Sunday November 28, 2004 Serial ATA support in Solaris 10
As many of you know, serial ata support has been added to Solaris 10. There have been a lot of questions on which controllers are currently supported. First, let me make this clear. Solaris doesn't currently support RAID for any SATA drives, the driver currently only supports SATA in non-RAID mode. RAID support will come in a future release of Solaris 10. However, you can use SVM for software RAID support today!
With this said, I am running Solaris 10 on SATA drives with success on a couple different controllers. There is currently support for Silicon Image 3112, 3114, and 3512 chipsets, as well as Intel ICHx (5 and 6 I'm told). I use SATA on a Tyan 2885 motherboard which incorporates the Silicon Image 3114 chipset, and it boots and runs fine.
A friend of mine is running a SATA drive on the ASUS P4P800 motherboard which uses the Intel ICH5 chipset, it also boots and runs fine.
In addition, I recentely searched for a PCI controller that would work with Solaris 10, and found that 2 different controllers at Fry's (I/O Flex and Syba) both showed up as RAID controllers, so Solaris wouldn't install to them. I then ended up with an Adaptec SATAConnect 1205SA controller which incorporates a Silicon Image 3112 chipset, is a non-RAID controller, and installs and boots fine with Solaris 10 on 64-bit.
I reccomend this 2 port adapter for people seeking supported SATA on Solaris 10, and if you purchase the clamshell package before 12/31/04, there's a $10 Rebate available from Frys/Outpost for this. The quality of this controller is what one would expect from Adaptec. I have no affiliation with Adaptec and bought this controller with my own money, it just works well.
( Nov 28 2004, 01:20:16 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [1]
Athlon64 Support
Some folks have been asking if the AMD64 port will run on Athlon64 systems, and the answer is YES!
The systems that I have run 64-bit on are ASUS K8N-E Deluxe motherboard (which works with SATA BTW), Acer Ferrari 3200 laptop, Acer Ferrari 3400 laptop, eMachines 6809 laptop, eMachines 6805 laptop, HP zv5000 laptop, to mention a few.
AFAIK, there are no issues running in 64-bit on most Athlon64 systems, laptops or standard system boards, although some drivers for devices are being worked on at this time. This will include some of the SATA support, some NIC devices, and stuff like that, but as far as the Athlon64 goes, it runs fine.
Many of the Athlon64 motherboards incorporate NICs that drivers can be found on Masa Murayama's website, so please check it if there isn't a driver in Solaris 10. Currently Solaris 10 build 69 is available on Solaris Express, but the 11/04 is rumored to be build 72 which will include 64-bit support. Keep your eyes posted to the Solaris Express Website for that to happen soon.
( Nov 28 2004, 01:03:27 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [3]