PC133CL3
spdmem3 at iic0 addr 0x57: 256MB SDRAM registered ECC PC133CL3
dc0 at pci0 dev 12 function 0 "Davicom DM9102" rev 0x31: ivec 0x7c6, address
00:03:ba:13:a8:bf
amphy0 at dc0 phy 1: DM9102 10/100 PHY, rev. 0
dc1 at pci0 dev 5 function 0 "Davicom DM9102" rev 0x31: ivec 0x7dc, address
00:03:ba:13:a8:c0
amphy1 at dc1 phy 1: DM9102 10/100 PHY, rev. 0
ohci0 at pci0 dev 10 function 0 "Acer Labs M5237 USB" rev 0x03: ivec 0x7e4,
version 1.0, legacy support
pciide0 at pci0 dev 13 function 0 "Acer Labs M5229 UDMA IDE" rev 0xc3: DMA,
channel 0 configured to native-PCI, channel 1 configured to native-PCI
pciide0: using ivec 0x7cc for native-PCI interrupt
wd0 at pciide0 channel 0 drive 0:
wd0: 1-sector PIO, LBA, 15279MB, 31293360 sectors
wd0(pciide0:0:0): using PIO mode 4, Ultra-DMA mode 4
wd1 at pciide0 channel 1 drive 0:
wd1: 1-sector PIO, LBA, 14559MB, 29818656 sectors
wd1(pciide0:1:0): using PIO mode 4, Ultra-DMA mode 4
usb0 at ohci0: USB revision 1.0
uhub0 at usb0 "Acer Labs OHCI root hub" rev 1.00/1.00 addr 1
bootpath: /p...@1f,0/i...@d,0/d...@0,0
root on wd0a swap on wd0b dump on wd0b
So, the verdict on this is that CF_2_IDE cards come in two varieties
and that ones with ICs on them to support CF&SD will not work with Sun's
IDE interface, specifically this card,
Syba SY-IDE2MC-4A IDE to Memory Card Adapter Supports CF/MMC/MS/SD Cards
will not.
Interestingly, while the sparc's bios will not recognize this
card, it is visible and mountable after OpenBSD has been booted
with another hard disk, but only with the wd driver limited to PIO-4.
On the other hand using a simpler card from the same manufacturer,
a Syba SD-CF-IDE-A IDE to Compact Flash Adapter, yielded better
that expected results as the
