Those SIL cards are horrid as far as compatibility goes. So what if they support ATAPI drives.. if they don't work worth a crap, they are junk.

Even when those SIL controller chips were built onto the motherboards they were super iffy. Data corruption, slow speed, just not working, etc.

Same goes for the VIA add-in cards. I have had nothing but issues with them.

I tried a pretty good number of the SIL and Via based cards and they all exhibited similar issues on older systems.

The only add-in SATA cards that I can recommend for older systems are the Promise SATA 1 - 150 cards. They have been flawless. But they don't support ATAPI.

In any case, you might be able to get it to work by injecting the SIL BIOS into your motherboard BIOS and flashing the motherboard with the hacked BIOS.

See here:
Booting from a Sil3114

If you don't want to do that and you must use a SATA optical drive, then I would get a SATA drive to IDE adapter. They work just fine:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/SATA-TO-PATA-IDE-Con … QK/223554578110

ah thanks, I hadn't seen that post about injecting the SIl BIOS into the motherboard BIOS. I'll give that a shot tomorrow. This is certainly a much bigger project than I'd thought it would be heh!

For newer systems, i've had a lot of luck with the enterprise/server type SAS controllers. LSI 2008 and similar.

SAS is backwards compatible with SATA (though i will add that i've not tried an optical drive on one), and being server grade the chipsets are rock solid.

Ofcourse these are PCI-e, but i would imagine PCI versions exist. A very quick google shows plenty of PCI-X cards, and i'm pretty much certain these are backwards compatible with normal PCI. I vaguely recall running a PCI-X SCSI card in a PCI slot many years ago.

For my own "late-2000" system ive stuck with IDE for the optical drive (i had a Pioneer slot loader back then, so had to get another), and used a IDE to SATA converter for the SSD. I might well consider a proper controller but need to do some performance tests on the converter first.

Edit: Heres an example:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-435709-001-8-PO … rwAAOSwBRpcoeMG

Aragorn wrote:

For newer systems, i've had a lot of luck with the enterprise/server type SAS controllers. LSI 2008 and similar. […]
Show full quote

For newer systems, i've had a lot of luck with the enterprise/server type SAS controllers. LSI 2008 and similar.

SAS is backwards compatible with SATA (though i will add that i've not tried an optical drive on one), and being server grade the chipsets are rock solid.

Ofcourse these are PCI-e, but i would imagine PCI versions exist. A very quick google shows plenty of PCI-X cards, and i'm pretty much certain these are backwards compatible with normal PCI. I vaguely recall running a PCI-X SCSI card in a PCI slot many years ago.

For my own "late-2000" system ive stuck with IDE for the optical drive (i had a Pioneer slot loader back then, so had to get another), and used a IDE to SATA converter for the SSD. I might well consider a proper controller but need to do some performance tests on the converter first.

Edit: Heres an example:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-435709-001-8-PO … rwAAOSwBRpcoeMG

thank you! I'm going to try this BIOS injection first but may give that a try as well.

More concerning at the moment is the power supply issue. I tried running only the 24 (20) pin ATX from the 450w unit to the motherboard, and everything else to the 550w unit but still it wouldn't post. I notice both of these EVGA PSUs have 20A on the 5v and 3v rails each, which just surprises me that they can't even reliably turn on. The old PSU I have laying around is a 400w V-Power unit with 23A on the 3.3v rail but a massive 40A on the 5v rail. It boots the system just fine every time but I don't trust it at all being so old.

Well, I seem to have solved the PSU issue by going with a Corsair 650w with 25A on the 5v rail.

As far as the Sil3114 SATA controller... no progress. I added its BIOS as a PCI ROM in the TUSL-2C BIOS and flashed that but nothing is different. I'm not sure how the guy in that linked thread 'disabled' the Sil BIOS but I see no option to do that... I can either flash it with the RAID bios or the 'base' BIOS (non-raid). Neither has any effect on the lack of ability to boot to a connected device.

Has anyone with one of these boards successfully managed to boot to anything on any PCI card?

Does the BIOS have an option to boot from "SCSI"?

Aragorn wrote:

Does the BIOS have an option to boot from "SCSI"?

Yes the "other boot device" options are :
Disabled, scsi boot device, int18 device (network), intel(R) boot agent GE v1.2.22

Neither the scsi or int18 options will boot from anything connected to the Sil3114 card. I see it list the attached devices after the primary system bios but no dice.

At this point I'm wondering if perhaps I just need a different type of card to be able to actually boot from something not directly mb connected.

picked up another card with the same controller and no change. This new card is a Vantec Sata II 150, but as the controller is the same I can't be too surprised by the lack of ability to boot.

Reflashed motherboard bios this time to the 1012 secret BIOS, and tried both the non-raid and raid 5500 version BIOSes on the card.

With either raid or normal Sil3114 BIOS, both connected devices show up on the BIOS bootup screen (DVD-ROM and SSD), but neither are bootable. I tried creating a concatenated RAID array with the SSD but that also is not bootable.

If I use an IDE CD-ROM to boot Windows 2000's installer and then load the driver, it can see the SSD and install to it but once the system reboots to begin setup, it can't boot to the SSD at all to actually go through with it.

At this point I see 2 solutions:
1) give up and use SATA to IDE adapters (which would make installing Windows ME or 98SE easier as I can't seem to find any way to load a SCSI/RAID driver in their install process)
2) Move on to SAS controllers like an LSI or Adaptec (though it appears the Adaptec cards are using 2 of this same Sil3114 chip so maybe not that one)

Something just seems off though - the motherboard has the capacity to boot from addon PCI cards, and this RAID controller *should* be able to be booted from connected devices (additionally it claims to support single device mode for connected devices) so I'm not sure where to go from here.

Aragorn wrote:

For newer systems, i've had a lot of luck with the enterprise/server type SAS controllers. LSI 2008 and similar. SAS is backward […]
Show full quote

For newer systems, i've had a lot of luck with the enterprise/server type SAS controllers. LSI 2008 and similar.
SAS is backwards compatible with SATA (though i will add that i've not tried an optical drive on one), and being server grade the chipsets are rock solid.
Ofcourse these are PCI-e, but i would imagine PCI versions exist. A very quick google shows plenty of PCI-X cards, and i'm pretty much certain these are backwards compatible with normal PCI. I vaguely recall running a PCI-X SCSI card in a PCI slot many years ago.
For my own "late-2000" system ive stuck with IDE for the optical drive (i had a Pioneer slot loader back then, so had to get another), and used a IDE to SATA converter for the SSD. I might well consider a proper controller but need to do some performance tests on the converter first.
Edit: Heres an example:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-435709-001-8-PO … rwAAOSwBRpcoeMG

Please don't give people hope without actual knowledge.
SAS3080X-HP this exact or same card, i have 2 spare to play with few months ago. Cards not compatible with conventional PCI without making a hole by dremel and isolating some contacts with electrical tape. And after that you not guarantied that mobo accept the card.
P3B-F you cam turn it on, play with reflashing firmware and setting it up with DOS utilities, but BIOS doesn't accept it as a bootable.
A8N32-SLI Deluxe, board doesn't power on with inserted card.

And you need drivers, earliest version of Windows is XP/2003. SCSI or SAS in DOS have mediocre performance compared to PATA/SATA if you consider drives produced after 1996.

Only viable and trouble free enterprise solution for such mobos - SCSI, probably Adaptec cards like 2940/29160 the best in terms of compatibility with either hardware or OS. Working OOB in DOS/W9x even without drivers, have support or OOB till W7, bootable on Socket7 through latest chipsets like X58.

_UV_ wrote:

Please don't give people hope without actual knowledge. SAS3080X-HP this exact or same card, i have 2 spare to play with few mon […]
Show full quote

Aragorn wrote:

For newer systems, i've had a lot of luck with the enterprise/server type SAS controllers. LSI 2008 and similar. SAS is backward […]
Show full quote

For newer systems, i've had a lot of luck with the enterprise/server type SAS controllers. LSI 2008 and similar.
SAS is backwards compatible with SATA (though i will add that i've not tried an optical drive on one), and being server grade the chipsets are rock solid.
Ofcourse these are PCI-e, but i would imagine PCI versions exist. A very quick google shows plenty of PCI-X cards, and i'm pretty much certain these are backwards compatible with normal PCI. I vaguely recall running a PCI-X SCSI card in a PCI slot many years ago.
For my own "late-2000" system ive stuck with IDE for the optical drive (i had a Pioneer slot loader back then, so had to get another), and used a IDE to SATA converter for the SSD. I might well consider a proper controller but need to do some performance tests on the converter first.
Edit: Heres an example:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-435709-001-8-PO … rwAAOSwBRpcoeMG

Please don't give people hope without actual knowledge.
SAS3080X-HP this exact or same card, i have 2 spare to play with few months ago. Cards not compatible with conventional PCI without making a hole by dremel and isolating some contacts with electrical tape. And after that you not guarantied that mobo accept the card.
P3B-F you cam turn it on, play with reflashing firmware and setting it up with DOS utilities, but BIOS doesn't accept it as a bootable.
A8N32-SLI Deluxe, board doesn't power on with inserted card.

And you need drivers, earliest version of Windows is XP/2003. SCSI or SAS in DOS have mediocre performance compared to PATA/SATA if you consider drives produced after 1996.

Only viable and trouble free enterprise solution for such mobos - SCSI, probably Adaptec cards like 2940/29160 the best in terms of compatibility with either hardware or OS. Working OOB in DOS/W9x even without drivers, have support or OOB till W7, bootable on Socket7 through latest chipsets like X58.

I managed to get everything working with the Vantech branded Sil3114 card, flashed with the non-RAID BIOS and using a SATA to IDE adapter on the DVD-RW drive. Just out of morbid curiosity I flashed the exact same BIOS to my first Sil3114 card and it still won't boot to the connected SSD. Apparently they are not all created equally 😀

As far as my goal of full SATA drives though - I have new idea that I'm going to try after spending hours and hours searching through specs of PCI-X SATA and SAS RAID controllers. I found that the Adaptec 1220SA SATA RAID card (PCI-E 1x interface) has a Win2k driver. The hope here is that it will function correctly in a PCI-E 1x to PCI adapter, and it specifically supports booting to connected SATA optical drives. I'll be sure to post back if I'm able to get this working.

on a PSU note - this cheapy Corsair CX650M has been working like a champ, and I'm actually not sure now why the two EVGA PSUs won't (at least reliably) boot the system. They both have 20A each on the +3.3v and +5v rails, where this Corsair does have 25 on each but I don't think the system should be even exceeding 20 on either (and the few times I got it to actually boot up with the EVGA PSU's it didn't shut off or anything - ran fine for hours as long as i didn't turn it off). However, just to be on the safe side I have a 1200w refurb Corsair coming with 30A each on both of those rails and was not much more than this 650w cost new (returning it to Best Buy ASAP before my return window ends).

kalm_traveler wrote:

As far as my goal of full SATA drives though - I have new idea that I'm going to try after spending hours and hours searching through specs of PCI-X SATA and SAS RAID controllers. I found that the Adaptec 1220SA SATA RAID card (PCI-E 1x interface) has a Win2k driver. The hope here is that it will function correctly in a PCI-E 1x to PCI adapter, and it specifically supports booting to connected SATA optical drives. I'll be sure to post back if I'm able to get this working.

Unless you already have the card and adapter, I'd go with the previous advice of the older SATA1 Promise controller. Total PCI bandwidth is 133MB/s vs SATA1's 150MB/s meaning you're not likely to get much more performance unless you're looking for better access times and/or better mixed read/write performance in RAID 0 or RAID 10.

BushLin wrote:

kalm_traveler wrote:

As far as my goal of full SATA drives though - I have new idea that I'm going to try after spending hours and hours searching through specs of PCI-X SATA and SAS RAID controllers. I found that the Adaptec 1220SA SATA RAID card (PCI-E 1x interface) has a Win2k driver. The hope here is that it will function correctly in a PCI-E 1x to PCI adapter, and it specifically supports booting to connected SATA optical drives. I'll be sure to post back if I'm able to get this working.

Unless you already have the card and adapter, I'd go with the previous advice of the older SATA1 Promise controller. Total PCI bandwidth is 133MB/s vs SATA1's 150MB/s meaning you're not likely to get much more performance unless you're looking for better access times and/or better mixed read/write performance in RAID 0 or RAID 10.

Adapter yes, just bought a card brand new for $15 shipped to try it out.

I'm not so much after performance - at this point just want to see if I can run this thing completely without IDE.