Problem with two SATA HDD dives on Sil 3512 controller.

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Problem with two SATA HDD dives on Sil 3512 controller. Rate Topic:

#1 Sfor

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Posted 26 March 2011 - 06:56 AM

I do have two 1TB SATA drives. Both of them are working fine when either one of them is connected to the PCI Sil 3512 controller. But, when both are connected at the same time, the Windows 98 does not boot freezing during the Sil driver initialization.

The driver installed is SiI3x12 32-bit Windows SATARAID Driver 1.00.51. It seems to be the newest one.

There is another driver available named as "SiI3x12 32-bit Windows IDE Driver" 1.2.0.57. But, it does not seem to be recognized as a valid one for this particular controller.

I tried with two different Sil 3512 controllers form different manufacturers, but result is still the same. It appears the Windows 98 RAID driver works fine as long as it is just one drive connected. With two drives not arranged in a RAID set the driver hangs the Windows 98 during booting.

Does anyone else encountered the same problem? Or perhaps someone was able to get two SATA HDD drives working on Windows 98 without a RAID set defined. I'm out of ideas, for the moment.

#2 loblo

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Posted 26 March 2011 - 08:26 AM

Sfor, on 26 March 2011 - 06:56 AM, said:

Or perhaps someone was able to get two SATA HDD drives working on Windows 98 without a RAID set defined.

No problems on my previous and current system with two 250GB SATA drives in such configuration. Previous system was an Abit NF7-S mobo with a Silicon Image SATA controller and the current one is an Asus A8V Deluxe with VIA and Promise SATA controllers (never used the Promise one so far).

#3 allen2

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Posted 26 March 2011 - 08:57 AM

Are you sure the silicon image configuration isn't set to raid (in the bios ) ?

#4 Sfor

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Posted 26 March 2011 - 10:05 AM

loblo, on 26 March 2011 - 08:26 AM, said:

Sfor, on 26 March 2011 - 06:56 AM, said:

Or perhaps someone was able to get two SATA HDD drives working on Windows 98 without a RAID set defined.

There are many Silicon Image chips on the market. Are you sure it was the Sil 3512? I have not heard about this particular chip to be integrated on a motherboard, so far.

allen2, on 26 March 2011 - 08:57 AM, said:

Are you sure the silicon image configuration isn't set to raid (in the bios ) ?

No, it is not set to the RAID. There are no RAID sets defined, there.

#5 loblo

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Posted 26 March 2011 - 10:30 AM

Sfor, on 26 March 2011 - 10:05 AM, said:

There are many Silicon Image chips on the market. Are you sure it was the Sil 3512?

I have not said it was a 3512, I just answered your generic question but looking it up, it appears to be the 3112A.

#6 Sfor

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Posted 26 March 2011 - 10:49 AM

The Sil 3512 seems to be based on the 3112 design. The chips are close related, so the same set of drivers can be used. The question remains, what driver version were you using?

In my case, everything seems to be working fine, before the SiI3x12 32-bit Windows SATARAID Driver 1.00.51 kicks in.

#7 Guest_wsxedcrfv_*

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Posted 26 March 2011 - 12:04 PM

I have a generic SATA PCI card installed on this win-98 system. Under SCSI controllers in device manager I have two devices as follows:

A347SCSI SCSI Controller
- c:\windows\system\iosubsys\a347scsi.pdr
- c:\windows\system\vmm32\ios.vxd

Silicon Image SiL 3512 SATARaid Controller
- c:\windows\system\iosubsys\si3112r.mpd (version 1,0,0,51)
- c:\windows\system\vmm32\ios.vxd
- c:\windows\system\silsupp.cpl (version 3,0,0,15)
- c:\windows\system\iosubsys\siisupp.vxd (version 1,0,0,15)

I'm not sure where the first device comes from (I don't think I have a real SCSI controller on this system).

I don't have a problem with two SATA drives attached to this card during bootup. My boot drive where win-98 is located is on the system primary IDE drive (I don't boot from the SATA drives). I currently have 400 and 750 gb sata drives attached to the system.

You might want to set a jumper on your SATA drives to force them to SATA-I operation. I've read where that can be a solution in some cases.

#8 Sfor

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Posted 26 March 2011 - 12:19 PM

Apparently, there some differences in two files in my driver set:
si3112r.mpd (version 1,0,57,0)
silsupp.cpl (version 3,0,22,0)

I'll try to make some experiments related to these files, later.

#9 loblo

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Posted 27 March 2011 - 12:21 AM

Sfor, on 26 March 2011 - 10:49 AM, said:

The Sil 3512 seems to be based on the 3112 design. The chips are close related, so the same set of drivers can be used. The question remains, what driver version were you using?

I used the drivers that came with the motherboard install CD and the files apparently were:

Si3112r.mpd 1.0.0.28
Siisupp.vxd 4.0.0.950 (1,0,0,10)

#10 shae

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Posted 27 March 2011 - 08:47 AM

I think you'll have to flash to a non-RAID BIOS, or at least change the device ID the driver looks for, to be able to install the non-RAID drivers.

wsxedcrfv, on 26 March 2011 - 12:04 PM, said:

A347SCSI SCSI Controller
- c:\windows\system\iosubsys\a347scsi.pdr
- c:\windows\system\vmm32\ios.vxd

I'm not sure where the first device comes from (I don't think I have a real SCSI controller on this system).

That's Daemon Tools.

This post has been edited by shae: 27 March 2011 - 08:59 AM

#11 dencorso

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Posted 27 March 2011 - 01:05 PM

shae, on 27 March 2011 - 08:47 AM, said:

wsxedcrfv, on 26 March 2011 - 12:04 PM, said:

A347SCSI SCSI Controller
- c:\windows\system\iosubsys\a347scsi.pdr

That's Daemon Tools.

Sure. and Version 3.47, to be precise.

#12 Guest_wsxedcrfv_*

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Posted 27 March 2011 - 03:28 PM

> That's Daemon Tools.

For emulating a virtual SCSI controller?

I can't imagine why it's on this system, unless it came as part of EZ CD creator or Nero burning rom or some other CD/DVD app. The file a347scsi.pdr exists nowhere else on this drive other than \windows\system\iosubsys. File properties don't list any corporate owner / author. Description is simply "SCSI port". Copyright is just "Copyright © 2000-2004".

#13 dencorso

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Posted 27 March 2011 - 05:14 PM

For emulating up to 4 SCSI CD/DVDs.

#14 Sfor

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Posted 28 March 2011 - 09:54 AM

wsxedcrfv, on 26 March 2011 - 12:04 PM, said:

I was able to get the same version of drivers installed. But nothing have changed.

I can not force the 1.5GBit transfer rate on the ST31000524AS. The other drive is WD10EARS, so it does have the jumpers to force the 1.5GBit transfer rate.

The drives are both working correctly, when connected without the other one to the same controller. So, the 1.5GBit transfer negotiation should be working fine. The problem starts only when both are connected, in the moment the windows driver is initializing. In some point the HDD LED stops blinking and gets permanently lited. The system gets frozen, before GUI kicks in.

As a workaround I'm using a IDE to SATA adapter in order to connect the ST31000524AS through the mainboard IDE port.

This post has been edited by Sfor: 28 March 2011 - 09:55 AM

#15 rloew

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Posted 28 March 2011 - 01:47 PM

Sfor, on 28 March 2011 - 09:54 AM, said:

wsxedcrfv, on 26 March 2011 - 12:04 PM, said:

I have had mixed results with Silicon Image Drivers. My girlfriend's Computer would not boot with the provided Driver, so I installed my SATA Patch. It can handle two SATA Drives.

#16 Sfor

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Posted 29 March 2011 - 02:43 AM

shae, on 27 March 2011 - 08:47 AM, said:

I think you'll have to flash to a non-RAID BIOS, or at least change the device ID the driver looks for, to be able to install the non-RAID drivers.

Well, I've tried installing the non-RAID drivers forcefuly, already. The driver was not working and all the partition from the drive were in DOS compatibility mode. So, changing the device ID in the .inf file will not do, I think.

I have no idea how can I reflash the BIOS in the controller. Unitek does not seem to provide any BIOS upgrades for their PCI-SATA-2R controller.

#17 rloew

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Posted 29 March 2011 - 03:10 PM

Sfor, on 29 March 2011 - 02:43 AM, said:

shae, on 27 March 2011 - 08:47 AM, said:

I think you'll have to flash to a non-RAID BIOS, or at least change the device ID the driver looks for, to be able to install the non-RAID drivers.

Many Vendor supplied Drivers hard code the PCI IDs in their code, so changing the INF Files isn't sufficient.

#18 Guest_wsxedcrfv_*

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Posted 03 April 2011 - 09:47 PM

Sfor, on 28 March 2011 - 09:54 AM, said:

I can not force the 1.5GBit transfer rate on the ST31000524AS. The other drive is WD10EARS, so it does have the jumpers to force the 1.5GBit transfer rate.
As a workaround I'm using a IDE to SATA adapter in order to connect the ST31000524AS through the mainboard IDE port.

I'm seeing references to a "Mod15Write" problem on sil3112/3114 controllers in conjunction with many Seagate hard drives (7200.7), most or perhaps all of which include drives with model numbers starting with "ST3".

At this point I'm trying to figure out what the difference is between 3512 and 3112. Seems that some people are flashing the 3512 bios onto their 3112 controller cards...

Also - you might want to see what you can do with the Sil Sata/Raid control panel applet that you should have in your control panel. Possibly change some settings might get your hard drives working properly.

#19 Guest_wsxedcrfv_*

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Posted 05 April 2011 - 08:43 AM

I think the topic of the compatibility or usability of the Sil 3112 and 3114 SATA controller chips with Windows 98 might need a bit of exploration and clarification, and I'll try to do that in the future. I know this thread is dealing with a problem with 3112, but I think I've hit upon something that pertains to both types of controllers.

First, controller cards that have either the 3112 (2-port) and 3114 (4-port) SiL Sata controllers seem to have two different types of BIOS or firmware: One is Raid, and the other is non-raid (I think is also known as "Base"). This is also true for motherboards with integrated 3112 or 3114 controllers.

(side note: I have no idea if 3512 / 3514 are different chips than the 3112 / 3114, or just a different package, and / or if they have different drivers).

In most or all cases, whether integrated onto the motherboard or add-on card, the firmware will be the RAID type. There are firmware files available from Silicon Image for both add-on cards and motherboards (128 kb and 64 kb in size I believe) for both types of applications (raid and non-raid/base).

When it comes to the driver files, the important file is si3114.mpd (or si3112.mpd). What I've been seeing in my bootlog.txt is "Init Failure si3114.mpd" while trying to install the drivers for my 3114 card. So on a hunch, I took the raid version (si3114r.mpd) and renamed it to si3114.mpd and copied it into my \windows\system\iosubsys directory (renamed the existing si3114.mpd) and bingo - I get "init success si3114.mpd" and the card shows up with no (!) issues in device manager.

I don't have time right now to plug in any SATA drives and see if it's working - I'll do that later tonight.

I might even try to flash the non-raid firmware onto my card and see how that works.

So to recap, I think we need to understand or get more info about:

- 3512 / 3514 vs 3112 / 3114 (hardware? drivers? Cross-usage between them?)
- Raid vs non-raid (base?) firmware (does non-raid firmware give better SATA speed/performance?)
- "SataLink" vs "Softraid 5" identification / driver
- Control panel SATA applet / functionality / files
- What are the "best" files (best versions) to use for win-98:

-- Si3114.inf / Si3114r.inf / Si3114r5.inf
-- SI3114.cat / Si3114r.cat / Si3114r5.cat
-- Si3114.sys / Si3114r.sys
-- Si3114.mpd / Si3114r.mpd
-- SIISupp.vxd
-- SilSupp.cpl

I haven't acquired too many files (yet) for the 3112 chip or sata cards, but what I have so far seem to be just "r" files, as in si3112r.inf, si3112r.mpd, etc. I have no 3512 / 3514 files of any sort (not sure if the reason is they don't exist or I just haven't looked specifically for any of them yet).

This post has been edited by wsxedcrfv: 05 April 2011 - 08:55 AM

#20 dencorso

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Posted 05 April 2011 - 11:21 AM

If the non-RAID is AHCI, it won't work with Win 9x/ME, while if it is " IDE-mode" it'll do OK, but probably be slower than RAID, provided their .mpd for it works OK. This <link> also may be of interest.