Solaris SATA support for onboard chipsets

This page is designed to consolidate my findings on (Open)Solaris support for SATA chipsets found on motherboards and cheap SATA controllers. It’s easy enough to find out if your Promise or 3ware controller is supported because they are listed explicity. To discover if a motherboard works under Solaris I had to trawl through the compatability lists, work out what board worked, and then find out the chipset. Mostly it was easy enough because the search results contained a lit of the info, but I have collated it below to save others (well, at least Rob from work) the trouble.

I mainly searched for the keyword “SATA” on this page: http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/search.jsp

Here ’tis:

SiS 661GX – Yes
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/data/systems/details/1652.html

VIA K8T800 – Yes
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/data/systems/details/1606.html
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/data/systems/details/1665.html

VIA K8T800 Pro – No
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/data/systems/details/1682.html
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/data/systems/details/1657.html

VIA KTM800 – Yes
http://blogs.sun.com/PotstickerGuru/entry/the_cheap_solaris_64_bit

VIA K8T890 – Yes
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/data/systems/details/1633.html

Nforce 4 Pro – Yes
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/data/systems/details/1675.html

Intel 915P – Yes
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/data/systems/details/1664.html

NVIDIA nForce4 4X – Yes
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/data/systems/details/1878.html
http://blogs.sun.com/chrisg/entry/home_server_hardware_configuration

Sil 3114 – Yes
http://blogs.sun.com/PlasticPixel/entry/build_your_own_multi_terabyte
(something like this: Skymaster SATA PCI CARD )

Sil 3132 – No
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/data/systems/details/1662.html

ATI RADEON XPRESS 200 – No
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/data/systems/details/1631.html

Sil 3112, Sil 3512, ICH5, ICH5R, ICH6, ICH6R (also Sil 3114 again) – Yes
http://forum.sun.com/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=66613&tstart=150
http://blogs.sun.com/nachiketa/entry/general_notes_on_sata_support

ICH7R – Yes
http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=9482
—–

It’s interesting that while the VIA K8T800 Pro is not supported, that the VIA K8T800 (non-pro) is. Also, the VIA K8T890 works, but there is no mention of the K8M890 – although the M variant of the K8T800 works so that’s a good hint it will be ok.

Most of the HCL postings note that the BIOS must be set to have the SATA interface in IDE compatability mode. One of the blogs referenced above is a Sun employee blog and he discusses Solaris x86 hardware shopping – a good guide for anyone interested in what kit will work.

If I’ve missed any or I am wrong, please let me know. I’m no expert, and I might be wrong, so check it yourself first and don’t come to me if it doesn’t work. IANAL, YMMV, do your research first before you buy anything and expect it to work (the links are right there to read after all). Otherwise, good luck!

[EDIT 2006-12-27]: Add K8M800 listing, and update discussion to match.