Kernel driver for Adaptec S-ATA 1420SA

Kernel driver for Adaptec S-ATA 1420SA

[sinister]

Dear all,

I bought the Adaptec S-ATA II-1420SA controller but I have a problem 
with this type.
I use the Linux Slackware 10.1 with the Linux Kernel 2.6.12-4 but I 
didn´t find any driver for this S-ATA controller.
I don't need RAID but I need a 4x S-ATA port.

Could you please to help me?
Have you any information about this driver for Linux systems?
I can't use RH,SUSE,UN binary because these drivers are very old for my 
the Linux system
I think I'm not sole.
I didn't have any problem with drivers for an Adaptec controller until now.

Thanks a lot

Best regards,
Jan Milsimer



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Re: Kernel driver for Adaptec S-ATA 1420SA

[James Bottomley]

On Fri, 2005-08-12 at 19:36 +0200, sinister@sinister.cz wrote:
> I bought the Adaptec S-ATA II-1420SA controller but I have a problem 
> with this type.
> I use the Linux Slackware 10.1 with the Linux Kernel 2.6.12-4 but I 
> didn´t find any driver for this S-ATA controller.
> I don't need RAID but I need a 4x S-ATA port.

Adaptec only publishes binary drivers for it's SATA RAID cards.

The rumour is that Adaptec doesn't make the SATA chips in these, but
OEM's them and then adds Adaptec softraid on top, so theoretically one
of the in-kernel SATA drivers might be able to attach to the OEM chip.
Your best bet would be to ask Adaptec support about it.

James


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RE: Kernel driver for Adaptec S-ATA 1420SA

[Salyzyn, Mark]

Partially true regarding RAID cards. We publish sources for all our processor based RAID cards (dpt_i2o, aacraid). For the HostRAID cards, the RAID stack is in the driver, we publish the binaries for the one-piece drivers. We released a GPL driver for the HostRAID card as a raw driver + Enhanced md replacement.

As for the chips, depending on which card model, the silicon used for the interface chips could be Adaptec, or it could be from another OEM. There is not much to a SATA chip, remember PATA is but a 74374 latch and the SATA chips simply serialize the same interface. In the case of the 1420SA, the SATA core is on Adaptec Silicon (AIC8130), but your guess is as good as mine with regards to where that SATA core originated from.

As for the ata driver, 1420SA has its PCI RAID class bit turned on, ideally you would want to turn that bit off before attaching the raw (none-RAID) driver to it. I have yet to get a response back from the H/W or BIOS folks about how this can be done; I could not find a 'RAID' tunable in the add-on BIOS. I expect that the intent was not to compete in the raw SATA environment...

And, when the card has the PCI RAID class bit turned on, this should trigger support for handling the RAID metadata on the drives. The META data, and support for HostRAID cards, was published in Justin Gibbs emd release last year. Sadly, in the time it took his team to produce that enhancement to the md product, Linux releases had switched from md to dm and that effort was lost and a new effort has not been started since Justin left Adaptec immediately after the rejection on the RAID list.

The publication of the meta data support has yet to be absorbed by the dm or dmraid tools.

Sincerely -- Mark Salyzyn
-----Original Message-----
From: linux-scsi-owner@vger.kernel.org [mailto:linux-scsi-owner@vger.kernel.org] On Behalf Of James Bottomley
Sent: Friday, August 12, 2005 6:02 PM
To: sinister@sinister.cz
Cc: SCSI Mailing List
Subject: Re: Kernel driver for Adaptec S-ATA 1420SA

On Fri, 2005-08-12 at 19:36 +0200, sinister@sinister.cz wrote:
> I bought the Adaptec S-ATA II-1420SA controller but I have a problem 
> with this type.
> I use the Linux Slackware 10.1 with the Linux Kernel 2.6.12-4 but I 
> didn´t find any driver for this S-ATA controller.
> I don't need RAID but I need a 4x S-ATA port.

Adaptec only publishes binary drivers for it's SATA RAID cards.

The rumour is that Adaptec doesn't make the SATA chips in these, but
OEM's them and then adds Adaptec softraid on top, so theoretically one
of the in-kernel SATA drivers might be able to attach to the OEM chip.
Your best bet would be to ask Adaptec support about it.

James


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