[wellylug] PCI SATA controllers

[David Antliff]

On 19/12/2007, John Durham <john.modec at xtra.co.nz> wrote:
> David Antliff wrote:
> > Has anyone had any experience with Linux and PCI (not PCI-express)
> > SATA controllers such as this one:
[snip]
> O'Reilly's "Linux Device Drivers" is a good book. While I don't write
> drivers, after reading through it I could see how it would help if I
> were ever in the need.
> Sean

Hi John,

Thanks for the info - I actually have that book. It's sitting on my
desk less than 1m away. In fact I have both the first and second
edition. However, I'm not yet at the point where I want to write my
own driver.

What I'm really looking for is first-hand experience that can indicate:

a). whether PCI SATA adapters (used to install a SATA hard disk in an
older machine) tend to work out-of-the-box in Linux, and
b). are there any particular things to look out for with these
controllers. Chipset perhaps. E.g. with some hardware RAID
controllers, Linux drivers can be a big issue.

SATA adapters aren't necessarily RAID controllers, but some are. I
just want something simple to connect a SATA hard disk to a
motherboard that doesn't do SATA, via the PCI bus.

Regards,

-- 
David.