SATA drive and PATA-only motherboard

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 11:51:19PM -0500, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> There are a million inexpensive SATA controllers that are PCI cards.
> The most available ones seem to be based on VIA chips.  I seem to
> remember reading somewhere some time ago that Linux doesn't like the
> VIA card.  I hope that that is no longer true.
> 
> http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=012857&cid=IO.898.236

That's an Sil3112A card.

> http://cty.ca/main.asp?dir=Others&category=Add-on Card

Seems to have a selection.  Some VIA based, some sil 3112a.

> http://www.jumbocomputers.ca/index.php?do=Product&cmd=pd&pid=001921&cid=812.475.760

This is also an Sil 3112a.

> http://www.infonec.ca/site/main.php?module=detail&id=9057

Sil3112A.

> http://www.infonec.ca/site/main.php?module=detail&id=350160

Looks like the vantec Sil based card again like jumbocomputers above.

> http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.7598

That one is certainly a VIA of some kind.  No idea if it works with
linux or what it is like.

> http://www.filtechcomputer.com/#IDE/SATA/SCSI

Lots of choices there including some promise cards that should work with
linux and the vantec sil 3112a controller again.

> http://www.inmax.ca/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=59&products_id=3584

VIA based, maybe the same chip as the above one.  No idea about it.

> http://www.sonaggi.com/productDetail.php?category=I/O Controllers&subcategory=&pid=190100068001&isid=1449
> 
> Most of these are only SATA 1.

Yeah the cheap ones tend to be.  Not that any drive does 150MB/s yet,
but they are getting close.  NCQ might also be nice to have.

Given the option, I would always go with an AHCI compliant card since it
(like usb and all but one firewire controller) uses a standard driver
interface no matter who made it.  At least that's the idea, hopefully no
one has messed up the implementation yet (well I know via has, but
that's not surprising really).

-- 
Len Sorensen
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