Flashing the Silicon Image Sil3112 to work in Macs (2025 Edition)

[speakers]

A few things:

1. Here's a link to firmware for 3114 cards for OSX only: https://www.siig.com/download/search?keyword=SC-SA4M12&f=true .. the flasher works for 10.1 only, I think, but the firmware can be extracted for other flashing methods.
2. The FirmTek 4-port firmware (ROMFILE.7174) doesn't work with with my 3114 card.
3. I've just successfully modded another 3112 card for my B&W G3. Since New World machines can boot Linux conveniently, I flashed the card using the flashrom utility under Debian. Super convenient if you're comfortable dabbling with the dark side. I also boot Debian on my Old World G3s but that's not as straightforward.

 

[robin-fo]

I just upgraded my card with an eSATA port. However I wasn‘t able to get it working yet, but it is not unlikely that this is related to the disk and not the card..

Edit: the PSU was dead.. Attached a new one and the drive now gets detected

 

[speakers]

So I got another 3112 card - this time for my B&W G3. Yes, it's not an Old World machine but I wanted to see the performance on a 100MHz PCI bus. And also for giggles, I tried a spare SATA 2TB drive (WD Blue) I had sitting around.

I got 60-plus MB/s read performance and about half that for write. (Ignore the FWB BenchTest write performance graph that's mucked up for some reason.)

For comparison, my main boot drive is a 120GB OWC SSD in the (33MHz) ATA bus running through an IDE to SATA adapter:

The FWB BenchTest hung doing seek tests which I hence needed to disable. I presume this was related to the specific drive or driver and not the SATA card itself because that's fine with older, smaller drives.

The big drive boots OS9 fine and HFS+ is OK with it .. but some classic apps and utilities may be freaked out by the size.

 

[XodiumLabs]

Bringing this thread back from the dead to say I've added an update to the guide pertaining to the AliExpress SIL3112s. Specifically, whoever or whatever makes these cards does a crap job of it, so if you have one of these cards and it's giving you trouble, I'd resolder all the capacitors. At least that's what my problem was, a few of the caps had cold joints so I wicked it all up and did everything over again.

The end result is that I have two cards that previously didn't work on the 9600, but now they come up just fine.

 

[AirplaneHome.com]

Many thanks - very generously shared exploration and development work, especially XodlumRetro!

1. Additional information or clarification requests:

Do I understand correctly that the SATA card's native flash ICs are of sufficient storage capacity and compatible? So there's no need to replace them if Mac compatible firmware's installed directly using a PC, right? (For those cards you're familiar with.)

I ask because old Wintel PCI based PCs are dirt cheap or we already have one, so it's not clear to me why it's considered worth the trouble to desolder the flash ICs, load the firmware separately, then re-solder them. That is, why not just use a PC to install the firmware, thus avoiding all the soldering work?

And if anyone has installed firmware via a PC and FreeDOS (FreeDOS.org), if inclined please advise which version you recommend and its download location. (Presumably from FlashROM.org/Downloads, but I haven't found the most suitable file to download yet.) And if feeling generous please advise the installation steps.

2. A terrific soldering option:

You may solder using water soluble organic flux instead of rosin flux. It renders utterly perfect joints and enables easy fine pitch IC soldering by simply swiping each row of pins with a ball of molten solder on your soldering iron tip. The organic flux keeps the solder completely clean so it retains full surface tension like pure mercury, so the molten ball jumps cleanly from one pin to another leaving (usually) no shorts. But for the last three or four pins a jump off platform is needed, such as copper braid or just a thin strip of solid copper or other solder compliant metal. It's available as a liquid which you apply generously with a small art brush. Fully immerse the working area - use plenty of it. You need either solid solder (with no rosin core) or solder cored with the same organic flux.

It washes off completely with mere hot water, though I use detergent and a toothbrush as well to insure any other contaminants are also removed. You must wash it off reasonably promptly - the flux is both corrosive and conductive so it must be completely removed. You can work for about 90 minutes but then must wash. Longer linger times result in metal surface tarnish - not serious but not as gorgeous. You must clean your work area and all tools as well since any residue would cause corrosion and conduction trouble for anything which contacts it.

The work area cleaning overhead is a bit inconvenient, but I use it for any significant soldering work because it's so superbly easy to work with, enables ordinary soldering irons to solder fine pitch easily, and the results are perfect mirror finish joints which are utterly solid and reliable.

The usual solder vendors have it. I think Kester's type name is 941. AimSolder.com calls it OAJ flux. But I think the common term is simply liquid organic flux. You'll need the liquid even if you acquire organic core solder because that solder alone delivers far too little fluid for any work in my experience, especially fine pitch work. (I doubt it was actually intended to be used alone in most cases.)

It's cheap. And working with it will make you wonder how you survived soldering the old way. But that's just my experience, and I'm nobody's nanny of course.

I hope to erect a new page to document this essentially verbatim along with other random nerd chat on AirplaneHome.com/NerdCaveNotes within a few weeks or so.

Many thanks all - great grist!

 

[speakers]

..
1. Additional information or clarification requests:

Do I understand correctly that the SATA card's native flash ICs are of sufficient storage capacity and compatible? So there's no need to replace them if Mac compatible firmware's installed directly using a PC, right? (For those cards you're familiar with.)

No - most (cheap) SIL3112-based SATA cards have insufficient capacity for the preferred Mac firmware (SeriTek). Furthermore, the SeriTek firmware accepts only 3 types of 4Mb PROM (PM39LV040, MX29LV040 or AM29LV040B).

If you're only wanting to use OSX and not MacOS9, the WeibeTech firmware will fit into 1Mb PROMs and it's not picky about device type.

...
And if anyone has installed firmware via a PC and FreeDOS (FreeDOS.org), if inclined please advise which version you recommend and its download location. (Presumably from FlashROM.org/Downloads, but I haven't found the most suitable file to download yet.) And if feeling generous please advise the installation steps.

I don't have a PCI-based PC so I haven't done this. But I have used the open-source flashrom package to flash SATA cards on various PCI Macs running under Linux or NetBSD. It's also possible to build flashrom under Tiger (MacOS 10.4) using Tigerbrew (a back-port of Homebrew) but I've found this to be dependency-ridden and messy.

 

[XodiumLabs]

Replying to this because we've just had a major breakthrough in the SATA market: dosdude1 did what he does best and actually patched out the EEPROM check for the Seritek/Firmtek 1S2 ROM, so now it should be possible to use it in *ALL* EEPROMs, so long as they're 512K.

I don't have the means to test this at current, but anyone trying it, please do report back how it went. I've updated the OP with relevant info.

 

[Nitram78]

Replying to this because we've just had a major breakthrough in the SATA market: dosdude1 did what he does best and actually patched out the EEPROM check for the Seritek/Firmtek 1S2 ROM, so now it should be possible to use it in *ALL* EEPROMs, so long as they're 512K.

Great news. Got any link about it ?

 

[AirplaneHome.com]

Many thanks XodiumRetro! DosDude1's announcement, which includes a download for the new firmware, seems to be at https://68KMLA.Org/bb/index.php?thr...er-way-using-flashrom.7013/page-2#post-470798. (The file seems to download via https://68KMLA.Org/bb/index.php?attachments/1s2_512-patched-rom-zip.51569/.)

I acquired a couple of firmware programmers from AliExpress.com and but haven't yet acquired 4 Mb PROMs nor attempted to establish support for the programmers - I need to order PROMa and review everyone's great suggestions, then try to arrange support for the programmers, presumably on an old Windows laptop. If successful I should then be able to test DosDude1's new firmware with both OS 9 and OS 10 PCI Macs within a free day or two. I'll report results of course, but others are almost certain to outpace me substantially. Cheers!

Addendum: The best value I could find, where I ordered 20 AM29LV040 (presumably the B version), was at https://AliExpress.us/item/32568048...00031585894959!sea&curPageLogUid=LZ1rZt6BPJmi

 

[XodiumLabs]

Great news. Got any link about it ?

AirplaneHome linked it, but it was also in the original post, as well. (I keep that updated with the relevant info.)

Only replied just in case people were watching this topic to know to give it a look.

The patched firmware file is also attached to the OP, as well.

 

[XodiumLabs]

Another update! Collin actually managed to shrink the ROM down so that it can fit on a 128K chip, which means that hopefully desoldering should no longer be necessary. He also patched the flasher utility for Mac OS so it should be able to flash these cards just fine for the most part. This is old news for those paying attention elsewhere, but I've unfortunately been extremely busy.

 

[AirplaneHome.com]

Amazing work! A decompression conflict with USB functionality arose but Collin (DosDude1) appears to have resolved it. His 7 February post at https://68MMLA.Org/bb/index.php?thr...lashing-easier-way-using-flashrom.7013/page-3 describes it, and provides three downloads at:

https://68KMLA.Org/bb/index.php?attachments/1s2-patched-compressed-rom-zip.52085/
https://68KMLA.Org/bb/index.php?attachments/seritek1s2flasher_5-1-3-sit-hqx.52086/
https://68KMLA.Org/bb/index.php?attachments/lzss-fcode-new-4th-zip.52087/

We're all in your debt Collin! (And the debt of those who test and report, and otherwise support these efforts!)

I'll report too when time allows but must attend to some other issues first, sorry...

 

[eric]

All of these links to files are inaccessible without registration unfortunately, could you edit the post and attach them @AirplaneHome.com ?

Edit: Nevermind dosdude1 just sent them to me on Discord, attaching so people can download without registration.

 

[AirplaneHome.com]

I'm not privy to Collin and 68KMLA.Org sensitivities in the matter, so I just posted a request for permission to post exact copies of his files here with DosDude1 and 68KMLA.org attribution. In the meantime as I recall registration to 68KMLA.org is free and easy, and perhaps many TinkerDifferent.Com members are already registered there too. However if permission's granted I'll post them here too. (And in the meantime, Cosmic class thanks for TinkerDifferent.com and BlueSCSI!)

Edit: Terrific, many thanks Eric!

 

[dosdude1]

I'm not privy to Collin and 68KMLA.Org sensitivities in the matter, so I just posted a request for permission to post exact copies of his files here with DosDude1 and 68KMLA.org attribution. In the meantime as I recall registration to 68KMLA.org is free and easy, and perhaps many TinkerDifferent.Com members are already registered there too. However if permission's granted I'll post them here too. (And in the meantime, Cosmic class thanks for TinkerDifferent.com and BlueSCSI!)

Edit: Terrific, many thanks Eric!

Yep, it's no problem with me to share/mirror copies of the ROM and flashing tool, so if there's anywhere else you think there would be benefit in posting it, go ahead and do so. I guess I should have just posted it here myself, but @XodiumRetro seems to have had that covered for now. If I have any other updates regarding this, I'll be sure to post here as well.

 

[AirplaneHome.com]

Testing one card at a time, I successfully installed dosdude1's latest firmware into one of my four SATA PCI cards in my Power Macintosh 9500/120 (with a 445 MHz G3 PowerPC processor card) running OS 9.1 with utter ease - the application is quite straightforward and elegant. And an attached HFS+ SSD volume seems to operate properly and is able to boot the system. However I've performed only minimal superficial tests thus far.

That card's equipped with a Silicon Image SATALink Sil3112ACT144 bridge and an AM29F010 prom.

My other three SATA PCI cards weren't recognized by the application so I haven't been able to install the firmware into them. Two have Sil3512ECTU128 bridges, one with an SST 39SF010A prom, the other an EN29LV040A prom. The third has a HighPoint HPT372NLF bridge, which, just guessing, might actually be a SATALink Sil3112ACT144 bridge but with a custom brand label (it's the same physical size as the Sil3112ACT144 bridge in the card which was recognized), with an SST 39SF020A prom.

I'll probably try replacing the original proms on those cards with the blank AM29LV040B 4 Mb proms in my stock in case the original prom or its firmware is responsible for the recognition failures. But I might study first because in my haste to experiment I've read only fragments of dosdude1's work thus far, and remember almost nothing of the prom voltage issues he described, so I'm not yet privy to or forgot component or card limitations he may have described perfectly. (The above rhetoric's at my Nerd Cave site too.)

But now I can't do so at 68KMLA because I got the boot there, presumably because I mentioned two of my domains I thought might interest the group, but were off topic, oops. ( I sinned to a far greater degree in my lengthy soldering post above, sorry, and am grateful to still be here.)

I'll study the dosdude1 messages I can still access more thoroughly and experiment further, in undecided order, then report back.

Edit: dosdude1 very kindly and swiftly corrected my information in his post just below. Thanks tons and tons dosdude1, you're Cosmic class aces!

 

[dosdude1]

Testing one card at a time, I successfully installed dosdude1's latest firmware into one of my four SATA PCI cards in my Power Macintosh 9500/120 (with a 445 MHz G3 PowerPC processor card) running OS 9.1 with utter ease - the application is quite straightforward and elegant. And an attached HFS+ SSD volume seems to operate properly and is able to boot the system. However I've performed only minimal superficial tests thus far.

That card's equipped with a Silicon Image SATALink Sil3112ACT144 bridge and an AM29F010 prom.

My other three SATA PCI cards weren't recognized by the application so I haven't been able to install the firmware into them. Two have Sil3512ECTU128 bridges, one with an SST 39SF010A prom, the other an EN29LV040A prom. The third has a HighPoint HPT372NLF bridge, which, just guessing, might actually be a SATALink Sil3112ACT144 bridge but with a custom brand label (it's the same physical size as the Sil3112ACT144 bridge in the card which was recognized), with an SST 39SF020A prom.

I'll probably try replacing the original proms on those cards with the blank AM29LV040B 4 Mb proms in my stock in case the original prom or its firmware is responsible for the recognition failures. But I might study first because in my haste to experiment I've read only fragments of dosdude1's work thus far so I'm not yet privy to component or card limitations he may have described perfectly. (The above rhetoric's at my Nerd Cave site too.)

But now I can't do so at 68KMLA because I got the boot there, presumably because I mentioned two of my domains I thought might interest the group, but were off topic, oops. ( I sinned to a far greater degree in my lengthy soldering post above, sorry, and am grateful to still be here.)

I'll study the dosdude1 messages I can still access more thoroughly and experiment further, in undecided order, then report back.

This ROM is compatible ONLY with the Sil3112 chipset, it won't work with any of the others you mentioned. Sil3512 and HPT372NLF are in no way compatible with Sil3112 drivers or firmware.

 

[AirplaneHome.com]

Thanks so much Collin - your work and expert guidance are superb, and class act generous! I'd like to try to purchase Sil3112ACT144 ICs, in both physical sizes if available, then replace the other bridges with them, or just the HPT372NLF if the Sil3112ACT144 is only available in the larger size (rather than the smaller size Sil3512ECTU128 on two of my cards). However I vaguely remember you stating that they're not pin compatible, so I'll study your messages first.

In the meantime, a question if you're interested: I have the right equipment to replace the proms pretty easily. If you were nurturing an old Mac friend, would you install the 4 Mb prom so the firmware compression wouldn't be needed, or do you view the prom swap as now no longer warranted at all - as essentially just a waste of time?

By the way I've experienced no USB glitches thus far. Thank tons Collin and everyone!

 

[dosdude1]

Thanks so much Collin - your work and expert guidance are superb, and class act generous! I'd like to try to purchase Sil3112ACT144 ICs, in both physical sizes if available, then replace the other bridges with them, or just the HPT372NLF if the Sil3112ACT144 is only available in the larger size (rather than the smaller size Sil3512ECTU128 on two of my cards). However I vaguely remember you stating that they're not pin compatible, so I'll study your messages first.

In the meantime, a question if you're interested: I have the right equipment to replace the proms pretty easily. If you were nurturing an old Mac friend, would you install the 4 Mb prom so the firmware compression wouldn't be needed, or do you view the prom swap as now no longer warranted at all - as essentially just a waste of time?

By the way I've experienced no USB glitches thus far. Thank tons Collin and everyone!

There is absolutely no reason to swap the EEPROM at this point, as there are no caveats at all to just using the compressed firmware. You can't just swap the other controllers with an Sil3112, as the pinouts are not the same. Just look for some cheap Sil3112 cards on eBay or the like.

 

[Borgmac]

Testing one card at a time, I successfully installed dosdude1's latest firmware into one of my four SATA PCI cards in my Power Macintosh 9500/120 (with a 445 MHz G3 PowerPC processor card) running OS 9.1 with utter ease - the application is quite straightforward and elegant. And an attached HFS+ SSD volume seems to operate properly and is able to boot the system. However I've performed only minimal superficial tests thus far.

That card's equipped with a Silicon Image SATALink Sil3112ACT144 bridge and an AM29F010 prom.

Hi, I have a card with Silicon Image SATALink Sil3112ACT144 bridge and an AM28F010 prom. I cannot flash it on my PowerMac G3.
Card in recognize in OS 9 but I could not use the flashrom updater as the computer freezes when I click “Flash”. I am under OS 9.2. Dosdude1, should I try with OS 9.1?
I tried with voidlinux Flashrom. The card is listed with lspci (see attached picture), but flashrom gives error
Error: No supported PCI device found.
Main difference between AM29F010 and AM28F010 is that it does use a 12V for programming.
Any idea?