VIA VT6330 PCI-E Combo Controller not fully supported

[Chris M]

Hi everyone!  I'll quickly introduce myself before I get to the crux of 
my reason for posting to the mailing list.  My name is Chris Merrett and 
although I'm not a subscriber to the list (my mail server would likely 
cry), I check a well-known archive quite regularly just to try and keep 
on top of developments in the community.

The reason I'm mailing is due to a partially-supported VIA chip present 
on a small handful of motherboards currently on sale.  I mailed the 
maintainer (Jeff Garzik) to bring this to his attention quite some time 
ago, but I'd imagine he's not found the time to reply to me yet which is 
understandable.  I figured that it'd be a good idea to make a post here 
with the info I've gathered, so that people affected by this same issue 
are aware that this particular chip isn't yet fully supported in the kernel.

The VT6330 is a combo controller chip that handles both Firewire and 
PATA, and is present on my Asrock N7AD-SLI.  I'm also aware of it being 
present on other Asrock boards, and presumably other boards from 
different manufacturers.  The Firewire functionality is supported 
perfectly and without issue, but unfortunately the PATA support is 
lacking at the moment.  VIA have some information on this at the 
following URL: http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/peripherals/1394/vt6330/

From the info on the URL above, it appears that the PATA functionality 
is identical to that of the VT6415 PATA controller, support for which 
was added in 2.6.28.  The mailing list post made regarding the patch 
that was submitted can be found here: 
http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0902.2/01428.html

Finally, some relevant output from lshw:

          *-firewire
               description: FireWire (IEEE 1394)
               product: VIA Technologies, Inc.
               vendor: VIA Technologies, Inc.
               physical id: 0
               bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
               version: 00
               width: 64 bits
               clock: 33MHz
               capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list
               configuration: driver=ohci1394 latency=0 module=ohci1394
          *-ide UNCLAIMED
               description: IDE interface
               product: PATA IDE Host Controller
               vendor: VIA Technologies, Inc.
               physical id: 0.1
               bus info: pci@0000:01:00.1
               version: a0
               width: 32 bits
               clock: 33MHz
               capabilities: ide pm msi pciexpress cap_list
               configuration: latency=0

I'm going to get my hands dirty and have a try at fixing it myself one 
evening this week, so if I have any luck (which I'll no doubt need) I'll 
be sure to reply soon.

Warmest regards to everyone,

Chris Merrett

****
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/