Which leads me to the question (as i don't know much about SATA) if i can use four drives with the 3112 (as the sil0680 can, or di i have to use the four port 3114 to be able to plug three (or more) devices in?
U-Boot supports the sii3112, it doesn't support the sii3114. I don't know if the sii3512 is supported or not, it's not mentioned in the docs. Booting in AmigaOS4 works with all 3 of course, but if you use a controller not supported by U-Boot AmigaOS4 has to be loaded from something else, for example the PATA HD you are currently using. If you are currently using a sii0680 and need the PCI slot for the SATA controller you can connect the HD to the motherboard VIA controller instead.
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3. Whats the speed difference, is it worth it?
There is no speed difference. Like with the PATA sii0680 and it8212 controllers the max. theoretical speed is 133 MB/s (UDMA6), and since you'll use it in a PCI33 slot it can't be faster anyway. The motherboard VIA PATA controller only supports up to UDMA5 (100 MB/s), but that doesn't make any practical difference either, there are no HDs which are that fast, only reading/writing from/to the drive caches, not the disk itself, could be a little bit faster with a PCI UDMA6 controller compared to the motherboard UDMA5 one.
You can connect 2 drives to a sii3112 and sii3512, 4 drives to a sii3114.
There is no speed difference. Like with the PATA sii0680 and it8212 controllers the max. theoretical speed is 133 MB/s (UDMA6), and since you'll use it in a PCI33 slot it can't be faster anyway.
So the best setup when disk access is crucial is to have a pic gfx card in 33MHz slot and HD controller in the 66 MHz slot Hmmm....
Jack
"the expression, 'atonal music,' is most unfortunate--it is on a par with calling flying 'the art of not falling,' or swimming 'the art of not drowning.'. A. Schoenberg
So the best setup when disk access is crucial is to have a pic gfx card in 33MHz slot and HD controller in the 66 MHz slot Hmmm....
I have such a setup now, and HDs which are fast enough to make a difference. Sequential reading of 250 MB in 64 KB chunks using the device (not through a file system) from identical HDs using UDMA5: sii3112, PCI33 slot: 5.955 sec., 41.982 MB/sec. sii3114, PCI66 slot: 3.204 sec., 78.017 MB/sec.
Unless there is a difference between the 3112 and 3114 or the drivers, I didn't test the 3112 in the PCI66 slot, using the PCI66 slot instead of a PCI33 one makes a much larger difference than it should.
But it's a quite useless test, there are no seeks and it's reading everything to the same 64 KB buffer without using the data (just using 2 64 KB buffers instead of one and alternate both drops the speeds to 37 and 63 MB/sec. already). On normal usage, through a file system, actually using the data read, etc., the difference is probably minimal.
I have just tried to put in a LG DVD burner and no matter what I do it is not seen by the OS, no CD0: shows up at all. Any help appreciated.
If the DVD burner has a higher unit number than the last HD start MediaToolBox and save the changes it should detect (it's no longer the last unit) to the last HD.
I didn't know the sii cards could be used in a PCI66 slot.
Check the card, PCI cards compatible to both PCI33 and PCI66 have 2 holes in the connector. You have to check it youself since the pin is missing in the PCI66 slot of the A1-XE, they used PCI33 ones for all 4 PCI slots and you can put a PIC33-only card in the PCI66 slot, but doing that would be a very bad idea since AFAIK PCI33 and PCI66 use different voltages.
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Is the PCI66 slot operational when the AGP slot is being used?
If the DVD burner has a higher unit number than the last HD start MediaToolBox and save the changes it should detect (it's no longer the last unit) to the last HD.
Ok, I opened up MediaToolbox, klicked on sii3114 and all that shows up is my HD.
Back in the old days all I would have to do is load CD0 into a text editor and change the Device and unit number. I am at a lost of what to do next. The DVD burner works fine under Vista.
Ok, I opened up MediaToolbox, klicked on sii3114 and all that shows up is my HD.
Back in the old days all I would have to do is load CD0 into a text editor and change the Device and unit number.
It's not required on AmigaOS4 since it's done automatically by diskboot.kmod. Being able to edit a mountlist/DOSDriver file wouldn't help at all, if it's not shown by MediaToolBox the device driver didn't find it and CDFileSystem can't use it either, no matter if an automatic or a manual mountlist is used. Check your U-Boot sii3114 variables, maybe explicitly set the unit of the DVD Burner to CD/DVD instead of auto detection. If that doesn't help set the OS4 command line to "debuglevel=1" (or set the sii3114_verbose U-Boot variable, but I'm not sure about the name, check the docs), do a cold reboot and post the debug output from the sii3114 driver, you can get it with C:DumpDebugBuffer.