Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2007 12:31:20 -0700 From: Ravi Pokala <rp_freebsd@mac.com> To: Fluffles <etc@fluffles.net>, Ravi Pokala <rp_freebsd@mac.com> Cc: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Looking for a motherboard with lots of SATA ports, supported in 6.2-STABLE Message-ID: <C2AD4F18.1F5DE%rp_freebsd@mac.com> In-Reply-To: <467E2392.6010109@fluffles.net>
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> From: Fluffles <etc@fluffles.net> > Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2007 09:56:02 +0200 > To: Ravi Pokala <rp_freebsd@mac.com> > Cc: <freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org> > Subject: Re: Looking for a motherboard with lots of SATA ports, supported in > 6.2-STABLE > > Ravi Pokala wrote: >> My main concerns are that the networking is well supported (GigE preferred of >> course), and that there are lots of supported on-board SATA ports. I >> currently have four SATA drives, so I'd prefer six or eight ports on the new >> board for growth. >> >> I'd also like decent on-board graphics, on the off chance I want to dual-boot >> it to play some older games. In FreeBSD, it just needs to be supported enough >> to give me a VGA console. >> > > You probably won't find 8 SATA ports and onboard video, these two just > don't match. You either take a high-end board with lots of features, but > *never* have onboard video (IGP), of you take a microATX board with > onboard video which have 2 maybe 4 SATA ports. > Heh. You're right of course. I wasn't able to find any 8-SATA boards with onboard video, but I did find a few 6-SATA boards. > So you may want to drop this demand and get a PCI videocard and focus on > boards with lots of Serial ATA connectors. Also be sure to check if > these are supplied by the chipset (best) or by some second chip on the > motherboard. Sometimes these 'extra' chips use the old and obsolete PCI > bus for data transfer, which can be very slow especially in a RAID > configuration. > > Maybe you can search for boards and post them on the mailinglist, so we > can check if the SATA and gigabit works? > Someone else on the list, who wished to remain anonymous, offered this advice: | The 165 boards seem to have lots of sata ports. I believe th g165 also has | on board video. Looking through the selection at newegg there are quite a | few with 6 sata ports (for example: | http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128018). | I had actually been looking at that board (GA-965G-DS3) before mailing the list, but I was concerned about the Marvell 8056 NIC and Gigabyte SATA controller. I had a friend with a -CURRENT tree do some grepping, and it looks like the NIC is supported by the msk driver. Also, (wonder of wonders!) Marvell has a downloadable driver for 6.x (myk). There's a readable manpage and everything! :-) I am leery of any SATA controller that I've never heard of, and I feared that perhaps this was something I already knew from work and didn't like. Some googling suggests it's actually a JMicron controller that is decent and fairly well supported by 6.2-STABLE. Can anyone confirm that? I do find it odd that they would use discrete chips for the NIC and extra SATA ports, when the chipset contains both. | Another board is the newer g33 | http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128053 | --- | I know there are p165 boards with 8+ ports - i did not check that many of | the g165/g33 boards. | | I do not know which (if any) of these boards freebsd currently support. | The g33 is quite new so is less likely but the g165 is more likely. | I looked through some drivers, and it looks like the ICH9 in the G33 chipset isn't supported in -CURRENT, so that board is out. Does anyone else have any other suggestions? > Good luck! > - Veronica Thanks! And also to my anonymous advisor. --rp
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