Anyone have a SiL3132 based card working in their system with the card still running the RAID bios as opposed to the base BIOS?

 

I installed one and moved one of my drives to it to test. When I read from the drive the data or file is corrupted. I get no errors in the syslog. I can put the drive back on the motherboard and it works fine.

 

The problem is this card can't be flashed because the manufacturer used an EEPROM that the SiL3132 can't reflash using the SiL software. I'll have to just return it and get a different one if it's the BIOS (or I have to unsolder and re-program the chip on the board).

 

Peter

 

Are you running the card in Raid1 or JBOD mode?  More than likely it will need a bios update.

 

This post talks about updating the bios to non raid version.  http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=1547.0

 

 

I missed that post before because it was a different chip. It looks like it won't work with the RAID BIOS. The stupid manufacturer used an eeprom instead of a flash eprom and the SiL chip can't reflash it making the reflash tools useless too. I guess I'll try to return it if shipping isn't too much otherwise I might try to unsolder the eeprom and reflash it or change it to a supported one.

 

It's always something. "Hey, lets make a SiL3132 based card but lets use an unsupported memory chip to save ourselves 20 cents each card".

 

Peter

 

I’ve 4 of these cards in one of my towers, 2 have base bios and 2 have raid bios, same bios that came with the cards when I bought them and all are working  fine.

Can you disable the bios with a jumper?  I don't believe linux needs the bios, I think it's for Interrupt13 booting in the bios.  Maybe you can just lift the power pin or the enable line on the eeprom.

 

Anyone have a SiL3132 based card working in their system with the card still running the RAID bios as opposed to the base BIOS?

 

I am using the RAID bios in my Sil3132 cards without issue.  I did have a slight issue with cables.

The drives would sometimes not appear or have issues communicating. The cables were new, I replaced them and the issues went away.

OK, thanks guys. Looks like my card is bad. There are no syslog errors telling me that the kernel is having trouble with the drive or card but it will not read a known working drive that is moved to be connected to it.

 

A parity check shows up with tons of errors. I could show you some of the syslog parity check errors if someone wants to see them but I don't really see a point.

 

Peter

 

Hi guys

 

I rma'd the card and got another one. I moved a drive to it to test and tried tp play a video. The playback failed and unRAID crashed. Attached is the syslog. Any insight?

 

Peter

Hi guys

 

I rma'd the card and got another one. I moved a drive to it to test and tried tp play a video. The playback failed and unRAID crashed. Attached is the syslog. Any insight?

 

Peter

It appears as if a reiserfsck file system check might be appropriate.  You seem to have a corrupt file-system.

 

See here in the wiki: http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Check_Disk_Filesystems

Ya, except after I put the drive back on the motherboard it is fine and the same files will play.

 

Peter

 

Ya, except after I put the drive back on the motherboard it is fine and the same files will play.

 

Peter

 

Now I understand...  You might need to get that new card out of a "raid" mode it is probably in and into a mode where it presents the disks as individual drives.

 

Joe L.

That's what I thought at first too but it can't be flashed onto this card and the RAID bios is reported to work for others.

 

I stuck it and a 500G drive into my HTPC and formatted NTFS and moved 100G of data to it last night. Mostly video files and they play OK. So, I'll move it back to the unRAID box and mount it there and see what happens. Actually, I'll do something like a CRC check on some of the different files first and then move it.

 

I was just thinking I haven't tried the PCIe x16 slot and maybe it's a motherboard issue so that's on the list of things to try too.

 

In the end though, I'll likely just RMA this card too and get my money back and try something else next time. I'd just bought another drive cage and had 6 ports and 8 slots so I threw the $22 card on the order at the same time even though I don't need it yet.

 

Peter

 

Well, I stuck the card back into my unRAID box still using the NTFS formatted drive.

 

I tried the x1 and x16 slots, both ports.

I tried the working slot on my first 4in3 cage with the locking cable that was working switched from motherboard port to this new card.

I brought the drive outside of the cages and tried it connected directly.

The file hashes never stayed the same and didn't match the original versions - it wasn't looking good.

 

So, I tried a non-locking cable I had. Suddenly I got some consistency reading the drive. 

 

Then, I put the drive back into the 4in3 cage with this cable and it began acting up again. 

 

So, I'm going to play with it tomorrow again. This card doesn't have the side on the connector for the lock to grab onto so I'm thinking poor connection there now. I'm going to try a few more things then it's going back if it doesn't co-operate. I put a second 4in3 cage and this card in at the same time so I'm still not 100% sure where the problem is.

 

 

On another note - there is a cool utility program called HashTab that puts a hash tab into the properties window. I was using it to check the file hashes.

 

http://beeblebrox.org/hashtab/

 

 

Thanks for your comments guys.

 

Peter