Linux and Acard AEC-6897 PCI-X ATA controller?

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.os.linux.hardware,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage (More info?)

I'm in the market for a four-channel PCI-X 64-bit ATA (not SATA)
controller card
(<URL:http://groups.google.ca/groups?selm=slrncvkvig.phj.ylee%40pobox.com>)
and was referred to the Acard AEC-6897. However, there's no
information on whether this will work with the Linux 2.6 kernel,
specifically for software RAID. Anyone with firsthand experience, good
or bad?

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[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.os.linux.hardware,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage (More info?)

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Yeechang Lee <ylee@pobox.com> wrote:
> I'm in the market for a four-channel PCI-X 64-bit ATA (not SATA)
> controller card
> (<URL:http://groups.google.ca/groups?selm=slrncvkvig.phj.ylee%40pobox.com>)
> and was referred to the Acard AEC-6897. However, there's no
> information on whether this will work with the Linux 2.6 kernel,
> specifically for software RAID. Anyone with firsthand experience, good
> or bad?

If it works for individual drives, then it works for software
RAID. The potentially negative effect I know of is bad performance, as
IDE has some troubles with two drives on one channel being used
simultaneously.

There is support for Acard AEC62xx (Artop ATP8xx) controllers in
the 2.6.10-as2 kernel. Whether they are compatible with your cards,
I have no idea and the driver source files are unhelpful.

The AEC webpage lists Linux Support as "comming soon", so it likely
is not there yet. Still, generic IDE support and the more specific
AEC driver may work both or fail miserably.

Maybe you should get two Promise 100tx2 or 133tx2 in the meantime
and wait a bit for a PCI-X solution. If you put only one disk
in a channel, the promise controllers are pretty fast and work
well under Linux. They also work in pairs, with one BIOS then
controlling both cards on boot-up. (Later the kernel takes over.)

Arno
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