It's nice that there's new PPC hardware, but I'm sure it'll be the same as always with these, everyone will be surprised that it was supposed to be low-cost hardware, but the price tag is well over 1000€ for just the motherboard
Well, for what I understand, the design and the BOM of the Mirari does allow for a reasonable sales price. This is something that both OS4 and MorphOS users want. I don't expect the MorphOS team to put a hefty extra on the board price because they'd only be shooting themselves in the foot. The situation is a little different for OS4: there are more players and interested parties involved, so if everyone decides to take a cut, yes, the price can easily climb to 1000€. But then users will flee to MorphOS because the deadly combination of cheap hardware, clear ownership structure, regular updates and quality sóftware (browser, anyone?) will finally swing the balance towards MorphOS.
Musing over the Mirari board some more, the T2081 variant doesn't include SATA ports, only two NVMe slots. Additional storage would require a separate card, BUT using ACube's Hardware Compatibility List (is there anything better?), the only supported chips appear to be PCI, not PCIe, and Mirari is PCIe-only.
Internal and external SATA plus a PATA connector for full backward compatibility. BUT I've read several places that PCIe SATA cards are really designed for hard drives, with poor ATAPI support, and to use an older PCI card instead. I'd likely be using this for optical drives exclusively.
What to do? Before I ping the Mirari developers, can anybody offer words of wisdom?
BTW, the Mirari USB3 functionality I'd asked about above comes via a dedicated chip.
And if anyone is unaware, the project has a blog that's updated regularly:
I know of m.2 to SATA adapters, have not found a NVMe to SATA, ok I’m confused on Mirari_Schema_01-1 its NVNE, but printed on the motherboard its M.2 printed.. this hard drive sticks does not have same keying. And have complicity different transferee rates.
I hope they are not trying to over selling it, its annoying finding out you had both the wrong hard-drive, they are not free..
(NutsAboutAmiga)
Basilisk II for AmigaOS4 AmigaInputAnywhere Excalibur and other tools and apps.
As for PATA, you can’t find CDROM in normal stores anymore with that, in my AmigaONE-XE I have a SATA CDROM, connected to a StarTech SATA to PATA adapter it works fine.
(NutsAboutAmiga)
Basilisk II for AmigaOS4 AmigaInputAnywhere Excalibur and other tools and apps.
I know of m.2 to SATA adapters, have not found a NVMe to SATA, ok I’m confused on Mirari_Schema_01-1 its NVNE, but printed on the motherboard its M.2 printed.. this hard drive sticks does not have same keying. And have complicity different transferee rates.
All my drives are still mechanical, so you made me look. M.2 is the form factor (can be notched three different ways) and can support either the traditional SATA protocol or NVMe, which is a sort of DMA for storage devices and utilizes PCIe directly without occupying a slot. NVMe can saturate up to 4 PCIe lanes, but in this case I'd expect each Mirari slot to get 1.
An M.2 to SATA adapter might be okay, but per some previous comments, I'd be concerned that it's going to need a driver somewhere.
Quote:
LiveForIt wrote:
As for PATA, you can’t find CDROM in normal stores anymore with that, in my AmigaONE-XE I have a SATA CDROM, connected to a StarTech SATA to PATA adapter it works fine.
Good to know, thanks. I've been using a PC laptop as my main computer for nearly 10 years and have enough old PATA optical drives that I'd still like the option of using them in a new tower. Would love my Amiga to be a "swiss army knife". :)
tao wrote:Musing over the Mirari board some more, the T2081 variant doesn't include SATA ports, only two NVMe slots. Additional storage would require a separate card, BUT using ACube's Hardware Compatibility List (is there anything better?), the only supported chips appear to be PCI, not PCIe, and Mirari is PCIe-only.
Internal and external SATA plus a PATA connector for full backward compatibility. BUT I've read several places that PCIe SATA cards are really designed for hard drives, with poor ATAPI support, and to use an older PCI card instead. I'd likely be using this for optical drives exclusively.
What to do? Before I ping the Mirari developers, can anybody offer words of wisdom?
BTW, the Mirari USB3 functionality I'd asked about above comes via a dedicated chip.
And if anyone is unaware, the project has a blog that's updated regularly:
Better idea is to ask AmigaOS developers about SiI 3132 support.
It is PCIe 2x SATA II adapter. Is already supported by MorphOS and Sam440ep, 440ep-flex and Sam460 U-Boot. Mirari and X5000 has U-Boot too, so Sii 3112 should be easily added on all this platforms.
Edited by sailor on 2025/9/18 6:56:28
AmigaOS3: Amiga 1200 AmigaOS4: Micro A1-C, AmigaOne XE, Pegasos II, Sam440ep, Sam440ep-flex, AmigaOne X1000 MorphOS: Efika 5200b, Pegasos I, Pegasos II, Powerbook, Mac Mini, iMac, Powermac Quad
tao wrote: All my drives are still mechanical, so you made me look. M.2 is the form factor (can be notched three different ways) and can support either the traditional SATA protocol or NVMe, which is a sort of DMA for storage devices and utilizes PCIe directly without occupying a slot. NVMe can saturate up to 4 PCIe lanes, but in this case I'd expect each Mirari slot to get 1.
An M.2 to SATA adapter might be okay, but per some previous comments, I'd be concerned that it's going to need a driver somewhere.
M.2 on Mirari with T2081 CPU, SATA protocol is not supported, this CPU has no SATA controllers.
If you want to have traditional PCIe slot instead M.2 slot, you can use M.2 NVME to PCIe passive adapter, something like this.
AmigaOS3: Amiga 1200 AmigaOS4: Micro A1-C, AmigaOne XE, Pegasos II, Sam440ep, Sam440ep-flex, AmigaOne X1000 MorphOS: Efika 5200b, Pegasos I, Pegasos II, Powerbook, Mac Mini, iMac, Powermac Quad
Better idea is to ask AmigaOS developers about SiI 3132 support.
That would work, too. Do you know if its ATAPI functionality is stable? As I said above, I have the impression that most (?) PCIe SATA cards have poor ATAPI support.
Most of the OS4 drivers are 10+ years old, aren't they? So the driver selection is overdue for a refresh.
Quote:
If you want to have traditional PCIe slot instead M.2 slot, you can use M.2 NVME to PCIe passive adapter, something like this.
I have never seen anything like that! I don't suppose there's an M.2 to PCI adapter, too?
When the time comes, if I can't find a usable PCIe card, something like this would also work
@tao M.2 to PCI not exists, because PCIe inside M.2 not compatible with PCI bus. M.2 to PCIe should be free used with Mirari, becouse M.2 NVME here has PCIe x1 lane. I.e. such adapter is only change of connector type, no latency, no driver needed.
PCIe - 2x PCI adapter you mentioned has PCI-PCIe bridge onboard, i.e. there is always latency. You also need no driver for this. But it should or should't work, you need to test it. It depends, if firmware recognize PCI cards behind the bridge.
AmigaOS3: Amiga 1200 AmigaOS4: Micro A1-C, AmigaOne XE, Pegasos II, Sam440ep, Sam440ep-flex, AmigaOne X1000 MorphOS: Efika 5200b, Pegasos I, Pegasos II, Powerbook, Mac Mini, iMac, Powermac Quad
Thanks for all the input! I also just pinged Dave and Harald privately to see if they have anything to add.
I wonder who wrote all the OS4 Silicon Image drivers? The SiI 3132 chip Sailor mentioned dates back to 2010, so I would think that's old enough to still have good ATAPI support. We just need real OS development again. :/
Yes, I asked Dave and Harald about the possibility of these "driverless" adapters working with BBoot 2024.
@all
A more general question, that only recently crossed my mind. Keep in mind that I have never owned AmigaNG hardware. How does OS4 deal with cards containing their own BIOS, like a bootable SATA card where you may want to enable/disable ports or features like RAID? I assume you're still stuck connecting it to a PC first?
I wonder who wrote all the OS4 Silicon Image drivers?
Nearly all AmigaOS 4.0 disk drivers (PATA: A1 and Peg2 VIA, SII0680, IT8212, SATA: SII3112, 3114, 3512, SCSI: LSI/SYM/NCR 53c8xx), and related tools (idetool, smartctl, ...), were implemented by Stéphane Guillard. Only exceptions were the CSPPC SCSI driver and the A1200/A4000 motherboard PATA driver. (I implemented a A1200/A4000 PATA driver based on Stéphane's drivers, only available to some beta testers. It had some advantages, not only because it was PPC native code, but for example it didn't support the IDEFix, EIDE, FastATA, etc. 4 port hacks the AmigaOS 3.9/m68k based one supports and therefore was never released.) The PCI SII 3112/3114/3512 SATA drivers probably would work with only very minimal changes, maybe even only changing the PCI IDs, number of supported ports, etc. required, which is the only difference in those 3 drivers, with PCIe SII SATA cards like the 3132. Even in case it's more work, because there are more differences between PCI and PCIe SATA controllers from Silicon Image than between the 3 supported PCI ones, ACube could easily create a sii3132ide.device if they can licence Stéphane's sii3[15]1[24]ide.device driver sources as they already implemented SII3132 support in their Sam460 U-Boot.
The Sam460, X1000, X5000 and A1222+ SATA drivers were implemented by other developers. Those are drivers for SoC SATA controllers, except for the X1000 one maybe, and not usable for PCIe SATA controllers.
Quote:
How does OS4 deal with cards containing their own BIOS, like a bootable SATA card where you may want to enable/disable ports or features like RAID? I assume you're still stuck connecting it to a PC first?
Can only be a problem if you buy a used one. For example the SII3114, which AFAIK includes RAID support in it's BIOS, has it disabled by default and you need to use a PC with the drivers for it installed to enable it, i.e. there are no problems with any new, or reset to factory default settings, one. If you buy a used one which was previously used in a PC with it's RAID feature enabled you may need to install it into a PC first, to disable such settings again.
Thanks, Joerg. Once again, you're an Amiga encyclopedia! :)
Quote:
Even in case it's more work, because there are more differences between PCI and PCIe SATA controllers from Silicon Image than between the 3 supported PCI ones, ACube could easily create a sii3132ide.device if they can licence Stéphane's sii3[15]1[24]ide.device driver sources as they already implemented SII3132 support in their Sam460 U-Boot.
Hmm, I might just run with that. As is always the case, the worst thing ACube can say is "no".
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