Abit AB9 Pro?

[mikester]

Anyone used the ABit AB9 Pro for their build?  It has 9 internal and 1 external SATA2 ports built in, and right now you can get it from Newegg for $109 after rebate.  Looks like the best bang/buck deal out there.

[mikester]

Well, I was at Fry's tonight, and they had this mobo for the same price as Newegg (except for the rebate, but I hate dealing with those anyway).  Besides, I prefer to buy motherboards locally, because I've had more DOA motherboards than any other component, so easy returns are a plus.

 

I'll report back how it works with Unraid once I get it setup.

[RockDawg]

Good luck!  I hope it works like a charm for ya.  That's a lot of onboard SATA! 

[mikester]

Well, I tried everything I could think of, but I just couldn't get this motherboard to boot off the USB flash.  I ended up returning it and ordered an Asus P5B-E.  It has 2 fewer ports for the same price, but it's been proven to work with Unraid, so that's worth something.

[parsec]

Could that be a vote for "not working" with 4.0 ?

/Rene

[limetech]

In future, you can send me an email [email protected] and I can spend some time trying to resolve such issues.

 

[mikester]

Ok, I decided to give this motherboard another shot, and it works!  I had swapped it out for an Asus P5B-E, and I had the same problem with it not booting off the USB key.  After I solved the problem for the Asus (had to do syslinux with some switches set on the command line - search the forums for more info), I thought maybe the problem affected all of the Intel 965 chipsets, so I picked up another AB9 Pro to give it a shot.

 

Here are a couple of notes to keep in mind when working with this motherboard:

 

1) There are 3 different SATA controllers on board, for a total of 10 SATA ports!  9 are internal, and 1 external.  All of the SATA controllers work in UnRAID.  I set both the Intel and JMicron controllers to AHCI mode.  I think the Intel will work either way, but I know from using the P5B-E that the JMicron only works in AHCI mode.  The Silicon Image controller only works in IDE mode, which works fine with UnRAID for that controller.

 

2) The IDE ports are NOT recognized by UnRAID.  I think this is because they are handled by the JMicron controller, and the Linux drivers only support that controller in AHCI mode (which doesn't apply to the IDE ports, even when you set the AHCI option in the BIOS).  I think this will be a common problem with newer motherboards, since Intel has dropped IDE support from their newer southbridges.  If you need a mixed system, you can always add in a PCI controller card (although when I did this it dropped my parity sync rate by 25%, so no thanks).

 

3) The board comes with dual gigabit lan ports, but at least on my board only the LAN 1 port worked.  This is strange, because both ports appear to be Realtek devices, which are supported well in UnRAID.  Perhaps I just have a defective one on my board - maybe others can comment when they try this board if both LAN ports work.

 

4) USB boot is a little slow - it takes about 10 minutes for my Sandisk Cruzer 256MB to boot up.  I've seen this on other boards I've tried, with the boot taking anywhere from 3-10 minutes.  It just seems to be luck of the draw with how they implement the BIOS.  Fortunately, I rarely find myself rebooting my UnRAID server during normal operation, so I can live with this.

 

Overall, I give this board two big thumbs up.  If you are putting together an all-SATA UnRAID system, this board should be at the top of your list, along with the Asus P5B-E.  They are about the same price locally, or even better if you order the Abit from Newegg right now with the $30 rebate.  But the ABit gives you 2 extra internal SATA ports.  Performance was about the same for me - with 6 SATA drives spread out between all the controllers, I get parity sync rates of about 57MB/s on the ABit and 59MB/s on the Asus.

 

[limetech]

Great report!

 

1) Whey you say the Silicon Image controller only works in IDE mode, do you mean that attached SATA drives appear as "IDE" drives (ie, as /dev/hda, /dev/hdb, ...)?

 

2) I'll try to look into JMicro IDE problem.

 

3) For current unRAID OS, only 1 LAN port is supported (though linux guy might get both going with enough tinkering).  Does the bios give you the ability to enable/disable either one?  If so, try both ports that way, ie, first port 1 enabled, port 2 disabled, then other way around.

 

4) Regarding USB boot - look for options in bios for setting "USB2.0" mode.  10 minutes is waaaay too long and it's probably using USB1.1 for some reason.

 

 

 

 

[mikester]

1) What I mean is that for the Intel and JMicron controllers, they each have a setting in the BIOS called "SATA Mode" which can be set to IDE, AHCI, or RAID.  For the Silicon Image controller, the only options are RAID and IDE.  From playing around with the settings, it appears that the Silicon Image and Intel controllers can be recognized in IDE mode, but the JMicron controller must be in AHCI mode for UnRAid to see it.  I think I saw in another thread here that this is a limitation of the Linux drivers.

 

2) When I was playing around with the Asus P5B-E, it specifically said in the BIOS that the AHCI mode for the JMicron controller only applied to the SATA devices, and that ATA devices would be in IDE mode.  If what I read about the JMicron driver only supporting AHCI is correct, that would explain why the ATA drives are not detected.

 

3) I tried using a single LAN port at a time (and disabling the other port in the BIOS) and it still only works for LAN1.

 

4) I've tried every setting in the BIOS I can find related to USB, and nothing seems to help.  I don't think it's my USB key, because it was pretty speedy with the other 2 motherboards I used.  I think I saw on Abit's forum that there is a BIOS update available.  I'm usually hesitant to flash the BIOS unless I am having major problems, but maybe I'll give it a shot while the board is still new (so if I brick it, I can return it to Fry's).