sil3114 versus sil3114a

[Vladimir Konrad]

> if you are planning to use the Sil3114 in a raid, I don't recommend it. I've
> been using it a while, but FreeBSD doesn't support the raid that you create
> using the bios. Thus, if you're planning to do a dual boot (ie. Windows),
> it's a bad idea because you can't use the raid features then. Besides, I've
> noticed (from using it myself for half a year), that it's stability isn't
> really that good.
i am not planning using a raid in bios/harware, but raid5 using vinum. 

so the sil3114 raid is flaky but no raid sata channels are stable?

also, are sil3114 and sil3114a both supported? (the one i am thinking of
using is sil3114a).

> What I propose is to check whether the motherboard has some other raid
> controller (i.e. for a NForce4 motherboard, the Nvidia Raid) that is
> supported and use that one.

this is not on-board chip set but an add-on PCI card (4 port serial
ata). basically, i need 4 serial ata ports in an older intel machine and
could not find info on a 4 port non-raid sata card supported by FreeBSD.
The one i found uses the sil3114a chip set.

> If, on the other hand, you don't need raid features, it should work without
> problems.

with the sil3114a chip?

vlad

ps: i know that the description of the chip set is only different by the
letter "a" but in principle the hardware could differ significantly.