PhilsComputerLab wrote:
Could you be more specific regarding "decent" card and "right" firmware? So others can have a go at it and see if it works for them? You can attach files too.
As far as firmware goes it's different for etch user and card. One might want ide, others raid. Then there are folks like me that use ahci firmware even although most chipset lack ahci. Then there is different versions of each firmware for etch card. typically the newest version of the firmware you want is best. And most off e time cards come with older crummy firmware.
As for a decent card, don't by a piece of junk from China for 3 to 5$ and get a card with a well supported chipset
It's tempting to buy a 5$ sata card off a site like eBay, but they often army the best regardless of the chipset. The chipset can even be fake. Your best bet is to buy a higher quality card with a well know/used chipset.
A few things to note, most pci sata cards user old sata1 chipsets witch is not much faster then pata133
I find that most sata1 card perform around ata100 or ata133 depending on he card and setup. A sata 2 chipset card such as the SiL3124 will not give you sata2 speeds on a pci bus do to pci lower speed. If your system supports it, get a 66mhz supported card. Get a card with bios extensions if you want to boot from a hdd attached to it.
I have always had good luck with via 6421 and SiL3124 chipset cards, but sil firmware is all over the place and knowing witch one to use is a bit of a nightmare, but at least they have every version available on there site.
Server cards are usually good, but not always what you want in a retro home computer.
Off the top of my head I'm only knowledgeable with the via 6421 and SiL3124. Other the that I'm only experienced with newer server cards.
In summary: for best results.
Buy a good quality card with a well supported chipset and put the newest firmware on it. If you want a raid setup used the raid firmware if kit used ide, if available use ahci.
And be sure to install the newist drivers for the card. Without them sata cards are über slow.
Sometimes although rear, older firmware is better. Try different firmware and find out.
I'll take a look at my cards and see witch firmware version I'm using and get back with you.
I know I get about 90-100mbs reads with my via 6421 card in my via c3 setup with 2k, 98 is obliviously slower but I have yet to test it.