Hi,

I'm about out of ideas here. There hasn't been anything posted recently because I have worked this on and off as time permitted. I have spent a lot of time though trying to identify what works and what doesn't.

As requested, I will break up the activity into separate messages to make it easier to read and respond. This message is about the SATA to EIDE Adapter.


I found a few issues with the SATA to EIDE Adapter I am using.


1) I have tried 4 of the same adapter part number (listed previously in the this thread), from the same vendor. One works, the other 3 do not (the one that returned was probably good, I'll buy that one back so they don't have to eat it).

There are 2 different revisions of the JM20330 JMicro Chip. One works, one doesn't. Unfortunately, the top of the chip is covered by the QC sticker and must be removed to see what revision the chip is. No seller is going to want to pull stickers to sell them.

The one that works is marked: JMicro JM20330 0730 GTAZ0 B2 114250026.

The one that doesn't work is marked: JMicro JM20330 0551 B2 110200023 TGS.

They look like they are both a B2 stepping, possibly different foundry or package vendor (GTAZ0 vs TGS), don't know what the 9 digit part number means.


2) The Empeg doesn't like the Drive Select jumper setting on the adapter. I can only get it to look at the drive with the jumper removed. I can't find documentation on the adapter so I don't know if it Drive Select 0 or 1 or a Drive Compatibility setting.

I do know that when I run the builder it only creates 16 MB of Swap Space (one of the builders puts 64 MB on HDA and 16 MB on HDC - I think). If in fact we need the 64 MB Swap Space, we're out of luck unless the builder is changed. This was mentioned in the big builder V3 thread. mark has later said that the 64 MB builder was only experimental.


3) The JMicro chip is a SATA Generation 1 Compatible design. I don't know if it is compatible with either side of the busses (SATA or EIDE). I suspect it isn't because using HDPARM it won't pass the all of Power Management commands across to the drive. The drive has the capability, it will accept the -S0 (no Standby), but won't accept -B255 (Power Down to off) on either the 250 GB EIDE Drive or the 500 GB SATA Interfaces Drive. It reports back that it is undefined with hdparm - C /dev/hda. I could be wrong, though. This is the serial output.

hdparm -B255 -S0 -K1 /dev/hda

/dev/hdahda: drv_cmd: status=0x51:
setti
ng drive hda: drv_cmd: error=0x04keep feat
ures to 1 (on)
HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(keepsettings) failed: Input/output error
setting Advanced Power Management level to disabled
setting standby to 0 (off)
empeg:/empeg/bin#

More details in another message in the thread.



I will look at a couple of other adapters and see if there is another implementation of the JMicro or another controller. Any suggestions?

If the 64 MB is an issue, can a builder that installs 64 MB Swap Space on Both HDA and HDC? Would this help?

I guess I can try a different drive vendor too and see what they do.


What do you guys think?

See other entries for this project.

Thanks,

Ross