In <B6723777.18DE%info@thrill-inc.com>
info@thrill-inc.com wrote:

> after emailing Sonnet and Acard (this one didnt even respond to my emails)
> someone from Sonnet tech support just told me that Acard wont even give out
> the datasheet to Sonnet's engineers to work with.
> so my question is now,
> do i have ANY chance of getting the card to work at all?

I'm working on support of the Acard AEC-6210 (based on the ATP850U chip).
Currently the device and drives are probed properly but
the driver cannot handle interrupts from the device correctly.

Linux has a driver for AEC-62x0 cards but it seems to rely on
some initialization by the firmware.
(macppc does not recognize the BIOS for PC, of course)

> or maybe there is a possibility of getting SOME card to work (maybe one of
> the PC cards) and if yes, can you (or anyone out there) specifically point
> one out for me so i can go and buy it.

The pciide cards listed on the pciide(4) man page (like Promise and HPT)
_should_ work also on macppc, but you cannot use them as the boot
device unless the Openfirmware recognizes them.

> what is so damn special on their card that they keep that document as a f**
> secret. its not that they reinvented the wheel or anything... its just an
> IDE card... big deal! sorry foe the spamming but i am sooo frustrated right
> now.

Seconded.

I've heard some companies do not have the _formal_ documents
for thier products so they cannot make them public ;-p
---
Izumi Tsutsui
tsutsui@ceres.dti.ne.jp

---
NetBSD 1.5O (LANCER) #62: Sat Dec 30 04:37:11 JST 2000
    tsutsui@:/cvs/netbsd/syssrc/sys/arch/macppc/compile/LANCER
total memory = 65536 KB
avail memory = 56132 KB
using 844 buffers containing 3376 KB of memory
mainbus0 (root)
cpu0 at mainbus0: 603ev (Revision 201), ID 0 (primary)
cpu0: ohare L2 cache enabled
bandit0 at mainbus0
pci0 at bandit0 bus 0
pci0: i/o space, memory space enabled
pchb0 at pci0 dev 11 function 0
pchb0: Apple Computer Bandit Host-PCI Bridge (rev. 0x02)
pciide0 at pci0 dev 13 function 0: Acard ATP850U Ultra33 IDE Controller (rev. 0x01)
pciide0: bus-master DMA support present
pciide0: primary channel wired to native-PCI mode
pciide0: using irq 23 for native-PCI interrupt
wd1 at pciide0 channel 0 drive 0: <QUANTUM FIREBALLlct08 04>
wd1: drive supports 16-sector PIO transfers, LBA addressing
wd1: 4110 MB, 14848 cyl, 9 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 8418816 sectors
wd1: drive supports PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2, Ultra-DMA mode 4 (Ultra/66)
wd1(pciide0:0:0): using PIO mode 4, Ultra-DMA mode 2 (Ultra/33) (using DMA data transfers)
pciide0: secondary channel wired to native-PCI mode

[..snip..]

# disklabel wd1
pciide0:0:0: lost interrupt
	type: ata tc_bcount: 512 tc_skip: 0
pciide0:0:0: lost interrupt
	type: ata tc_bcount: 512 tc_skip: 0
pciide0:0:0: lost interrupt
	type: ata tc_bcount: 512 tc_skip: 0
pciide0:0:0: lost interrupt
	type: ata tc_bcount: 512 tc_skip: 0
pciide0:0:0: lost interrupt
	type: ata tc_bcount: 512 tc_skip: 0
pciide0:0:0: lost interrupt
	type: ata tc_bcount: 512 tc_skip: 0
pciide0:0:0: lost interrupt
	type: ata tc_bcount: 512 tc_skip: 0
pciide0:0:0: lost interrupt
	type: ata tc_bcount: 512 tc_skip: 0
# /dev/rwd1c:
type: ESDI
disk: QUANTUM FIREBALL
label: fictitious
flags:
bytes/sector: 512
sectors/track: 63
tracks/cylinder: 9
sectors/cylinder: 567
cylinders: 14848
total sectors: 8418816
rpm: 3600
interleave: 1
trackskew: 0
cylinderskew: 0
headswitch: 0           # microseconds
track-to-track seek: 0  # microseconds
drivedata: 0 

3 partitions:
#        size   offset     fstype   [fsize bsize   cpg]
  a:  4192902       63      MSDOS                        # (Cyl.    0*- 7394)
  b:  4225095  4192965    unknown                        # (Cyl. 7395 - 14846*)
  c:  8418816        0     unused        0     0         # (Cyl.    0 - 14847)
disklabel: boot block size 0
disklabel: super block size 0
pciide0:0:0: lost interrupt
	type: ata tc_bcount: 0 tc_skip: 0
#