SunTzuTech
New Member
So I found a couple of old Athlon XP systems, and wondered how'd they work.
A big box computer store has some really cheap 120GB/240GB SSDs and the speedup I got on an old Lenovo R61 with one of those SSDs made the system really usable, so I bought a couple SSDs to test those Athlon systems with.
2 Systems. 1) Asrock A7KTA Pro 2) HP Pavillion A620n (XP 3200+, Asus A7V8X-LA)
Both systems are VIA chipset (8237 Southbridge, VT6420 via raid/sata controller)
None of those systems recognize any SATA3 disk (HD or SSD) in the BIOS. Suspect that it has to do with the bugs in those chipsets (https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Sata_via)
Found an older SATA2 disk, and could see that disk on the MB SATA ports. Installed BL Lithium on the Asrock MB on the SATA2 device. Still can't see one of the SSDs on the other onboard port.
The HP Pavilion A620N still had a valid Windows XP. Installed the VIA drivers from the website, and couldn't see the SSD.
Tried a VT6421a raid card. The VIA drivers recognized the card. Once the system booted, the VIA RAID could see and format the SSD. Even after rebooting, the SATA card doesn't report the disk.
Tried an Adaptec SA1205 (Si3112 chipset). Same problem. Can't see the disk.
All those controllers seem to exhibit the inability to initialize at SATA3 back to SATA1 at boot time, but the Windows Raid software definitely seems able to recognize the SSD once windows was booted.
Picked up a cheap PCI Si3114 and threw it in the Pavilion A620N. System posts through, reports the Si3114 and it says "SSD". Silicon Image BIOS reports the correct stats for the SSD. Loading the drivers. I can format the disk.
Now looking at figuring out how to clone to the new SSD and getting it to boot XP.
Yes, I'm aware that SATA1 doesn't do trim, but for a $17 SSD, I'm not too concerned about it for an old system. It's gotta be better than an old 5400rpm IDE disk.
I also found a PCI SATA2 controller available. But I'm going to hold off on that. SATA2 would saturate the PCI bus and the only thing it buys me is SATA2 management (trim) of an SSD.
Figured I'd save some folks some head banging regarding old SATA1 controllers and SSDs.
A big box computer store has some really cheap 120GB/240GB SSDs and the speedup I got on an old Lenovo R61 with one of those SSDs made the system really usable, so I bought a couple SSDs to test those Athlon systems with.
2 Systems. 1) Asrock A7KTA Pro 2) HP Pavillion A620n (XP 3200+, Asus A7V8X-LA)
Both systems are VIA chipset (8237 Southbridge, VT6420 via raid/sata controller)
None of those systems recognize any SATA3 disk (HD or SSD) in the BIOS. Suspect that it has to do with the bugs in those chipsets (https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Sata_via)
Found an older SATA2 disk, and could see that disk on the MB SATA ports. Installed BL Lithium on the Asrock MB on the SATA2 device. Still can't see one of the SSDs on the other onboard port.
The HP Pavilion A620N still had a valid Windows XP. Installed the VIA drivers from the website, and couldn't see the SSD.
Tried a VT6421a raid card. The VIA drivers recognized the card. Once the system booted, the VIA RAID could see and format the SSD. Even after rebooting, the SATA card doesn't report the disk.
Tried an Adaptec SA1205 (Si3112 chipset). Same problem. Can't see the disk.
All those controllers seem to exhibit the inability to initialize at SATA3 back to SATA1 at boot time, but the Windows Raid software definitely seems able to recognize the SSD once windows was booted.
Picked up a cheap PCI Si3114 and threw it in the Pavilion A620N. System posts through, reports the Si3114 and it says "SSD". Silicon Image BIOS reports the correct stats for the SSD. Loading the drivers. I can format the disk.
Now looking at figuring out how to clone to the new SSD and getting it to boot XP.
Yes, I'm aware that SATA1 doesn't do trim, but for a $17 SSD, I'm not too concerned about it for an old system. It's gotta be better than an old 5400rpm IDE disk.
I also found a PCI SATA2 controller available. But I'm going to hold off on that. SATA2 would saturate the PCI bus and the only thing it buys me is SATA2 management (trim) of an SSD.
Figured I'd save some folks some head banging regarding old SATA1 controllers and SSDs.