Well.... Update? on Sil3132 driver

From AYM, half way down or more:
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/

OS X 10.6 Report (low cost) Sil3132 based PCIe SATA card in 10.6 (w/sonnet drivers)

(10.6 installer scan removes Sil3132 drivers as mentioned in Apple docs, previous posts here. Friday's news had tip on trying Sonnet's drivers.-Mike)

I tried the original drivers and got kernel panics. (where they the RAID 3132 driver or the non-RAID (1.1.9u) driver?-Mike)

It was the 1.1.9U drivers. (which are removed at OS X 10.6 install)

Sonnet Tempo driver ( http://www.sonnettech.com/support/kb/kb.php?cat=345&expand=_a3&action=b146#b146

Ok, while I know this is not the main thread for this, I figure I will post my findings here. This will be a long informative post.

First off let me explain my environment. I am an audio engineer and I use ProTools LE 7.4.2 in an everyday fashion on my Macbook Pro. For this reason I tested Snow Leopard for 2 weeks prior to upgrading this machine on another older Macbook. Of course this did not allow me to test my eSATA card as the Macbook does not have an eSATA slot. I upgraded tonight. And while I am ****** off about the new way SL calculates drive capacity, here is what I have found regarding Sil3132-based eSATA cards:

I have an Addonics non-RAID card, which is obviously based on the Sil3132 chipset. Up until recently I used the SI reference driver, but after SL was released I did a lot of reading and switched to the latest Sonnet driver. Fast forward to post-upgrade: As with the rest of you, Snow Leopard considered my driver to be incompatible. I immediately reinstalled it. Inserted the card and the drives were recognized as they should be. Now for the important part...testing for data corruption. and kernel panics.

While I not really worried about kernel panics so much (I have had a few on Tiger and Leopard related to this card) I am worried about my data being corrupted during file transfers. I plopped an old Hitachi Deskstar (SATA I) 250GB drive into my hot-swap eSATA enclosure and plugged it in. I was in shock when I noticed that the Formatted Capacity stated 248GB...***? I'll save that rant for another thread. I used SuperDuper! to copy my boot volume to the fresh drive. I then verified the clone with Disk Utility. It spat out the error "Volume header need minor repair". At first I was ready to ditch the card, then I searched for the error, and it seems common among clones and actually makes sense, it cannot have the same volume header as the boot drive (/dev/sda). I was not satisfied to I moved on to more testing. I grabbed my trusty Slackware DVD image, which has now grown in size thanks to the new method of measuring drive capacity, gee thanks Apple. I created an MD5 SUM for the file and copied both files to 10 different test folders on the eSATA drive. Tested the MD5 file in all 10 locations and guess what...they all checked out!

*In my opinion, through thorough testing, it is SAFE to reinstall the latest Sonnet SI-3132 driver, so long as you do not try to boot to a 64-bit kernel (which I have NOT tested.*

I am going to speculate that Apple moved this driver to the incompatible folder just to be on the safe side. It is possible that we may see Snow Leopard booting into a 64-bit kernel by 10.6.5 or so, and that would obviously cause issues with a 32-bit kext that mounts volumes. If anyone is interested, all aspects of ProTools 7.4.2 work flawlessly (well as flawlessly as possible for a DigiDesign application) including full interaction with the Mbox (playback/recording).

Unlikely. I have a APIOTEK Sil3132-based Dual Port eSATA Expresscard/34 card running on Snow Leopard. But any of the known drivers available on the net supports to 32 bit Snow Leopard only. Once you boot off into 64 bit Snow Leopard. All external eSATA drivers/storage becomes un-connectable. It is useless.

As this is such a wide spread issue, I think Apple should be working on a resolution to this rather than waiting for the card Manufacturers, seeing as Apple has dropped the Express card slot from most new MacBooks, there is less incentive for the hardware manufacturers to help.

Yap, I had suggested Apple (written to Apple's comment input site) to bundle Sil3132 driver in the Snow Leopard OS Disc on last month. Hopefullly, it will be coming out on next major release pack (10.6.2)

SIL3132 driver for Mac OS X 10.6 is now available!!!!! Upgrade it to immediately for your SIL3132-based ESATA adapter for Macbook Pro now!!!!

Sorry forgot to list the URL for downloads:

http://www.siliconimage.com/support/searchresults.aspx?pid=32&cat=3

Tried the new driver from SI (beta for 10.6.1) on my Mac Pro, but no luck. I installed, restarted, and started up the connected drive. Drive didn't mount and doesn't show up in Disk Utility, but System Profiler sees a pci1095,3132 "Other Mass Storage Controller" with a driver installed.

Any suggestions/help?

Thanks!!!

This is exactly the type of feedback I was looking for in my other thread:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2198562&tstart=30

So the new, beta Silicon Image driver for 10.6 doesn't work for you FTLPhysicsGuy?

What about the new Sonnet driver (which I assume is based on the new Silicon Image driver)?

http://www.sonnettech.com/support/kb/kb.php?cat=339&expand=&action=a3#a3

Any experiences with that one?

BACK IN BUSINESS! The Sonnet driver worked for me! Installed, restarted as instructed, turned on my drive enclosure, and the drive mounted right up.

Thanks so much for the link! Hope it works for others as well.


-Jay

I tried to install this but it errorred during install. I am running 10.6.1. Any thing I might be doing wrong? I am simply double clicking on the mpkg file and following the prompts.

The SONNET driver also worked for me with my IOGEAR GICe702S3R5 PCI express card. I am running Snow Leopard 10.6.1 on a MacPro dual quad-core xeon 3.0 GHz (2006 model).

Many thanks for the help!!

The "new" Silicon Image 3132 driver works just fine for (most if not all) eSATA cards using the SI chip. But as noted, it is a 32 bit driver and will not work if you are running the 64 bit kernel. Since my Mac Pro cannot boot the 64 bit kernel anyway, it's no issue for me. But if you want to run in 64 bit mode, you are still SOL...

I tried the new sonnetnet driver and it works for me in single HDD mode. No raid available.
I am using a 5bay enclosure, even copies from disk to disk (internal enclosure disks) are going to hang up finder...
Copies to only one enclosure disk are working fine!

I think this driver is not able to recognize the portmultiplier function of the enclosure or has trouble to adress read/write access correctly over time...

64bit is not working with sonnet! the silionimage driver for 10.6.x isn't working for me at all...

I tried for months to get my FD Green Drive 1TB External working with a generic ESATA ExpressCard and it finally worked (so far) with the Sonnet driver. The SIL3132 update drivers posted in late January were useless (both raid and non-raid). I have not had a Kernel Panic yet, knock on wood. With the prior Silicon Image drivers I kept having the infamous grey screen of death. I shouldn't have had to look through the entire internet to find a driver. Apple should support this. I believe it is understandable that I am somewhat disappointed in the company for this. Here is the driver which is posted earlier in the discussion: http://www.sonnettech.com/support/kb/kb.php?cat=345&expand=_a3&action=b146#b146