EIO AP-1680 ATA133 RAID PCI Controller

[tk Voice <tkVoice@netscape.net>]

I was under the impression that these EIDE RAID cards were "hardware 
RAID" as I see it this seems to just be a 2-Channel IDE controller That 
I will have to set up as MD (Software RAID).

Has anyone got one of these working as a hardware RAID controller under 
LINUX ?

Does anyone have any hints you can give me to get this working without 
using "Software RAID" ?

Here are the details of this controller:

EIO (Extreme IO) is a division of InnoVISION (www.ivmm.com)

They have a ATA RAID solution: "EIO AP-1680 ATA133 RAID PCI Controller"
It can be viewed here: http://www.ivmm.com/eio/products_ap1680.html

Which they claim is LINUX compatible

It is based on Silicon Image's "Sil 0680 Ultra ATA133" chipset.

Silicon Image "Sil 0680" chipset link is:
http://siimage.cubik.com/products/sii0680.asp

The Driver for this chipset is in the kernel source:
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_CMD64X and CONFIG_BLK_DEV_CMD680

Output from lspci -vvv is this:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
00:09.0 RAID bus controller: CMD Technology Inc: Unknown device 0680 
(rev 02)
    Subsystem: Unknown device 1771:1680
    Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- 
Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
    Status: Cap+ 66Mhz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- 
<TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
    Latency: 32, cache line size 01
    Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 12
    Region 0: I/O ports at a000 [size=8]
    Region 1: I/O ports at a400 [size=4]
    Region 2: I/O ports at a800 [size=8]
    Region 3: I/O ports at ac00 [size=4]
    Region 4: I/O ports at b000 [size=16]
    Region 5: Memory at df001000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256]
    Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled] [size=512K]
    Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 2
            Flags: PMEClk- DSI+ D1+ D2+ AuxCurrent=0mA 
PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
            Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=2 PME-
-----------------------------------------------------------------

I have attached two(2) 40GB drives to this card one on each ide channel 
both set as Master. I went into the controllers BIOS and made 
configuration changes to reflect RAID 1 and built the set adding both 
drives to it. Everything looks fine a boot time. The controllers BIOS 
states two drives found combined as RAID 1 as 0x80. Under Window 98 I 
only see one drive. Which is what I would expect.

But after compiling these drivers into my LINUX kernel the system sees 
my drives as 2 separate disks (I have an ATAPI CDROM drive on 
Motherboard's 2nd-IDE channel) Here are my messages at boot time:
----------------------------------------------------------
VP_IDE: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev 39
VP_IDE: chipset revision 6
VP_IDE: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
VP_IDE: VIA vt82c686b (rev 40) IDE UDMA100 controller on pci00:07.1
ide0: BM-DMA at 0x9000-0x9007, BIOS settings: hda:pio, hdb:pio
ide1: BM-DMA at 0x9008-0x900f, BIOS settings: hdc:pio, hdd:DMA
PCI: Found IRQ 12 for device 00:09.0
CMD680: chipset revision 2
CMD680: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
ide2: BM-DMA at 0xb000-0xb007, BIOS settings: hde:pio, hdf:pio
ide3: BM-DMA at 0xb008-0xb00f, BIOS settings: hdg:pio, hdh:pio
hdd: CD-ROM 56X/AKH, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hde: WDC WD400AB-00BVA0, ATA DISK drive
hdg: WDC WD400AB-00BVA0, ATA DISK drive
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
ide2 at 0xa000-0xa007,0xa402 on irq 12
ide3 at 0xa800-0xa807,0xac02 on irq 12
blk: queue c02c766c, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
hde: 78165360 sectors (40021 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=77545/16/63, 
UDMA(100)
blk: queue c02c79d0, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
hdg: 78165360 sectors (40021 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=77545/16/63, 
UDMA(100)
Partition check:
hde: [PTBL] [4865/255/63] hde1 hde2 hde3
hdg: [PTBL] [4865/255/63] hdg1 hdg2 hdg3
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks

Peter