Has anyone successfully installed vista on a SIS chipset SATA driv

[Guest]

Have a gigabyte motherboard that is running a Sis964 Raid SATA chip. The
drive are set as IDE in the Bios, but everytime I try to install vista I get
numerous and different error messages. If I install to my EIDE drive, the OS
installs correctly with NO error messages.

Anyone have any Ideas here?

Glenn

 

[Mark D. VandenBeg]

Search the forum for SATA

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the reply, did a search of all forums and did not find any posts
dealing with my perticular chipset, but did find a couple that may help, will
have to wait until I get home to try

Glenn

 

[Tony Thijs]

FYI
Expect no sympathy from gigabyte. I have posted this message earlier/
Kind regards
Tony Thijs

message
Last year I bought a Gigabyte SINXP1394 mobo with a Apollo Geforce FX 5500
GPU. I have problems locating drivers for the embedded 3112 Silicon Image
SATA controller.
According to Silicon Image this is a OEM product where Mobo manufacturers
are responsible for driver development.
I have a written statement of Gigabyte stating that:,, We will wait until
the final release of Vista with driver development and let it depend on
market demand whether we will start developing a driver. for the SIL 3112 on
the SINXP1394 mobo.
Of course that is an effective way of letting people throw away their mobo.
Has anyone experience with ASUS, ABIT or other mobo manufacturers concerning
the 3x12 series of Silicon Image sata controllers in their embedded form and
drivers for Vista?
I talked with the largest Dutch consumer organisation and according to them
Gigabyte won't get away with this support policy
Kind regards,
Tony Thijs
Oriolus

For

 

[Kerry Brown]

FYI
Expect no sympathy from gigabyte. I have posted this message earlier/
Kind regards
Tony Thijs

message
Last year I bought a Gigabyte SINXP1394 mobo with a Apollo Geforce FX
5500 GPU. I have problems locating drivers for the embedded 3112
Silicon Image SATA controller.
According to Silicon Image this is a OEM product where Mobo
manufacturers are responsible for driver development.
I have a written statement of Gigabyte stating that:,, We will wait
until the final release of Vista with driver development and let it
depend on market demand whether we will start developing a driver.
for the SIL 3112 on the SINXP1394 mobo.
Of course that is an effective way of letting people throw away their
mobo. Has anyone experience with ASUS, ABIT or other mobo
manufacturers concerning the 3x12 series of Silicon Image sata
controllers in their embedded form and drivers for Vista?
I talked with the largest Dutch consumer organisation and according
to them Gigabyte won't get away with this support policy

That motherboard is at least three years old. I know you don't want to hear
this but in the computer world that is ancient. I expect that sometime after
Vista is released you will be able to find drivers for the SIL 3112
controller. You may even be lucky enough to find some after the RC1 or RTM
releases are out. I wouldn't expect them to be motherboard specific from the
motherboard manufacturer of a four year old motherboard (at the time of the
scheduled Vista general release). The computer industry just doesn't work
that way. There is not enough profit in a product to develop for it after
you quit manufacturing it.

 

[Mark D. VandenBeg]

That motherboard is at least three years old. I know you don't want to
hear this but in the computer world that is ancient. I expect that
sometime after Vista is released you will be able to find drivers for the
SIL 3112 controller. You may even be lucky enough to find some after the
RC1 or RTM releases are out. I wouldn't expect them to be motherboard
specific from the motherboard manufacturer of a four year old motherboard
(at the time of the scheduled Vista general release). The computer
industry just doesn't work that way. There is not enough profit in a
product to develop for it after you quit manufacturing it.

I'll bet he got a "great deal," though!

 

[Kerry Brown]

I'll bet he got a "great deal," though!

Consumer class motherboards are so cheap they are all a good deal. I can
never understand why people but the cheapest motherboard then buy expensive
name brand RAM, video cards etc to install on it. The motherboard in
question is actually a decent board as far as SIS boards go but for a few
dollars more he could have bought an Intel or VIA based board.

 

[Tony Thijs]

Absolutely right. This is probably the last time I buy anything else then
Intel or VIA based motherboards.
Furthermore I had no idea that the motherboard was that old. It supports DDR
400 and SATA which rates it Vista ready according to the Windows Vista
Upgrade advisor.
The thing is that it was sold in retail stores all over Amsterdam last year.
That takes care of my problems anyway.
Consumer rules in the Netherlands -and the european union for that matter-
are very strict. Really something to think of when you release software or
hardware in the European countries.
Here the date of sale is the only thing that counts. There are documented
cases in court that state that products should be supported by manufacturers
long after the warrantee periiod has expired
Now I almost feel a bit sorry for Gigabyte. Their products are not really
bad, but they should realize that the European Union has different rules
then the rest of the world. Which in itself is not so suprprising.
Furthermore their Commercial Manager Northern Europe offered to replace the
motherboard for a newer version. That is a generous offer, but I would
rather see that Gigabyte adheres to the rules and delivers well tested
drivers.
After all, the Silicon Image 3x12 RAID Chipset is applied in a host of
Gigabyte products that can run for years if the right drivers are present.
From that perspective Gigabyte is victem of their own sense of quality. The
SINXP1394 was way ahead of competition, resulting in a long lifecycle in
general compared to the competition.
Tony Thijs

 

[Kerry Brown]

I would be quite surprised if the laws forced a manufacturer to support an
OS that wasn't released when the motherboard was sold. There are drivers for
XP which was current when the motherboard was sold. If a patch for XP broke
the drivers then I can see that Gigabyte would be obligated to fix it. How
can you expect them to support something that didn't exist at the time of
the sale? If you bought a car and a couple of years later someone developed
a new fuel that needed a different timing and air/fuel ratio would the car
manufacturers be obligated to reprogram the car's computer to work with the
new fuel even if the old fuel was still readily available?

My reference to Intel and VIA wasn't to imply that there would be drivers
available if you had a motherboard based on those chipsets. It was just that
I believe they are better chipsets than SIS.

 

[Tony Thijs]

Keny,
<<The computer industry just doesn't work
that way. There is not enough profit in a product to develop for it after
you quit manufacturing it.I know, thats whý law enforcement has been invented. Dutch consumer
organisations have been rather effective in enforcing rules about product
continuation., backed up by the European Union.
That's why I have been carefull investing in own software development
projects and specially carefull about what is put in SLA's.
Watch out to restrict liability to heavy for a product that really gets
popular because that's really inviting the legal sharks for breakfast .
Gigabyte
As a matter of fact, after some friendly wakeup calls Gigabyte Taiwan
decided to support the Silicon Image 3x12 SATA I RAID chipsets after the
region manager Benelux and Nordics had been explained what consqeuences not
deleviring drivers would have.
As Gigabyte is also producing for renowned brands this means a significant
expansion of devices supported by Vista
I wrote this about it:
Gigabyte takes the lead in legacy support for Vista drivers

Although it is the distribution responsibility of motherboard manufacturers
like Gigabyte and Abit to supply a customized SATA Vista driver for the
Silicon Image 3x12 (and later versions), they have to wait for Silicon Image
microcode before they can adapt that code and recompile a dedicated driver
for all involved legacy or near legacy motherboards.

Gigabyte is the first to make a statement indicating that as soon as Silicon
Image delivers the microcode, Gigabyte will start customization for the
Silicon Image 3x12 RAID controllers. See attached statement from Gigabyte
Taiwan.

This is of course slightly more then changing the .inf, but definitely not a
long process.

Microsoft should be happy with Gigabyte, as the usefulness of much useful
legacy or near legacy equipment is extended by this and makes involved
equipment suitable for a Windows Platform upgrade.



Meanwhile owners of Sil 3x12 chipsets should take a couple of things into
consideration when using Vista beta's with embedded versions of a Silicon
Image Sil 3x12 SATA RAID chipset.



Seven steps to an sane Vista system with the Silicon Image 3x12 SATA RAID
controller J

1.. Download the Silicon Image base version (when only 1 disk is attached
to the SATA controllerattached) and Raid driver (when attaching two drives
regardless of the fact that they are in a non raid configuration or else)
from the Silicon Image website and expand these drivers to an USB stick
2.. Boot from the Vista beta dvd
3.. Have the base or raid (with a r extension) driver ready on an USB
stick attached to the system
4.. load the base or raid driver during a clean install of Vista beta2 (I
used build 5472) on to an classic ATA boot disk partition
5.. The Vista install will immediately see the SATA disks, thus preventing
a later mix up of drive letters
6.. Silicon Image (or any mobo manufacturer) does not recommend this while
the driver is originally designed for Silicon Image own pci 3x12 SATA Raid
controllers, not for embedded systems like on motherboards, but it works so
far
7.. Check Vista's version of Windows update on a regular basis. All
suppliers that have their -Signed and Windows Vista Logo compatible- Vista
drivers ready will post them for distribution through the Microsoft Windows
Update system.
<Gigabyte Taiwan statement:

"As for the issue upon Silicon Imgae RAID 3112 chipset of not able to
support VISTA Beta:

1) Vista Beta is not an official release retail OS, its major purpose is for
Hardware / Software manufacturers to validate their products. And of course,
during this validation period uncompatible issues might be found.

2) When uncompatible issues are found, it is confirmed either/both Microsoft
or Silicon Image are responsible to find solutions. When there are new
solutions drivers available
the chipset vendor will then provide to us. After that we will definitly
provide the new drivers on our website for end-user to update."


Kind regards,

Tony Thijs

Oriolus: