YKhan wrote:
On May 8, 9:30 pm, "W" wrote:
"Yousuf Khan" wrote in message
Maybe this, then?
Newegg.ca - VANTEC 2-Port SATA II-150 PCI Host Card Model UGT-ST200
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...82E16815102102
You can find 100 such cards on every retail web site. The point of my
question was to get recommendations for a specific card that someone had
experience with, specifically does the card have a BIOS configuration UI
that lives in the preboot environment so that I could explicitly enable the
card as a boot device.
I only know for sure that the PCIe eSATA card that I pointed to first
does have its own BIOS, since I use that card. I don't know about the
second one, though.
According to one of the entries in that card's comments, they said
that they had to update the card's BIOS to get it to work with their
system, so that might indicate it's got some kind of a BIOS of its
own. But the commenter might actually be talking mistakenly about the
system BIOS rather than the card BIOS, hard to say.
It might be best to look for a PCI-SATA RAID card, as those would be
guaranteed to have their own BIOS. Something like this (it's much more
expensive than the previous one):
Newegg.ca - HighPoint RocketRaid1522A PCI SATA External Controller
Card
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...82E16816115035
It seems the world is filled with $25 eSATA cards that have minimal software
and minimal support. I would not mind spending $100 for something that is
top notch, extremely robust, and well supported in software and by email.
--
W
Yousuf Khan
The cards have an EEPROM, which holds Extended INT 0x13 code. If
that code is present, the BIOS reads in that code during POST.
And any disks off the card, can then be considered as boot
candidates. The EEPROM can also contain code, such as RAID
management code, so a user can create an array from the comfort
of their BIOS setup screen. So the code in the EEPROM on the
card, can provide two functions - Extended INT 0x13 for reading
sectors for boot purposes, as well as the ability to have
a "control panel in the BIOS" for setting up arrays.
There's an example here, of a card with an EEPROM on it. The
paper label stuck on the EEPROM, is for the manufacturer to keep
track of what kind of program was stored in it. With a lot of the
SIL3112 cards, customers spend most of their time changing the
code in there (as customers buy the "vanilla" card and want to
run a RAID array, or buy the "RAID" card and want to run the
ports in vanilla mode). To do that kind of flashing, you need
the flasher program, as well as the binary file with the code
in it, to do the updating. SiliconImage on their website, used
to provide such things. It's a distraction that I bet a lot
of customers could do without (i.e. find a solution where one
code performs all flavors). Even a switch or a jumper on the card,
would be better than having to screw around with flashers.
http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggIma...104-219-16.jpg
As far as I know, that code lives in "config space". And when the
code is loaded during POST, it is located below 640K, in a 128KB
area set aside for it. Once the system is booted, then it doesn't
really matter what happens in there. The VESA BIOS code copied
from the video card during POST, also lives in that 128KB area.
Even peripheral chips on the motherboard, have code modules
provided for them. The motherboard BIOS image is modular, and
is a miniature file system. As an example, a NIC chip can have
a PXE code module, so that the BIOS can "net boot" via the NIC.
With the appropriate BIOS tools, it's possible to review what
modules are present in the BIOS. For things like the PXE code
module, there is probably also a BIOS setting, to disable
that code module if you don't want it. On my motherboard, the
options a
Marvell Gigabit LAN [Enabled]
LAN Boot ROM [Disabled]
I can leave the so-called Boot ROM disabled on that, because
I have no devices on the network for serving up an OS image
to boot from.
Paul