Quote:
|
Originally Posted by phaedrus
I think this is a hardware limitation - probably the Promise controller and/or its BIOS.
I have a 4100 which started life as a Dell 705n. It's running 3.4.805 which is 48bitLBA compatible unlike 3.4.803 which is not. 4.0.830 is also 48bitLBA capable, but only on suitable hardware.
|
Which is not really true. If you "bios pci", you get the vendor and product ID's.
Devices on the PCI bus:
# 0 0 0x8086 0x7100 *430 TX Chipset memory controler
# 0 7 0x8086 0x7110 *82371AB (PIIX4) PCI-to-ISA Bridge (fcn 0)
# 0 9 0x8086 0x1209 Intel
# 0 10 0x105A 0x0D30
# 0 11 0x105A 0x0D30
The last 2 are the IDE-Controlers, which has just the same Vendor and Product-IDs as Promise FastTrak 100. Earlier FastTrack had problems with 48bit LBA, but flashing the cards with a newer BIOS resolved the problem.
This is still no answer on how to enable 48bit LBA on 4100 with to old BIOS, but I see no reason why it should not work. There are 2 ways updating a Snap-server:
1. With a newer OS - normally resides in a flashrom
2. with a newer BIOS file with either TFTP or bootp (bios Flup [T=>TFTP, B=>Broadcast])
I also get
11/29/2005 9:41:49 98 D SYS | IDE: A 48 bit LBA capable Hard Drive was detected ...
11/29/2005 9:41:49 98 D SYS | IDE: 48 bit LBA is not supported on 4100 and 12000 platforms.
on my 4100's here, but I guess that's not true by hardware, but true by Adaptec. If anyone get connection to
11/29/2005 9:41:49 98 D SYS | Executable built by KEVIN
he could tell us how to flash a newer BIOS. Another approuch is to extract the BIOS from another 4100 with working 48bit LBA. Setting up a bootp-Server is not really complicated and TFTP is a well known service. We still don't know, if the BIOS file needs to be packed or altered in any way to get flashed.
Last chance: desolder the controler-chips, put them on a FastTrack and update their BIOS in a PC... ^^
There are several hints how to hack onboard Promise chips on ASUS and other motherboards. Promise uses the same chip for standard IDE and for RAID 0/1-devices. You can extract the Promise-BIOS from the motherboard-BIOS and include the other BIOS to change the Promise into something else (the device ID will change - beware!). All we need is a 4100-BIOS with or without working 48bit-LBA and some time to find the Promise-code inside the BIOS. And a hint on how the file must be provided by TFTP or bootp.
btw.. I wonder if you can boot eg. DSL with bootp.. hmmm...
Guess I gonna play a bit with "bios Flup B"...
