Acer Aspire T671 (Microstar MS-7326) - OnBoard SATA Success!!


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Update:  See fourth post for the resolution.

 

 

A recent power-out left the PC not booting (no POST).  I never upgraded to 4.7 due to a couple HPA errors that I didn't want to deal with at the time and never got around to it.

 

Closer inspection showed several caps on the old mobo leaking (Asus A7N8X-E) so it's been replaced with one from an Acer T671.  I could only allocate six of the eight drives, the two I had attached to the mobo SATA ports were not in the device list.  I've moved those two over to the remaining ports on the PCI SiI-3114 cards and now everything is running OK.  I'm now out of SATA ports and have all the drives on the PCI bus which is miserably slow.

 

http://support.acer.com/acerpanam/desktop/0000/Acer/AspireT671/AspireT671sp2.shtml

http://www.ascendtech.us/msi-ms-7326-lga775-ddr2-motherboard_i_mbintelms73262d.aspx

 

Any tips on how I can get the four on-board SATA ports working?  My guess is the ports are supplied by an ATI SB600 chip.

syslog-2012-10-16.txt

MS-7326_Block_Diagram.gif.f93f1b4d9dfbf3a63937ab36c9722eba.gif

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Syslog errors:

 

Oct 16 22:31:40 Watchtower kernel: Pid: 545, comm: modprobe Not tainted 2.6.32.9-unRAID #8 (Errors)

Oct 16 22:31:40 Watchtower kernel: Call Trace: (Errors)

Oct 16 22:31:40 Watchtower kernel:  [<c11b55d8>] ? ata_host_activate+0x38/0xb2 (Errors)

Oct 16 22:31:40 Watchtower kernel:  [<c102449e>] warn_slowpath_common+0x60/0x77 (Errors)

Oct 16 22:31:40 Watchtower kernel:  [<f824e022>] ? ahci_interrupt+0x0/0x3df [ahci] (Errors)

Oct 16 22:31:40 Watchtower kernel:  [<c10244c2>] warn_slowpath_null+0xd/0x10 (Errors)

Oct 16 22:31:40 Watchtower kernel:  [<c11b55d8>] ata_host_activate+0x38/0xb2 (Errors)

Oct 16 22:31:40 Watchtower kernel:  [<f824dff6>] ahci_init_one+0xd73/0xd9f [ahci] (Errors)

Oct 16 22:31:40 Watchtower kernel:  [<c1142050>] local_pci_probe+0xe/0x10 (Errors)

Oct 16 22:31:40 Watchtower kernel:  [<c11426ad>] pci_device_probe+0x48/0x66 (Errors)

Oct 16 22:31:40 Watchtower kernel:  [<c1194956>] driver_probe_device+0x79/0xed (Errors)

Oct 16 22:31:40 Watchtower kernel:  [<c1194a0d>] __driver_attach+0x43/0x5f (Errors)

Oct 16 22:31:40 Watchtower kernel:  [<c11940a7>] bus_for_each_dev+0x39/0x5a (Errors)

Oct 16 22:31:40 Watchtower kernel:  [<f8234000>] ? ahci_init+0x0/0x19 [ahci] (Errors)

Oct 16 22:31:40 Watchtower kernel:  [<c119482f>] driver_attach+0x14/0x16 (Errors)

Oct 16 22:31:40 Watchtower kernel:  [<c11949ca>] ? __driver_attach+0x0/0x5f (Errors)

Oct 16 22:31:40 Watchtower kernel:  [<c119451c>] bus_add_driver+0x9f/0x1c5 (Errors)

Oct 16 22:31:40 Watchtower kernel:  [<f8234000>] ? ahci_init+0x0/0x19 [ahci] (Errors)

Oct 16 22:31:40 Watchtower kernel:  [<c1194ccf>] driver_register+0x7b/0xd7 (Errors)

Oct 16 22:31:40 Watchtower kernel:  [<f8234000>] ? ahci_init+0x0/0x19 [ahci] (Errors)

Oct 16 22:31:40 Watchtower kernel:  [<c1142882>] __pci_register_driver+0x39/0x8c (Errors)

Oct 16 22:31:40 Watchtower kernel:  [<f8234000>] ? ahci_init+0x0/0x19 [ahci] (Errors)

Oct 16 22:31:40 Watchtower kernel:  [<f8234017>] ahci_init+0x17/0x19 [ahci] (Errors)

Oct 16 22:31:40 Watchtower kernel:  [<c1001139>] do_one_initcall+0x4c/0x131 (Errors)

Oct 16 22:31:40 Watchtower kernel:  [<c1042e6e>] sys_init_module+0xa7/0x1dd (Errors)

Oct 16 22:31:40 Watchtower kernel:  [<c1002935>] syscall_call+0x7/0xb (Errors)

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I found some clues in this thread:

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=17794

 

... which I found by searching for "warn_slowpath_common".

 

I'll try changing some BIOS settings after the Parity Check completes (running at 15MB/s).  I know I have the SATA ports set to IDE in the BIOS currently (options are RAID/AHCI/IDE).  Another thing to try would be to boot using one of the 5-betas.  I'm pretty sure the BIOS is up-to-date (as far as Acer is concerned).

 

 

[update]

Looks like I cannot set the SATA ports to anything other than IDE.  I was confusing the BIOS options with another motherboard.

 

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  • 3 months later...

Resolved!

 

The solution in my case was to get the BIOS updated to R01-B0.  This turned out to be much trickier than I expected.  The WinFlash that came with the BIOS update would not run in 64bit Win7 and would hang most of the time in 32bit Vista.  When it did run it would say that the BIOS was not an Award BIOS and would exit, running from a DOS boost disk gave the same result.  It was only after resetting/defaulting the BIOS that progress was made.

 

After the BIOS update, and now running UnRAID 5.0-RC10-test, I have full access to the onboard SATA ports and getting speeds over 130MB/s when testing via UnMenu > [user Scripts] > [Disk Speed Test].

 

Hooray!

 

Also, the OE power-supply (Delta Electronics, 250W) is running an Intel E2180 CPU, 4GB DDR2, two SiI 3114 PCI cards and eight 'green' drives (mix of 1.5/2T WD/Seagate) with no troubles.  The onboard gigabit ethernet works well (Marvell 88E8056 PCIe), and the OE cooling/fans keep the temps well under control at low-speed with some airflow modifications.  All this fits in the case with minor modifications and hassle to create a nice, small, quiet array with a bit of room to grow (room for one more drive, one PCIe x1 slot, one PCIe x16 slot of questionable value).

 

So, yes I'd recommend an Acer Aspire T671 desktop for a small & tidy UnRAID 5.0 rig.

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Upgrade Update:

 

Tested the x1 and x16 PCIe ports with a 2-port SATA3 card from Syba / IOCrest  ( SY-PEX40039 based on ASMedia ASM1061 ).  Both seem to work fine and read speed is over 130MB/s when testing using UnMenu > [user Scripts] > [Disk Speed Test]. 

 

As expected write and parity-check speeds have improved greatly from reducing the PCI drives from 4 to 2.

 

Write to array: 28MB/s

Parity Check: 55MB/s

 

It now looks like it's possible to install a second SATA card with 2, 4 or 8 ports using the x16 PCIe slot.  More good news for this simple platform!

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  • 3 years later...

Pictures of the settings and configuration changes are always nice for the newest and less technical users.

Just wondering about a single post user replying to a 3 year old thread with no unraid content in the post. I couldn't think of a good reason for the post.

I always believe in giving the benefit of the doubt as far as I can.  (and there's no negative evidence at all)  I do appreciate your watchfulness, there's many a spammer you were first to detect!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Motherboard id: MRS600M

Bios version: R01-B0 (Phoenix Award Workstation BIOS)

Chipset: ATI SB600

What is the purpose of this post?

 

The purpose: I was looking for info regarding AHCI on T671. The official bios doesn't let you set AHCI or RAID as the original poster wrote. So after much searching I was able to modify the bios to show SATA options and posted it here so that others looking to solve the same problem can find a solution here. My aim was to enable AHCI to upgrade the machine with SSD.

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  • 2 years later...

And 3 more years later...

Hello chriz74,
Thank you! I use your mod-bios to unlock my MS-7326 and set AHCI on. You did a great work.
But my board came from an Aspire M5610 and there is a difference between this board and the one from Aspire E571/T671. Mine's got a HDMI port. Of course, it disappeared from the menu. Is it possible for you to modify the bios for my board?
Here is the link, but no pressure.
https://www.acer.com/ac/fr/FR/content/support-product/362?b=1

Edited by LucWep
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1 hour ago, LucWep said:

And 3 more years later...

I have approved your account for posting, even though I suspect you only got here from an internet search, and you possibly have no idea what Unraid (the purpose of this forum you have joined) is.

 

The person you are hoping will help you with your hardware problem only made these 2 posts to our forum, those in this thread. He has not even visited our forum since then.

 

In fact, if you check the replies to his post you should notice that its relevance to our forum was considered questionable by some of our most active members. And, your 3 year old reply was to a post that was itself a 3 year old reply and not related to the purpose of our forum.

 

I seriously doubt you will get any help, but go ahead and take a look around. It is a great community, but it has a fairly narrow focus. Modifying BIOS is not one of them.

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