And this is only part of the reason why I refuse to use the SIL based SATA controllers.

Reasons are:
1. Data corruption for no apparent reason, even when running everything at stock speeds.
2. Failure to even detect known good drives.
3. Random system lock ups.

Every since I swore off SIL based controllers, magically all those types of problems went away.

These problems with the SIL controllers was well known even when they were the current thing.

What motherboard and other hardware are you using?

Have you tried all the different PCI slots? You may have better luck if you make sure that the SATA controller is not sharing an IRQ with any other devices.

Adjusting the PCI latency in the BIOS may make a difference.

Who knows, I have up after fighting with SIL controllers. Different firmware made almost no difference, changing BIOS settings made almost no difference, and different driver versions made almost no difference.

I don't understand, after all this time and many years of these controllers causing problems, why people suddenly started recommending them again a few years ago.

I've a 3114 card that I flashed to the BASE BIOS, but it refuses to work in most systems - the two exceptions have been an Asus TXP4 and a PCChips M520, they work fine with those two boards. Promise cards have worked much better for me, but even the Promise cards often have to be moved from one slot to another when used on MVP3 boards. Try different PCI slots and disable any unused ports in the CMOS settings to free up all possible resources.

Well im not stuck on these, im not sure what else to use. I am running a Dell 450mhz p3 on a 440bx-3 chipset, so my bios options kind of suck.

I just ordered a few ide to sata adapters for now, but i dont think they will work in the long run. If i am not mistaken you loose the option of two devices on the IDE chain when you use these adapters?

In the long run the only sata i want is the 64gb SSD as my main drive. This machine has a Zip and Ditto drive, both IDE. When i get a Optical drive I would like it to be IDE, so i have the audio cd cable that goes to the sound card, the one that allows dos games to play music. So using an IDE to Sata on the first chain will kill my ability to use the secondary IDE.

Im also hoping i didnt order crap IDE to Sata, all the pics on ebay have QC passed stickers on the chips, so its a real crap shoot.

I also tried switching PCI slots, and using a card with the newest base bios and a second card with the newest raid bios. They both displayed the same behavior, freeze after POST. Also tried using a stock 98 boot floppy and a win98 quick install boot floppy, figuring i would just install off the hard drive and maybe win98 would sort out the boot issue but every time w98 setup.exe locked up.

Many no-name manufacturers have produced add-on boards based on Silicon Image chips.
Therefore, they can be faulty to varying degrees.
Starting with power supply issues.
High-quality boards use two voltage regulators: one for +3.3 V and one for the SIL core (1.8 V, if I remember correctly).
Cheaper boards get +3.3 V directly from the PCI connector.
If there's no second regulator, but there's place for one, it's worth installing it.
It's also a good idea to replace the capacitors.
Otherwise, the controller will start to work with bugs.

Looks like translation fault.
Its better to boot from W98 boot floppy or bottable CD (not VM) and fdisk/format your SSD.

rwGast wrote on 2026-07-13, 02:38:

Next i used a 98 VM to format drive: /s.

Don't do this. Always format a drive using the PC it's intended to be used on.

rwGast wrote on 2026-07-13, 03:42:

I also tried switching PCI slots, and using a card with the newest base bios and a second card with the newest raid bios. They both displayed the same behavior, freeze after POST. Also tried using a stock 98 boot floppy and a win98 quick install boot floppy, figuring i would just install off the hard drive and maybe win98 would sort out the boot issue but every time w98 setup.exe locked up.

Can you post picture of your cards?

jmarsh wrote on 2026-07-13, 06:54:

rwGast wrote on 2026-07-13, 02:38:

Next i used a 98 VM to format drive: /s.

Don't do this. Always format a drive using the PC it's intended to be used on.

Why? With SSDs that are too large for the older fdisk to recognize properly, you at the very least have to partition the drive with a different computer or use a newer OS on that same computer that will recognize and partition the drives properly.

There really is no reason to have to format a drive on the computer it is going to be used on unless the drive geometry is detected differently or improperly on the computer it is going to be used on. I've really only seen this on some CF cards though where I had to use a utility on a newer computer to read what the geometry should be because the computer o wanted to use them on would not detect what they should be set to... on top of that, even though they were the same exact model and revision, they had slightly different geometry settings.

If that were the case, then portable / external drives would not work and moving an internal drive to another computer would not work.

Same for floppies, unless you have a drive that is misaligned and the formatted disks will not read in another floppy drive, but that is a hardware level issue.

I can not format the ssd on the p3 machine, anytime i run format on the sil3112/ssd combo it locks up at writing fat table. I have also formated/s from a geniune 98 thinkpad, made no difference.

I will post pics when i get home, the caps look fine, but i think there is only one regulator. I dont have any 1.8v regs on hand, i guess id just use an adjustable, where would the 1.8v output go? If the sil3112 needs 1.8v for the core how is it being made on these boards with one regulator?

rwGast wrote on 2026-07-13, 16:54:

I can not format the ssd on the p3 machine, anytime i run format on the sil3112/ssd combo it locks up at writing fat table. I have also formated/s from a geniune 98 thinkpad, made no difference.

I will post pics when i get home, the caps look fine, but i think there is only one regulator. I dont have any 1.8v regs on hand, i guess id just use an adjustable, where would the 1.8v output go? If the sil3112 needs 1.8v for the core how is it being made on these boards with one regulator?

It’s actually the exact opposite.

+3.3V is used for I/O, for example the PCI bus.
This is either provided by a regulator (on decent add-on boards) or by a jumper, routing power from the PCI bus directly to the chip.
The core is powered by a 1.8V regulator and is always present.

As for the capacitor.
They always look fine.
On cheap boards, there’s only one for the core power supply.
As it ages, it can no longer cope under load – during active disk operations.
This is because the average current is low, but the pulse current is quite high.

Any 100 µF capacitor will do the job there, replacing the stock 10 µF one.

cyclone3d wrote on 2026-07-13, 15:04:

There really is no reason to have to format a drive on the computer it is going to be used on unless the drive geometry is detected differently or improperly on the computer it is going to be used on.

And that's exactly why you shouldn't do it. If the partition is created using the wrong geometry it won't have a hope of working correctly. Especially a VM, I would not trust at all to use the correct translation.

Fdisk, which comes with FreeDOS, works with all disk sizes.

At least with those used for retro games.

FWIW I tried my SiL3114 with my Chaintech 5HTM-M101 (Intel HX) and it worked perfectly; that's three for three with old Intel chipset motherboards. I installed it with a Patriot Burst 120 gig SSD, ran Super Fdisk to format and partion it, then booted from an OEM Win98 CD, copied the .cabs to the SSD and ran setup.

You could ty to create a smaller partition (say 2 or 4GB to start) for a basic functionality test.

You could also try to create a FAT16 partition using the Windows 98 FDISK by answering "No" when prompted to work with "Large" partitions when FDISK starts.

I also agree with a comment earlier. Only partition and format the drive when connected to the SIL3112 card. As I wrote above, this controller has strange behavior with attached drives.

Well all partions were made on the p3/sil3112 machine. I do not have the option to format it there, format freezes at writing fat table... so formating the ssd is not an option at least with the sil3112 card, that is why I ordered adapters.

I am only seeing one vreg on the picture above. If i add a 3.3v ldo where do i get the input power and where do i connect the output power?

To me its strange windows setup wont even start up, just locks the command prompt.
I can try to partion in small drive mode using fdisk.

rwGast wrote on 2026-07-13, 20:21:

I do not have the option to format it there, format freezes at writing fat table... so formating the ssd is not an option at least with the sil3112 card

I'm not sure why you expect everything else to work ok when formatting doesn't...

Becuase everything else does work just fine. The drive is good. Formatting works fine to, the issue is writing the fat table, and the only computer that can do it is the one with the sil card. Dos programs run just fine, so why not windows setup?