[SOLVED] Flashing Silicon Image Sil3114 BIOS -- Comparable Flash Memory Chipset?

[RW]

Hello everyone,

 

While I am neither a long-standing member of your fine community nor an unRAID user, I am posting here because one of your members experienced a problem very similar to my own and I am hoping that one of you could help me pick up from where that thread ended.

 

Several years ago, jeff.lebowski was trying to update the BIOS on his Sil3114 SATA controller only to discover that the chip wasn't even reprogrammable. In my case, the chip can be flashed but, unfortunately, the utility that Silicon Image provides to flash the chip doesn't recognize the chip on my card. It knows only the following:

 

 

The chip on my card is an EON EN29LV010-70JCP and the data sheet is available here. In the other thread, S80_UK wrote that the flash utility is probably compatible with my chip; I only need to figure out which of the listed chips it is compatible with. Since my chip is 1 MB, that eliminates about half of those listed. How can I go about figuring out which of the remaining chips should be compatible with mine?

[S80_UK]

Hi RW - I saw your PM.

 

Sadly there isn't a simple answer here.  Each flash memory manufacturer builds the chip with some special registers outside the normal memory array which programming software can read.  These identify in a couple of bytes who made the chip and which chip variant it is.  The programming software is able to use that information to adjust the programming algorithm to the requirements of each chip.  The differences can include the programmer software timings, and the way that blocks of memory are erased or written, although the are often some aspects that do not vary from one chip version to another.  The authors of the programming software have to build in those variations for each chip that they want the software to support.  They seem to have built in support for several mainstream Flash memory vendors (STM, SST, AMD, Atmel, etc) .  Since there is next to no money in small Flash memory manufacture, and since the big guys always stay nearer the leading edge of the technology, a card nade more recently is very likely to use Flash from someone that we've never heard of, and that appears to be the case here.

 

I looked up the list that you gave.  Each chip maker in that list uses a different vendor ID in the silicon.  The Eon chip you quoted uses another completely different ID.  So the programmer software that you have may simply decide that it cannot program your chip at all.  It is also possible that one of the options might yield a result that happens to work.  And it is also possible that you might find the flash can be erased, but that programming is unreliable., in which case the card is then useless.

 

Unless there is a programming utility from your card vendor, and that is probably unlikely, for a commodity card like the SIL3114, I very much doubt that you'll be able to update the firmware on your card.  Sorry it's not good news.

[RW]

I see. Thank you for your response, S80_UK. Your user title, "Hero Member," truly befits you.

 

Is there any utility that can, in general, read the flash memory chip on my card to backup the BIOS? Although I am not even remotely a computer engineer, the AMD Am29LV010B appears to have, of those chips on the list returned by the flash utility, the datasheet most similar to my EON chip and I wouldn't mind giving it a shot provided some sort of failsafe mechanism.

[S80_UK]

There may be utilities - I don't know of any.  One issue would be how the Flash memory is accessed - don't forget it's a block of memory but with access managed by the SIL chip, so any utility has to know how to find and access the chip and then understand how to program that particular type from that particular manufacturer.  Unless you can physically remove the chip and reprogram it with an appropriate programmer I think you are unlikely to be able to reprogram it.  You are right - most of the chips have the same basic structure, often the same numbers of blocks of storage - but the differences in the required programming algorithms are often determined by subtle differences in the silicon manufacturing processes.  The Eon chip may or may not require similar treatment to another make. 

 

It might not really be worth the time and expense to do this, but you could even try sourcing a different chip that you know is supported by the utility that you have, fitting that chip to your board, and then seeing if you can use the utility.  The card might or might not let your PC boot without a valid Flash memory chip on that card - but I think it might just be OK if it is an erased chip with no data - but there's no way to find out without trying.

 

Given that disk controllers with only two or four ports are often quite cheap, personally, I would choose not to spend the time on trying to get any further with the current one.  And I say that despite probably being one of the small minority that would be able persevere with it to if I really needed to. 

[RW]

Thanks so much, S80_UK. Your kindness and expertise is remarkable and I enjoyed reading your responses. This website is privileged to have you as a member.

 

My very best wishes go out to you and this community for accommodating a transient such as myself. May it and you continue to flourish.