Mathey MSATA-13UMAC IDE/SATA card

[finkmac]

Got this card a few months back.

Mathey MSATA-13UMAC. Combo IDE/SATA PCI card based on a common VIA ref design.

specs here:



firmware seems to originally made for this card by Projovian

that page claims 8.1 compatibility, which should mean sys7 compatibility

note, i was too lazy to actually verify booting. it did show up in the system profiler / tattletech though.

firmware ROM is a W49V002AP PLCC32

in theory you could flash a regular VIA VT6421L card with this firmware and it would just work.

wanna try? you know you want to...

 

[macuserman]

Whoah you found one! How the hey people have been on the hunt for this forever!

 

[macuserman]

This might be a game changer, get us out from under the thumb of the pompous $%@! that is sataman/firmtek. This opens up lots of possibilities.

 

[eastone]

@finkmac
Wow, you've done the impossible!!!! I have two cards based on this chip, one combo with USB. I've ordered new eeptoms and will see if that works. Thanks a lot for this find.

 

[ArmorAlley]

Does this card require drivers to be installed?

 

[joevt]

The 256K ROM has one PCI option ROM. The image is for Open Firmware (no BIOS image). The fcode includes an ndrv for classic Mac OS and a mkext for Mac OS X.

The fcode is interesting because most of the words are named. I think the ROM was still in development? A release version would probably remove all the names. There's also some test code for a specific device path which is valid only for specific Macs:
/pci@f2000000/pci-bridge/xsense-sata/disk
But the device name is "mathey-eSATA-ATA-Combo-Mac", not "xsense-sata", so that test code is meant for some other PCI card?

 

[Compgeke]

As it turns out, I have one of these too! I bought a card at a flea market to try and flash with this firmware, and as it turns out, it's already a Mac card.

Mine's showing up as an XRack SUA100. It's also got a VIA VT6421A instead of an L like the Mathey has. I can confirm it will boot under Classic Mac OS no problem. I'll try and get the ROM dumped as soon as I can get my hands on some hot air.

 

[supernova777]

nice one boys
yea this one supports IDE + SATA x 2 i think
anyone test the firmware on any other VIA cards?

VIA VT6421A chipset is actually a HW RAID controller chipset...
maybe theres a way to have a SATA 2 device raid aswell as a PATA 2 device raid with this card....
i dunno if it ever supported RAID tho probably not but it might have

If someone can figure out how to clone the firmware to a generic card this could make alot of macs boot again