I bought such a controller for nearly the same purpose, except I ran out of optical IDE drives and ended up using both SATA Ports on my 4CoreDual-SATA2 board (on wich SATA is configurable to legacy IDE operation, I honestly did not know the VSTA-variant of this board apparently IS NOT...) for those optical drives.

Specifically I bought this one, flashing was straightforward:
https://www.fruugo.de/pci-zu-sata-konverterka … 03879-975669313

A little more expensive than those ten (or less) buck chinese imports, but I wanted to be sure to be able to return the controller, just in case. So I turned to a local seller.
The card is sporting the SIL3114 and was (of course, but WHY? Does anyone really buy these for building a RAID? Lunatics...) configured in RAID-mode, too. But flashing of the legacy bios was as straightforward as such thing ever could be. Guess I got lucky... or at least you are the first unlucky buyer of such an item I have heard from.

BTW, I have read in your linked post, that you are using a PCI-E graphics card. Why turning to these now ridiculously overpriced boards, wich were nothing but a cheap curiosity back in the day, then?

VGApocalypse wrote on 2026-01-30, 23:37:

I bought such a controller for nearly the same purpose, except I ran out of optical IDE drives and ended up using both SATA Port […]
Show full quote

I bought such a controller for nearly the same purpose, except I ran out of optical IDE drives and ended up using both SATA Ports on my 4CoreDual-SATA2 board (on wich SATA is configurable to legacy IDE operation, I honestly did not know the VSTA-variant of this board apparently IS NOT...) for those optical drives.

Specifically I bought this one, flashing was straightforward:
https://www.fruugo.de/pci-zu-sata-konverterka … 03879-975669313

A little more expensive than those ten (or less) buck chinese imports, but I wanted to be sure to be able to return the controller, just in case. So I turned to a local seller.
The card is sporting the SIL3114 and was (of course, but WHY? Does anyone really buy these for building a RAID? Lunatics...) configured in RAID-mode, too. But flashing of the legacy bios was as straightforward as such thing ever could be. Guess I got lucky... or at least you are the first unlucky buyer of such an item I have heard from.

BTW, I have read in your linked post, that you are using a PCI-E graphics card. Why turning to these now ridiculously overpriced boards, wich were nothing but a cheap curiosity back in the day, then?

Yeah...no idea why anyone would use 150MB/s PCI for RAID...I suspect it's a VERY old thing you might find retrofitted to late 90s servers running NT4 or something.

Can you confirm which flash ROM is on the card you purchased?

And sorry, not sure what you're asking re. the PCI-E graphics card?

I've had nothing but problems with the SIL based cards. Usually data corruption happens. This was true even back when they were new. Motherboards with the SIL SATA controllers almost universally had major issues with the data being corrupted.

I've got some of the SIL PCI controllers and all of them end up corrupting the data on the drives.

The controllers that don't have this issue and work with Windows 9x are the Promise S150 controllers.

The other option is to use an IDE to SATA adapter and just use a PCI IDE controller or the IDE built onto the motherboard.

ONIXLabs wrote on 2026-01-31, 00:05:

Yeah...no idea why anyone would use 150MB/s PCI for RAID...I suspect it's a VERY old thing you might find retrofitted to late 90s servers running NT4 or something.
Can you confirm which flash ROM is on the card you purchased?
And sorry, not sure what you're asking re. the PCI-E graphics card?

Unfortunately, I cannot. At least right now, as I am not at home for another week or so (gotta work to fill the fridge 🙁... ).
I remember to have used a tool called "updflash" to update the bios and for the sake of alz and heimer I cannot recall if that program even told me about the type of flash rom. I reckon it did not, but in hindsight I am not that sure about it, anymore.
What I'd have to take a look on the controller, the funny chip beneath these "SATA RAID"-stickers - does this chip happen to be the flash rom?

But either way, a few weeks ago I found a video by phil, in which he got that damn thing working in RAID-mode in Windows 98SE. Aparently he used a tool called "Windows98 quick install" that I have not fiddled around with by now.

(and for that graphics card: you linked a post up here in which you stated to make use of a nvidia quadro pci-e card with your ...-VSTA motherboard. Did I misread that? Because if you do, there are a lot of much cheaper alternatives to your ...-VSTA around. So I wondered why you might have ended up with these PCI-E / AGP combo.)

ONIXLabs wrote on 2026-01-30, 22:16:

In a related thread about building a PC capable of running Windows 98 (here: Building a Retro PC to run Windows 98SE), I ran into an unexpected roadblock with the ASRock 4CoreDual-VSTA motherboard. Specifically, it does not support SATA drives operating in legacy IDE mode—and I am very keen to avoid buying secondhand IDE hard drives and optical drives if at all possible.

I have same southbridge on K9VGM-V and SATA HDD (even SATA2) work in W98SE - there is SATA "RAID" option in BIOS and RAID drivers for W98 and you no need RAID really, it work even with 1 HDD only. In Device manager you will see SATA controller as VIA SCSI.

These cards/chipsets were so weird and very commonplace back in the day. Some on-board chipsets or cards had custom firmware, others had stock firmware, some couldn't be flashed and others could, some cards were straight-up reference designs and others looked like reference designs but were locked down entirely. I don't miss using them at all, but the cards are still useful, in a limited sort of way, if you have older functional systems with available PCI slots, free SATA PSU connections, and an open HDD cage or whatever.

ONIXLabs wrote on 2026-01-31, 00:05:

Yeah...no idea why anyone would use 150MB/s PCI for RAID...I suspect it's a VERY old thing you might find retrofitted to late 90 […]
Show full quote

VGApocalypse wrote on 2026-01-30, 23:37:

I bought such a controller for nearly the same purpose, except I ran out of optical IDE drives and ended up using both SATA Port […]
Show full quote

I bought such a controller for nearly the same purpose, except I ran out of optical IDE drives and ended up using both SATA Ports on my 4CoreDual-SATA2 board (on wich SATA is configurable to legacy IDE operation, I honestly did not know the VSTA-variant of this board apparently IS NOT...) for those optical drives.

Specifically I bought this one, flashing was straightforward:
https://www.fruugo.de/pci-zu-sata-konverterka … 03879-975669313

A little more expensive than those ten (or less) buck chinese imports, but I wanted to be sure to be able to return the controller, just in case. So I turned to a local seller.
The card is sporting the SIL3114 and was (of course, but WHY? Does anyone really buy these for building a RAID? Lunatics...) configured in RAID-mode, too. But flashing of the legacy bios was as straightforward as such thing ever could be. Guess I got lucky... or at least you are the first unlucky buyer of such an item I have heard from.

BTW, I have read in your linked post, that you are using a PCI-E graphics card. Why turning to these now ridiculously overpriced boards, wich were nothing but a cheap curiosity back in the day, then?

Yeah...no idea why anyone would use 150MB/s PCI for RAID...I suspect it's a VERY old thing you might find retrofitted to late 90s servers running NT4 or something.

Can you confirm which flash ROM is on the card you purchased?

And sorry, not sure what you're asking re. the PCI-E graphics card?

Back when SATA cards were "new", running RAID was the primary reason for using them. That's why so many have the RAID firmware installed, even the dinky PCI ones that did okay with regular HDDs, while the premium RAID cards used PCI-X and fed premium drives like WD's RAPTOR line. As the years went on, it was more common to find the PCI models with JBOD firmware, because most people simply didn't want RAID and needed the SATA ports for optical drives or more SATA HDDs and the vendors knew they could charge a premium for RAID cards. One of the popular retro PC hacks is to just slap SATA flash modules (mini SSDs) onto the SATA ports and use them in place of old HDDs or more expensive SATA SSDs.

VGApocalypse wrote on 2026-01-31, 13:52:

Unfortunately, I cannot. At least right now, as I am not at home for another week or so (gotta work to fill the fridge :-(... ). […]
Show full quote

ONIXLabs wrote on 2026-01-31, 00:05:

Yeah...no idea why anyone would use 150MB/s PCI for RAID...I suspect it's a VERY old thing you might find retrofitted to late 90s servers running NT4 or something.
Can you confirm which flash ROM is on the card you purchased?
And sorry, not sure what you're asking re. the PCI-E graphics card?

Unfortunately, I cannot. At least right now, as I am not at home for another week or so (gotta work to fill the fridge 🙁... ).
I remember to have used a tool called "updflash" to update the bios and for the sake of alz and heimer I cannot recall if that program even told me about the type of flash rom. I reckon it did not, but in hindsight I am not that sure about it, anymore.
What I'd have to take a look on the controller, the funny chip beneath these "SATA RAID"-stickers - does this chip happen to be the flash rom?

But either way, a few weeks ago I found a video by phil, in which he got that damn thing working in RAID-mode in Windows 98SE. Aparently he used a tool called "Windows98 quick install" that I have not fiddled around with by now.

(and for that graphics card: you linked a post up here in which you stated to make use of a nvidia quadro pci-e card with your ...-VSTA motherboard. Did I misread that? Because if you do, there are a lot of much cheaper alternatives to your ...-VSTA around. So I wondered why you might have ended up with these PCI-E / AGP combo.)

I had not considered using the Windows98 quick install tool. I have previously, but it installs some weird incarnation of Windows 98...feels a bit icky, if you know what I mean.

Yes, the BIOS is that chip under the sticker. Both of mine say AM28F010 which cannot be flashed with updflash, or flashrom.

The reason I chose an ASRock 4CoreDual-VSTA was based on the bits I already had (i.e. an LGA775 CPU, and many different PCI-E graphics cards). I didn't really want to fall back to older hardware (albeit, that would be more period correct). ChatGPT suggested that several retro builders had been successful with SATA2 and VSTA variants, but in my case, this machine has so far been nothing but trouble, and the longer this goes on, the less confidence I have in the build.

I have another build (also based on PhilsHardwareLab builds) using a Gigabyte board. This was easy to install Windows 98 as the onboard SATA ports support IDE mode, but for the life of me, I could not get sound working in MS-DOS, and I tried SB Live! CT4760, ESS Solo-1 and ESS Maestro-1...nothing worked. The USB Hub Controller hijacks IRQ 5 every time

cyclone3d wrote on 2026-01-31, 07:56:

I've had nothing but problems with the SIL based cards. Usually data corruption happens. This was true even back when they were […]
Show full quote

I've had nothing but problems with the SIL based cards. Usually data corruption happens. This was true even back when they were new. Motherboards with the SIL SATA controllers almost universally had major issues with the data being corrupted.

I've got some of the SIL PCI controllers and all of them end up corrupting the data on the drives.

The controllers that don't have this issue and work with Windows 9x are the Promise S150 controllers.

The other option is to use an IDE to SATA adapter and just use a PCI IDE controller or the IDE built onto the motherboard.

This is what I recall about a known data corruption bug. Re: SSD on TUV4X...impossible [UPDATE: in fact, IRQ problem with PCI cards]

AFAICR, I could not find the reference I had read prior to posting that. Not clear in my memory which chip models and/or revisions were affected, but using only a single drive on a given controller was a known workaround. There may be other data corruption bugs, but I have not hit those yet, AFAICR

Finally I got around to take a look beneath that RAID-sticker.
The bios chip is an ST-Micro M29F010B
Hope that helps. At least these are readily available still...