To the best of our knowledge, any PCI IDE board using the Silicon Image SiI3112-ATA, SiI3114-ATA or SiI3512-ATA chipsets is suitable, and there are several readily available. Two cards being tested by Amiga Auckland are the STLab 2-Channel (SiI3112) and 4-Channel (SiI3114) Serial ATA RAID PCI Cards, while another popular card overseas is a combo card with SATA, USB and Firewire. While many PC motherboards have the SiI3512 chip onboard, we have been unable to locate any add-on cards which use this chip for sale in New Zealand at this time.
STLab 2-Channel Serial ATA RAID PCI Card (A-181)
The card discussed here is distributed by ST Labs and uses the Silicon ImageSiI3112SATA chip, SiI3112-ATA for short, and costs around NZ$78 incl GST. It has two 7 pin SATA sockets, and comes with 2 x 46cm cables, 2 power cables, a CDROM containing drivers and a 10 page User Manual exclusively for the Microsoft environment.
Specifications
The specifications for the card are:
- Chipset: Silicon Image SiI3112
- Compliant with Serial ATA 1.0 specifications
- Compliant with PCI Plug & Play
- Data Transfer Rate: SATA data transfer rate of 150MB/sec
- Bus: PCI 2.2 32-bit, 33/66MHz
- Dual independent DMA channels with 256 KB FIFO per channel
- Supports up to 2 SATA devices (coexists with other IDE and SCSI controllers)
- Supports all UDMA and PIO modes
- Hot Spare and On-line Mirror Rebuilding
- Supports RAID 0(striped), RAID 1(mirrored) (Optional)
- Supports Windows 98/98SE/ME/2000/NT 4.0/XP and Linux
It is our intention to try out this configuration at some point soon to see how well it works, and when we do we will update this page.
STLab 4-Channel Serial ATA RAID PCI Card (A-223)
The card discussed here is distributed by ST Labs and uses the Silicon ImageSiI3114SATA chip, SiI3114-ATA for short, and costs around NZ$85 incl GST. It has four 7 pin SATA sockets, and comes with 2 x 46cm cables, 2 power cables, a CDROM containing drivers and a 10 page User Manual exclusively for the Microsoft environment. Additional power cables are approx NZ$4.00 each, while additional data cables are approx NZ$3.50 each.
Specifications
The specifications for the card are:
- Chipset: Silicon Image SiI3114
- Compliant with Serial ATA 1.0 specifications
- Compliant with PCI Plug & Play
- Data Transfer Rate: SATA data transfer rate of 150MB/sec
- Bus: PCI 2.2 32-bit, 33/66MHz
- Dual independent DMA channels with 256 KB FIFO per channel
- Supports up to 4 SATA devices (coexists with other IDE and SCSI controllers)
- Supports all UDMA and PIO modes
- Hot Spare and On-line Mirror Rebuilding
- Supports RAID 0(striped), RAID 1(mirrored) & RAID 0+1(Optional)
- Supports Windows 98/98SE/ME/2000/NT 4.0/XP and Linux
It is our intention to try out this configuration at some point soon to see how well it works, and when we do we will update this page.
Disclaimer: Amiga Auckland have prepared the above information for the use of its members based on our experiences and as such is subject to revision at any time. Amiga Auckland cannot guarantee any of the information and cannot be held accountable for any issues that may result from using it.