Re: [SeaBIOS] Issues with ASRock E350M1

[Scott Duplichan]

Marshall Buschman wrote:

]Or not! It's back. Same issue as before.
]
]Quoting [e-mail]:
]
]> Mystery solved - the drive's shipping firmware was causing this  
]> behavior - an upgrade to the latest firmware (2.0) resolves this.
]>
]> Thanks!
]> -Marshall Buschman
]>
]> Quoting [e-mail]:
]>
]>> I should mention that a 16gb Kingston SSD I have works just fine,  
]>> as well as a 500gb traditional hard disk.
]>> Looks like this might be a problem with the disk itself. I know the  
]>> Sandforce controllers do all kinds of "smart" things like  
]>> compressing data to achieve greater throughput. I'll investigate  
]>> and see what I can find.

Hello Marshall,

An SSD drive I bought for boot time testing also has the
SandForce sf-1200 controller:
http://www.mushkin.com/Digital-Storage/SSDs/MKNSSDCL40GB-DX.aspx

I have not noticed any detection problem with it. Let me know 
if there is any experiment I could do with it.

Thanks,
Scott

Issues with ASRock E350M1

[Marshall Buschman]

I picked up another sandforce SSD myself, an OCZ vertex 2 120gb. 
Absolutely no issues.
I hacked around in the SeaBIOS AHCI code a bit.
Adding 100ms of wait between the port reset and the probe causes the 
drive to work properly, but this is a really, really bad hack -- and 
from what Kevin was saying earlier, the drive reports ready and is not.

I'm inclined to believe that Corsair did a very poor job of implementing 
their firmware (which is sad, because typically, I find Corsair products 
to be of high quality), and that this drive only works at all because 
legacy BIOS systems take virtually forever to start, and this conceals 
the failure of the Corsair firmware to behave properly.

I suppose the question is .. do we have any desire to support hideously 
broken disk firmware? If so, I will hold onto the disk so we can test 
with it (as nothing else that I have behaves this way -- even mechanical 
disks work fine) - otherwise, I'll be returning it to the place that I 
bought it from as defective, which it is.

Thanks!
-Marshall Buschman

On 6/5/2011 2:46 AM, Scott Duplichan wrote:
> Marshall Buschman wrote:
>
> ]Or not! It's back. Same issue as before.
> ]
> ]Quoting [e-mail]:
> ]
> ]>  Mystery solved - the drive's shipping firmware was causing this
> ]>  behavior - an upgrade to the latest firmware (2.0) resolves this.
> ]>
> ]>  Thanks!
> ]>  -Marshall Buschman
> ]>
> ]>  Quoting [e-mail]:
> ]>
> ]>>  I should mention that a 16gb Kingston SSD I have works just fine,
> ]>>  as well as a 500gb traditional hard disk.
> ]>>  Looks like this might be a problem with the disk itself. I know the
> ]>>  Sandforce controllers do all kinds of "smart" things like
> ]>>  compressing data to achieve greater throughput. I'll investigate
> ]>>  and see what I can find.
>
> Hello Marshall,
>
> An SSD drive I bought for boot time testing also has the
> SandForce sf-1200 controller:
> http://www.mushkin.com/Digital-Storage/SSDs/MKNSSDCL40GB-DX.aspx
>
> I have not noticed any detection problem with it. Let me know
> if there is any experiment I could do with it.
>
> Thanks,
> Scott
>
> SeaBIOS mailing list
> [e-mail]
> http://www.seabios.org/mailman/listinfo/seabios

Issues with ASRock E350M1

[Marshall Buschman]

More food for thought - the device works just fine with Linux as the 
payload.

On 06/05/2011 01:22 PM, Marshall Buschman wrote:
> I picked up another sandforce SSD myself, an OCZ vertex 2 120gb. 
> Absolutely no issues.
> I hacked around in the SeaBIOS AHCI code a bit.
> Adding 100ms of wait between the port reset and the probe causes the 
> drive to work properly, but this is a really, really bad hack -- and 
> from what Kevin was saying earlier, the drive reports ready and is not.
>
> I'm inclined to believe that Corsair did a very poor job of 
> implementing their firmware (which is sad, because typically, I find 
> Corsair products to be of high quality), and that this drive only 
> works at all because legacy BIOS systems take virtually forever to 
> start, and this conceals the failure of the Corsair firmware to behave 
> properly.
>
> I suppose the question is .. do we have any desire to support 
> hideously broken disk firmware? If so, I will hold onto the disk so we 
> can test with it (as nothing else that I have behaves this way -- even 
> mechanical disks work fine) - otherwise, I'll be returning it to the 
> place that I bought it from as defective, which it is.
>
> Thanks!
> -Marshall Buschman
>
> On 6/5/2011 2:46 AM, Scott Duplichan wrote:
> > Marshall Buschman wrote:
> >
> > ]Or not! It's back. Same issue as before.
> > ]
> > ]Quoting [e-mail]:
> > ]
> > ]>  Mystery solved - the drive's shipping firmware was causing this
> > ]>  behavior - an upgrade to the latest firmware (2.0) resolves this.
> > ]>
> > ]>  Thanks!
> > ]>  -Marshall Buschman
> > ]>
> > ]>  Quoting [e-mail]:
> > ]>
> > ]>>  I should mention that a 16gb Kingston SSD I have works just fine,
> > ]>>  as well as a 500gb traditional hard disk.
> > ]>>  Looks like this might be a problem with the disk itself. I know the
> > ]>>  Sandforce controllers do all kinds of "smart" things like
> > ]>>  compressing data to achieve greater throughput. I'll investigate
> > ]>>  and see what I can find.
> >
> > Hello Marshall,
> >
> > An SSD drive I bought for boot time testing also has the
> > SandForce sf-1200 controller:
> > http://www.mushkin.com/Digital-Storage/SSDs/MKNSSDCL40GB-DX.aspx
> >
> > I have not noticed any detection problem with it. Let me know
> > if there is any experiment I could do with it.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Scott
> >
> > SeaBIOS mailing list
> > [e-mail]
> > http://www.seabios.org/mailman/listinfo/seabios
>
> SeaBIOS mailing list
> [e-mail]
> http://www.seabios.org/mailman/listinfo/seabios