Driver needed for Promise PDC42819 SATA/SAS controller

Mark Nelson mdnelson8 at gmail.com
Wed Aug 6 03:04:23 UTC 2008


Hi Greg,

I think I have an addition for the following list:
http://www.linuxdriverproject.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/DriversNeeded

I recently bought an MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard and it has a
Promise SATA/SAS RAID (fakeraid) controller onboard that is not
currently supported by the Linux kernel (as far as I can tell anyway).

References to the controller in the motherboard manual and the
motherboard manufacturer's website: Promise T3 [1]

Written on the actual chip on the motherboard: Promise PDC42819 [2]

This chip is also used on Promise's own FastTrak TX2650 & TX4650
adapters [3] which have "partial open source" drivers [4], [5]. This
driver looks like an open source wrapper around a binary blob (some
fasttrak library for software fake raid, I think).

Having a quick look through the source of Promise's driver, it looks
like the driver has been hacked up out of a driver that was originally
used for fakeraid on ATI and intel southbridges as well as Promise's
SX4 adapter (and some Promise adapter called the OCTOPUSII).

Promise has an open source commitment written on its werbsite [6] but
it just relates to their SuperTrak products (not their FastTrak ones)
and the stex driver.

The following is the hunk of lspci output that refers to the controller:

02:00.0 RAID bus controller [0104]: Promise Technology, Inc. Unknown
device [105a:3f20]
	Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. Unknown device [1462:3716]
	Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr-
Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B- DisINTx-
	Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort-
<TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR+ <PERR- INTx-
	Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 64 bytes
	Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 10
	Region 0: I/O ports at c800 [size=128]
	Region 2: I/O ports at c400 [size=256]
	Region 3: Memory at fbeff000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
	Region 4: Memory at fbec0000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=128K]
	Region 5: Memory at fbefc000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K]
	Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2
		Flags: PMEClk- DSI+ D1+ D2- AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
		Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-
	Capabilities: [70] Express (v1) Legacy Endpoint, MSI 00
		DevCap:	MaxPayload 256 bytes, PhantFunc 0, Latency L0s <64ns, L1 <1us
			ExtTag- AttnBtn- AttnInd- PwrInd- RBE- FLReset-
		DevCtl:	Report errors: Correctable- Non-Fatal- Fatal- Unsupported-
			RlxdOrd+ ExtTag- PhantFunc- AuxPwr- NoSnoop+
			MaxPayload 128 bytes, MaxReadReq 512 bytes
		DevSta:	CorrErr- UncorrErr+ FatalErr- UnsuppReq+ AuxPwr- TransPend-
		LnkCap:	Port #0, Speed 2.5GT/s, Width x1, ASPM L0s L1, Latency L0
<64ns, L1 <1us
			ClockPM- Suprise- LLActRep- BwNot-
		LnkCtl:	ASPM L1 Enabled; RCB 64 bytes Disabled- Retrain- CommClk+
			ExtSynch- ClockPM- AutWidDis- BWInt- AutBWInt-
		LnkSta:	Speed 2.5GT/s, Width x1, TrErr- Train- SlotClk- DLActive-
BWMgmt- ABWMgmt-
	Capabilities: [94] SATA HBA <?>
	Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting <?>
	Capabilities: [140] Virtual Channel <?>
	Capabilities: [160] Device Serial Number 01-00-00-00-02-00-00-00
	Capabilities: [170] Power Budgeting <?>

Is this Promise controller a suitable candidate for the DriversNeeded list?

Many thanks!

Mark


[1] http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?func=proddesc&prod_no=1332
[2] http://www.3dnews.ru/_imgdata/img/2008/01/25/72299.jpg
[3] http://www.promise.com/product/product_detail.asp?product_id=191#
[4] http://www.promise.com/support/download/download2_eng.asp?productID=191&category=all&os=100
[5] http://www.promise.com/upload/Support/Driver/FT%20TX4650-2650%20Linux%20Kernl%202.6%20PSC%20v1.1.0.12.tgz
[6] http://www.promise.com/product/linux/linux_eng.asp



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