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