====
1) The VIA RAID chip appears to have the PCI registers of a Native-Mode
IDE chip, though it declares itself to be PCI class 1 subclass 4.
2) I can get the VIA RAID chip to do an "Identify Device" command using
the primary channel I-O registers. But I cannot get it to do any
DMA read/write commands. As a minimum, QDMA's test for "1st DRQ"
before starting DMA must be deleted for the VIA RAID, which seemed
to help. But there must be other differenced, as well.
3) Worst of all, the VIA BIOS does NOT provide "DPTE" data for the SATA
drives! Instead of 30 bytes of EDD data, it gives only 26 bytes,
i.e. no "DPTE" pointer and NO device-address data for SATA disks!
The VIA "Cheap Bastards" obviously never intended their controller chip
to be used as anything but a RAID system. It does not follow standard
PCI IDE conventions, and it likely was NEVER intended to "boot" DOS.
I am NOT INTERESTED in more "custom work" only for VIA chips! I could
disassemble their damned 17K RAID BIOS, but this does NOT help with the
problem of adding "general purpose" SATA logic in QDMA. This means I
CANNOT proceed with adding SATA in the QDMA driver, not with my current
Asus mainboard and its miserable VIA chipset.
====
印象中nVidia的SATA能用作起動之用。作者: Wengier 时间: 2006-9-14 19:08 关于用VIA chipset的华硕主板,我近几天去查了一下,发现的确这些中相当多型号的BIOS都无法直接支持SATA硬盘,其表现是BIOS中并无有关SATA设置的选项和显示信息,并且不能用作启动。只有一部分型号(主要是去年底或今年买的一些型号,比如我这台)才出现了有关SATA的设置,并且在系统信息中将普通的IDE硬盘和SATA硬盘并列进行显示在启动媒介中。然而,这些BIOS恐怕仍有问题,其虽然将普通的IDE硬盘显示在1st IDE channel或2nd IDE channel中,将SATA显示在3rd IDE channel或4th IDE channel中,但通过此次研究和测试,我开始相信这些BIOS或是这些主板本身对标准的支持也存在问题。既然目前已确定其模式并不是很可靠,看来绕开它们也是必要的了。作者: johnsonlam 时间: 2006-9-14 22:47
只有一部分型号(主要是去年底或今年买的一些型号,比如我这台)才出现了有关SATA的设置,并且在系统信息中将普通的IDE硬盘和SATA硬盘并列进行显示在启动媒介中。然而,这些BIOS恐怕仍有问题,其虽然将普通的IDE硬盘显示在1st IDE channel或2nd IDE channel中,将SATA显示在3rd IDE channel或4th IDE channel中,但通过此次研究和测试,我开始相信这些BIOS或是这些主板本身对标准的支持也存在问题。既然目前已确定其模式并不是很可靠,看来绕开它们也是必要的了。