From owner-freebsd-hackers  Mon Jun 12  4:26:21 2000
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From: Soren Schmidt <sos@freebsd.dk>
Message-Id: <200006121125.NAA33956@freebsd.dk>
Subject: Re: Promise Fasttrack RAID controller
In-Reply-To: <200006111906.MAA14816@mass.cdrom.com> from Mike Smith at "Jun 11, 2000 12:06:24 pm"
To: msmith@FreeBSD.ORG (Mike Smith)
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 13:25:47 +0200 (CEST)
Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, sos@FreeBSD.ORG
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It seems Mike Smith wrote:
> > It seems Mike Smith wrote:
> > > > Does anyone KNOW of these working under the 
> > > > new drivers? What about setup?
> > > > I've seen plenty about people failing (in 98-99)
> > > > to get tehm going but the archives are silent on the topic
> > > > after that period. The hardware support lists don't mention
> > > > them either.
> > > 
> > > They work OK, but you need to pull the BIOS (ie. not boot from them).
> > 
> > Uhm, why is that exactly, I boot of one such bastard :)
> 
> The FastTrak RAID controller?  Last time I played with the one we have, 
> it insisted on RAIDing any disks you attached to it.  Since we don't 
> support their on-disk metadata, that made it kinda hard to go anyhere.

I've looked at what they put on disk long ago, but I newer got to
make either ccd or vinum use that info, I'd rather see vinum and
the kernel grow this in a generic manner...

> Sounds like that's no longer the case, which is good news. 8)

It newer was, you just make a single onedisk "promise" partition and
dont use it, that way the BIOS is satisfied. BTW it not possible
to pull the BIOS on the newer ones ie the Fasttrak 66 & 100, the
BIOS is soldered in place. I guess one could degrade the Fasttrak
to an Ultra by flashing an Ultra BIOS image :)

At any rate the Promise Fasttrak is a "winraid" gimmick that is
close to useless, but its a fine way to trible the income off
ones ATA controller...

This can be done with any dual channel ATA controller, so I guess
its just a matter of time until we see this in the motherboard
BIOS on some boards....

-Søren


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