I know I should be going straight to the Silicon Image support but I thought I would try you guys first!

 

Anyway, I decided to buy two eBay cheap SATA cards.. Making sure they were Sil3132 based.

 

 

I did some reading after 3 of my discs stopped showing up once I plugged the card in and found out I had to flash the RAID card to the BASE firmware.

 

 

Have I bought one that CAN'T be flashable?

In UpdFlash (DOS) it asks me to 'Select flash memory type:' followed by 15 choices. None of them seem to work at ALL.

 

Is it possible to force flash this card? I don't care if it bricks since it looks like I will be buying a new one anyway...

Possibly not 'flashable', but more likely defective, or conflicting with something else.  Does the Device Manager show any red or yellow flags by this or other devices?  They should not have caused other drives to drop out, under any conditions.

 

It's been awhile, but I *think* the RAID firmware should have produced the word 'RAID' somewhere up there.  Also, I used to think it was necessary to flash to the the Base version, but have heard from other users that they did not bother flashing it, and it worked fine for them.  The version showing should be fine.  It is not the latest, but is only one back, and is either the same as what I have, or newer than what I am using, quite successfully (can't check for sure just now).

 

I doubt you will get much help from Silicon Image, but worth a shot.

 

Very long shot, is there possibly another SiI3132 chipset already onboard?

 

Another long shot, try an older or newer version of Updflash and SiFlashTool.  Otherwise, you have already tried just about everything already.  I'd be thinking about returning them.  Even if by some remote chance it worked, forcing it may not give you any confidence in the card, enough to trust it with your data.

 

Edit:  Also, I don't remember ever seeing choices for flash memory type.  That seems odd.

They work fine in my main PC and I can see the RAID BIOS and drives attached, I can also access the drives in Windows.

have heard from other users that they did not bother flashing it, and it worked fine for them.

Edit:  Also, I don't remember ever seeing choices for flash memory type.  That seems odd.

 

I'm using the raid bios without issue.

also I get the various memory types, but my card did not flash either.

 

 

The possibility of conflict with a motherboard version of SIL chipset also exists.

I had to be careful with my ABIT AB9 PRO.

 

have heard from other users that they did not bother flashing it, and it worked fine for them.

Edit:  Also, I don't remember ever seeing choices for flash memory type.  That seems odd.

 

I'm using the raid bios without issue.

also I get the various memory types, but my card did not flash either.

 

 

The possibility of conflict with a motherboard version of SIL chipset also exists.

I had to be careful with my ABIT AB9 PRO.

 

 

I also have an ABIT AB9 PRO, how did you get yours working? Is their any specific BIOS settings I need to use?