Abit AB9 SATA port problems with unRAID? - Log attached

Hey all,

Everyone who is running with an ABIT AB9 I was wondering if you had any problems getting it to boot with all the SATA ports filled? I just RMA'ed one and received my replacement because SATA port 3 and port 4 (these are located where the 6 of them located - the two in the middle) would hang when booting. Has anyone else run into this problem with this board? I find it hard to believe that two boards display the same problem. I have since moved over two of the drives to ports 5,6,7,8 and everything is perfect. The moment I try and move one to 3 or 4 it hangs while booting into unRAID. I can fetch a system log if needed.

I guess I really should have posted a system log  Here is the system log attached. Interesting note: I attached a drive that will be my parity drive once I assign it (currently coping 2 TB over from my old array to this new, so I don't have a valid parity drive to help write performance) that was in SATA port 8 and moved it to port 4 and it knocked off the two drives that are assigned to port 5 and port 6, but left the IDE drive and the SATA drive on port 7 boot.

Any idea what the heck is happening here?

I'm sorry to say that the problems may be worse than you think.  Your syslog strongly resembles the syslog of this thread:  http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2244.0, and although I suggested he try going back to v4.2.4, the results were just as bad.  You do not have his network issue, but the drive and interrupt issues look identical.

I'm beginning to wonder about these Abit AB9 boards.  I understand that many BIOS's have buggy ACPI sections, but there are more errors reported in the syslog for this board than any other.  The following is typical:

ACPI Error (dswstate-0226): No result objects! State=f7f75a00 [20070126]
ACPI Exception (dsutils-0642): AE_AML_NO_RETURN_VALUE, Missing or null operand [20070126]
ACPI Exception (dsutils-0735): AE_AML_NO_RETURN_VALUE, While creating Arg 1 [20070126]
ACPI Error (psparse-0537): Method parse/execution failed [\_TZ_.THRM._TMP] (Node f7c14f90), AE_AML_NO_RETURN_VALUE

It would be interesting to know exactly what Abit AB9 board and BIOS versions everyone has, so we can look for a pattern here, which boards and BIOS's do and don't work.

Edit note:  just noticed this thread about BIOS's for Abit AB9's:  http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=1992.0

Rob,

Thank you again for reading my thread and offering some input. I'm going to check and see which BIOS version I have- figures that a board with 9 SATA ports has a lot of problems. I read through a lot of thread when choosing my components for my new array and I guess I didn't choose wisely. Any other comparable boards? I would rather just get my cash back and start with a functioning board.

I am currently running BIOS 16... and looking through the ABIT website a BIOS upgrade requires a Floppy (might have one of those somewhere) and a Floppy Disk (def. don't have any).

Sheesh, this board seemed too good to be true 

teamhood: I was the guy who had this issue in the thread that RobJ linked to (also BIOS 16), and I've fixed it.  The link below also includes instructions on how to use your USB drive as the bootable disk to flash the BIOS, so no need for the disk!

I'll keep you updated as I work out any other kinks, and let me know if you have any problems with getting the BIOS working and the system up and running!

This was a BIOS issue, as was suggested in other threads.  I simply followed the instructions I found here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=1453.0 to flash to 22 (the newest non-BETA BIOS) and things seem to be working fine.  It doesn't see one or two of my drives, but I will deal with that issue later after I upgrade to PRO and can actually use the additional drives--as a whole it all looks great.

Vorlagen,

Thank you very much for your input and the link that you provided. I went through and flashed my BIOS successfully to 22. The steps were nice and easy to follow and only took a few minutes. The results are still the same for me. The moment I put 1 more drive on SATA port 1,2,3, or 4 I receive the same error as before. Looks like this board is no good and I guess it's time to move onto something that works.

It appears that there are few boards that offer 8 SATA ports that don't have any report problems. Really sucks as this board was not all that expensive and had 9 SATA ports... shucks. 

Sorry to hear that....  I currently have ports 1-8 up and running fine on the 22 BIOS.  Did you set all of the port types to AHCI (off of IDE) in the bios?

Sorry to hear that....  I currently have ports 1-8 up and running fine on the 22 BIOS.  Did you set all of the port types to AHCI (off of IDE) in the bios?

LOL! I just read through your thread about changing those port types to AHCI and sure enough I was able to boot up without problems! I am going to have start some more testing (need more SATA drives now) to make sure all these ports are functioning correctly! Wow... this MOBO needs its own thread about all the little tricks to get it play nice.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP!

teamhood,

did everything work out ok?

I am about to buy this board

ABIT AB9 Pro LGA 775 Intel P965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813127004

and want to make sure it works well with UnRaid

Thanks