RE: Silicon Image Sil 3112 SATARaid Controller

Hi

I'm FreeBSD user since RELENG_4_3 and I founnd useful many of it's features.
I accepted the fact that I used a "crappy" motherboard (MSI K7T Turbo2) on
which USB suport was less than I expectd (my USB keyboard wasn't usable on
RELENG_5, I dindn't tested with RELENG_4, at that time I used a PS/2
keyboard) and the fact that an old crappy Compaq Presario can't use the
PCMCIA/CardBus controller with FreeBSD while same hardware is workinng fine
with other more or less commercial OS'es. I see THE FACT that other
developer teams CAN DO some things (like implementing pcmcia/cardbus
properly and usable, on NetBSD 1.6.1 the cardbus controller works fine with
Compaq laptop), I see that other developer teams can implement properly
support for well-known hardware like SoundBlaster Live! Sound cards. I
believe that a poor implementation of a specific hardware chip is not a good
reason to change motherboards, network cards, soundcards or even laptops.
For me is a better option to change the OS as long it is not capable to keep
up with actual hardware. Of course, that means that I must forget about
"portupgrade", about the clean configuration and other benefits which I may
have if I would use FreeBSD, but there are many users of "crappy" hardware
which don't want to up/down-grade their systems JUST BECAUSE it is
impossible or too difficult for most of FreeBSD developers to [find
documentation from chip manufacturers | implement proper support for some
piece of hardware]. I'm using now some actual/stable/known hardware with
other OS-es because at this time FreeBSD can't support it... I think there
are many others in the same situation.
Here is my computer configuration:
- Motherboard: Abit NF7-S ver 2.0 (memory controller and APU: unsupported by
FreeBSD, RAID controller Sil3112, "the crappy" - see the original message)
- Graphics card: Ati Radeon 9500 (R300) (DRI not available on FreeBSD after
more than one year since chip released, is this too crappy?)
- Extra SoundCard : SoundBlaster Live! - (advanced features not supported on
FreeBSD after more than 4 years since released, perhaps SB Live! it's more
crappy than 95% of it's users believe).
Conclusion: I'm one of many "crappy hardware" users which are happy to move
on to other OS'es if this situation persists.

Please excuse my poor english, it's not my native language.

Best regards,
Emil Cazamir

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-freebsd-current_at_freebsd.org
[mailto:owner-freebsd-current_at_freebsd.org] On Behalf Of Dag-Erling
"Smørgrav"
Sent: 11 martie 2004 22:37
To: Burhan Nazir
Cc: freebsd-current_at_freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Silicon Image Sil 3112 SATARaid Controller

Burhan Nazir <burhan_at_btinternet.com> writes:
> This controller may be crappy, however it is prevalent amongst many
> nforce2 chipsets.  In particular the asus A7N8X, which is ubiquitous.

You may find the following link to be of interest:

  http://12.24.47.40/display/2n/kb/article.asp?aid=10516

> In addition, the controller does work and has so far caused no
> problems under windows, so I am fairly pleased with it.

"works with Windows" has got to be the computer hardware equivalent of
"big in Japan"...

>                                                         So, I would
> hope that there is some talented deveoper out there that does not take
> your narrow minded view

I'm afraid you're the one being narrow-minded here.  Talent alone is
not sufficient to write a good driver.  Experience with the FreeBSD
kernel in general and the ata drivers in particular is a prerequisite,
as is access to sample hardware and chipset documentation.  You'll
have a hard time finding someone with more experience in this area
than Søren, and I wish you luck in obtaining documentation from
Silicon Image.

>                         and take mercy on all those people that would
> love to use freebsd with raid0 on their desktop machines.

There are plenty of other controllers you can use for RAID-0.  Most
Promise controllers, for instance, work flawlessly with FreeBSD, for
the simple reason that Promise actually cares enough to provide Søren
with the hardware and documentation he needs to write good drivers.

DES
-- 
Dag-Erling Smørgrav - des_at_des.no
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