Thread
Sil3112 flashing (SATA)
I haven't tried booting yet because I don't have a spare SATA drive to play with. I haven't left the computer on for long periods of time but I haven't seen any kind of a crash yet...also since the PCB is different we can't be certain that everything will be fully compatible, but it seems OK so far.
The Sil3112 seems to be configurable for 120 ns or 240 ns flash chips according to its datasheet. I'd say 120 ns is safe to use...
The Sil3112 seems to be configurable for 120 ns or 240 ns flash chips according to its datasheet. I'd say 120 ns is safe to use...
Ahh good, guess it was something about the webie firmware.
Booting shall be the first thing i try then when i have converted my card
will order myself a chip tomorrow (just in case the original chip i ordered actually turns up tomorrow)
Booting shall be the first thing i try then when i have converted my card
will order myself a chip tomorrow (just in case the original chip i ordered actually turns up tomorrow)
ok, the chip actually arrived, did the 3.3v mod and swapped the chip
took several attempts but finally got dosflash to report code 0.
the card seems to be reporting it's self just like yours do.
however when i plugged a drive in i got nothing.... went to reboot and the b/w g3 has decided to start not booting again. hopefully it is just a bad sata cable (had this when testing cards before)
Edit: replaced the sata cable and it seems to be working
cloneing my boot disk to it now... then we will see if it's bootable
took several attempts but finally got dosflash to report code 0.
the card seems to be reporting it's self just like yours do.
however when i plugged a drive in i got nothing.... went to reboot and the b/w g3 has decided to start not booting again. hopefully it is just a bad sata cable (had this when testing cards before)
Edit: replaced the sata cable and it seems to be working
cloneing my boot disk to it now... then we will see if it's bootable
And i can confirm, the converted cards are bootable cloned my boot drive and booted right up from the card
might go stick this card into my 8600 and see if it works under os 8 or 9....
though, i am getting some compatibility problems, my B/W G3 keeps kping wth it in, and my 2001 QS just won't boot with it (though that is to do with the card, not the firmware did the same thing with the pc fw)
Edit, i can also confirm the card works under mac os 9, however it dosen't appear to be bootable under mac os 9
cloned my boot drive and booted right up from the cardmight go stick this card into my 8600 and see if it works under os 8 or 9....
though, i am getting some compatibility problems, my B/W G3 keeps kping wth it in, and my 2001 QS just won't boot with it (though that is to do with the card, not the firmware did the same thing with the pc fw)
Edit, i can also confirm the card works under mac os 9, however it dosen't appear to be bootable under mac os 9
Just to be clear...
It's not just the Firmtek updater which checks for a supported flash chip, but the actual firmware on the card checks for a supported flash chip and will not load itself during the boot process if the flash chip is not supported?
Is that correct?
It's not just the Firmtek updater which checks for a supported flash chip, but the actual firmware on the card checks for a supported flash chip and will not load itself during the boot process if the flash chip is not supported?
Is that correct?
Excellent, good work! Hmm, interesting that your B/W G3 is kernel panicing. I'll have to extensively test it with the card to see if I can make it happen...And i can confirm, the converted cards are bootable
Pretty much. Actually, as best as i can tell, the FirmTek updater doesn't check for a supported flash chip at all, it only checks for whether the flash chip already has FirmTek firmware on it.
The firmware extracts a couple of kexts into OS X, and one of the kexts checks for supported flash chips during the OS X boot process and fails to load if the board doesn't have a supported flash chip. (In fact, on a newer revision of the firmware that they don't have available on the website for download, it causes a kernel panic...)
Yes, there are two kexts that extract themselfs from the card at boot, if the flash I'd dosen't match it will stop them loading, this giving you a non working card
Dougg3 tried patching and manually loading these kexts, which gave him a working card with a 'unsupported' flash chip, but this gives you a non bootable card
Edit: Seems dougg3 beat me to it...
Edit2: I am wondering if the problems are more to do with my g3 than the card, it seems extremely picky about booting and staying stable. I tested it with a spare 2.5" SATA drive and it worked fine and was perfectly stable, but with a couple of 3.5 wd's it vary's from failing to get past the apple logo, to freezing to random kp's
With the sawtooth it is stable with whatever drive I seem to give it
Dougg3 tried patching and manually loading these kexts, which gave him a working card with a 'unsupported' flash chip, but this gives you a non bootable card
Edit: Seems dougg3 beat me to it...
Edit2: I am wondering if the problems are more to do with my g3 than the card, it seems extremely picky about booting and staying stable. I tested it with a spare 2.5" SATA drive and it worked fine and was perfectly stable, but with a couple of 3.5 wd's it vary's from failing to get past the apple logo, to freezing to random kp's
With the sawtooth it is stable with whatever drive I seem to give it
i'm beginning to think the problem is actually the ATA bus in my g3, after all i have a rev 1 logicboard, it seems the crashes mostly happen when copying data from the internal hdd to the sata one, copying no data, or installing from cd it seems to be fairly stable
Could be. My B&W has a rev 1 logic board too, but I also have an older IDE drive from that era that didn't have the reliability problems of newer, faster drives in those machines.
Maybe switching entirely to SATA will make your machine more reliable!
Maybe switching entirely to SATA will make your machine more reliable!
Sonnet says their cards work with Mac OS 9, will these as well? Is it the same firmware?
Yes, it is.
dougg3, yeah, think i might stick the card + a 80gb drive in the g3 and do a clean install of osx and see if it's stable then
Renegade, Is that card bootable? I tried booting mac os 9.1 from the card but my G3 just refused to boot it
Renegade, Is that card bootable? I tried booting mac os 9.1 from the card but my G3 just refused to boot it
Max: YES !!! :beige: :beige:
I tested it in a G4 QS DP800 with OS 9.2.2
IIRC, that firmware was supposed to be compatible with MacOS ≥ 7.6.1 . Am I wrong ?
I could test 8.0/8.1 on a Beige G3, but I don't have any older PCI PowerMac in working condition.
I tested it in a G4 QS DP800 with OS 9.2.2
IIRC, that firmware was supposed to be compatible with MacOS ≥ 7.6.1 . Am I wrong ?
I could test 8.0/8.1 on a Beige G3, but I don't have any older PCI PowerMac in working condition.
intresting..... i'll throw my card into the sawtooth tonight and see if it boots... i did think it was odd the card booted osx but not os9
Is that a modified card or a firmtek / sonnet one?
Is that a modified card or a firmtek / sonnet one?
Thanks to your discussion with Doug, it's a flashed one.
I bought a few of those cards with a 512KB chip last year when somebody told us about in this topic.
I had to use the UPDFLASH.EXE dos flasher to feed them with Firmtek's ROMFILE.1S2.
The red one is a genuine Ratoc (= Firmtek), the green one is the flashed one.
Here's the chip:
I bought a few of those cards with a 512KB chip last year when somebody told us about in this topic.
I had to use the UPDFLASH.EXE dos flasher to feed them with Firmtek's ROMFILE.1S2.
The red one is a genuine Ratoc (= Firmtek), the green one is the flashed one.
Here's the chip:
Aha, got the sawtooth booting os9 off a SATA drive
Out of intrest, did that card come with the correct flash chip installed or did you swap it yourself?
Out of intrest, did that card come with the correct flash chip installed or did you swap it yourself?
That's the original flash chip.
See post #4 in this topic.
See post #4 in this topic.
Glad to hear you got it working Renegade So what did you have to do differently if it came with the correct flash chip already? You said in your original post that you flashed the SeriTek firmware to it with the DOS utility but it wasn't recognized correctly. Just curious.
max1zzz, glad to hear you have it working on your Sawtooth now, so why wasn't it working before?
So what did you have to do differently if it came with the correct flash chip already? You said in your original post that you flashed the SeriTek firmware to it with the DOS utility but it wasn't recognized correctly. Just curious.max1zzz, glad to hear you have it working on your Sawtooth now, so why wasn't it working before?
Thank you Doug.Glad to hear you got it working Renegade
I don't understand why it failed last year... Could have been a problem with my Quicksilver, or with the PC mobo I used for flashing. :lol:
not entirely sure why it didn't work, the drive i installed os 9 onto didn't boot in the sawtooth either, so i copied the system folder to a different drive and it booted just fine.
Also wondering, anyone have any idea why my quicksilver won't boot with the card insalled? it chimes but gives no video and no disk activity, works with a flashed sil3512, but there not bootable
Also wondering, anyone have any idea why my quicksilver won't boot with the card insalled? it chimes but gives no video and no disk activity, works with a flashed sil3512, but there not bootable
Doh! Goes in the "Always try it yourself" file. I'm the one who suggested those cards, then after Renegade's posting where it didn't work, I put it aside and didn't try it myself, figuring it would take more effort.
I have a chip programmer. I could have lifted the socketed chip and installed the firmware and had a working card all this time. Possibly in time to purchase more of those nice socketed boards with the 4 Mb chips already installed. Just so I'm clear, I do not blame Renegade at all. He reported his experience. I just should have tried it myself.
Still, it's nice to have the explicitly explored information that Doug has generated. Now we know what will and won't work and why.
Anyone have a source for more of those cheap cards? Seem to have dried up.
Low probability of success, but I PM'd the seller on Ebay to ask if they would or could offer any more of that card. I mentioned that the socket AM29LV040 chip makes them versatile and there's a group of us on a forum who are interested in more of them.
The good news is that I received a response already. The bad news is that this, in total, was the response:
"no"
The good news is that I received a response already. The bad news is that this, in total, was the response:
"no"
Maybe some people here could manufacture a few, i would be more than happy to make some mac os compatible cards, however i don't know how practical shipping them to places like the US would be
On another note, my g3 is much more stable running off just the sata card
On another note, my g3 is much more stable running off just the sata card
I would actually draw the line at selling them. I mean, if you want to toss the compatible EEPROM on a generic card and resell it with a PC firmware, fine. but selling these flashed with mac compatible fimware feels wrong. Same goes for GFX cards. If someone flashes it themselves then okay, but there are a couple people making a business out of flashing and then selling with an incredibly marked up price claiming they are some sort of god and that is not cool imho. :disapprove:
yeah i agree, i wouldn't say it's right to buy a £4 card and sell them on for a huge markup. If i did it i would be selling the cards for £7 or £8.
Fully agreed about not selling these with Mac firmware. The firmware is copyrighted, and it's not like it's a dead product--Sonnet still sells the actual card for $80. I'm with MacJunky, I think the limit would be soldering a new chip to the PC card and selling it with PC firmware on it.
Fair point, I didn't cosider the copywrite aspect, bad idea to sell them with the mac firmware then.
Anyway i'm gonna order a few more, interested to see if these work in my Xserve G4 (which can be very picky when it comes to pic cards)
Hmm... Seems 10.4.11 breaks boot ability of my G3, gets to the gray screen then gives the no access sign (still waiting for rot device...).Was booting fine with 10.4.6
Edit: still boots fine in safe mode
Anyway i'm gonna order a few more, interested to see if these work in my Xserve G4 (which can be very picky when it comes to pic cards)
Hmm... Seems 10.4.11 breaks boot ability of my G3, gets to the gray screen then gives the no access sign (still waiting for rot device...).Was booting fine with 10.4.6
Edit: still boots fine in safe mode
Hmm, weird. I would recommend to try booting into safe mode, running FSCAPP that is bundled with the firmware updater, and rebooting. That clears all the kext caches so that you can rule out something weird going on with the driver.