A10 SATA problems with certain drives

Hi,

Been having a nightmare trying to get SATA drives to work on my Mele a1000.

In summary I have been using a 640GB WD 2.5 SATA and an old 60GB Toshiba 2.5 SATA (test drive)
and cant get sata working with the allwinnerv3 android v2 kernel compiled from GIT

Theres nothing wrong with the SATA drives or the mele box as with the Mele android v4 they work perfectly (auto recognised and mounted and perform with zero errors) and play media with no issues at all ... though with the "cubie" "hipboi" android 4 (uses the GIT allwinner v3 android v2 drivers and config no doubt) they do not work at all

I have come to the conclusion that either the drivers for the A10 currently on GIT do not operate with certain drives or theres a configuration issue that needs to be resolved.

The detailed error messages and troubleshooting tried and the rest are posted on GIT so no point repeating a second time :

https://github.com/amery/linux-allwinner/issues/40#issuecomment-8019254


I have seen quite a few other posts on other forums with this SATA issue as well put down to ????? so for them .. firstly download meles android 4 and test your drive (i bet it works) and then you know your issue is not your drive or the mele box its the drivers and/or config in the current GIT allwinner linux ...

hopefully someone can get hold of the drivers and config in the mele android 4 build and reverse engineer them back to the linux on GIT ... Olimex are doing I helieve an A10 board soon so as they seem to be very thorough open ttech savvy guys they very well deal with this issue (fingers crossed)

hope it helps someone else

rgds

ian

I've been complaining about SATA resets down to 1.5 Gbps ever since I got my Mele. I assumed it was a driver issue. But I am reluctant to pin it on that alone. I have not yet tried plugging a straight cable in and bypassing the Mele socket. Until I do that I can't blame it on a driver issue. Plugging the cable in is easy enough. But I don't have a SATA power cable handy.
I know it's not an issue with the drive. The drive works fine at SATA II on Kirkwood. So it is definitely a Mele issue.

Fortunately the drive works fine at SATA 1.5Gbps. So it is not a pressing issue for me right now. I'll try to look into it later.

who knows .. i "suspect" its either old 2.6.x code (eg libata) lying around on GIT which has been updated for other platforms long ago to fix it outside the allwinnerGIT world or it could be the allwinner SATA driver which as mele's android 4 works perfectly with all drives ive tested if it is this, allwinner presumbly has a fix for it (new drivers)

possibly if hipboi (being a current or ex allwinner employee) who is now selling his own a10 board needs to get SATA sorted for his punters we may see the changes made to GIT and/or any updated otherwise perhaps it will take Olimex if they launch a SATA A10 board to get it sorted

rgds

ian

Quote

mele's android 4 works perfectly with all drives ive tested

same here. no issues with the SATA in Android. It is only with the Linux-allwinner kernel where there are reset issues.

Like you I also saw the issue in Amery's kernel issue list. Fortunately even though the driver drops down to 1.5Gbps for me it otherwise works fine. It has really been a non-issue for me, and I did not go to the trouble to report it.

But since I have a bit more time now, and this issue needs to be resolved, I am checking it out a bit further today. It has been reported that the script.bin hardware configuration may have something to do with it. So I'll try using the Mele-provided one before doing anything else. Otherwise it is likely some type of regression from the 3.0.8+ kernel. Another thing that might make a difference is that the driver is built into the kernel on the Mele Android. I use a module.

Either way, like the other sunxi modules, the automatic module loading is broken. That also needs to be resolved.

The A10 uses basically a standard AHCI SATA driver. So fixing the issues and getting automatic module loading fixed should be relatively straightforward. We'll see how it goes and if a different script.bin makes a difference.

I copied the script.bin from the Mele Android 4.0 to my Linux /boot partition. Thus I replaced the existing script.bin which came from here:

https://github.com/amery/sunxi-bin-archive/blob/master/mele-a1000/stock-nanda/script.bin

It appears that script.bin has issues. . .

It thus also appears that the SATA problems with certain drives is a non-issue.

Works fine for me now!

hi,

thanks for this,

incidently what drive have you tested it with (it will help others to know models that work)

i will have a bash over the weekend replacing the script.bin im using (so thats jeffs i think) with this .. im a bit surprised as in the fex the only directly sata relevant bits are :

[sata_para]
sata_used = 1
sata_power_en =

so did the fex (from the bin) you have used have anything different in it for this section ?

can you post the fex then if your bin does work i can quickly compare the 2 for differences and see where the duifference is that way help other ppl change what they have

thx

I'm very busy and will be gone for the weekend. So there is no way for me to post the ICS script.bin until next week. Don't you already have the Android ICS on your Mele to pull the script.bin from? I would assume everyone would be using that unless they wiped the NAND and are using Debian or other GNU/Linux.

hi,

if you could post it I'm sure that would help everyone sufferiung with this A10 sata malaise

i'm keen to try to replicate exactly what you have done to get SATA working correctly .. expecially if its only changing the script.bin file .. as i said i just used jeffs so if this is a quick fix to get sata working then jeffs (fex then fex->bin) can hopefully be ammended as well for the benefit of all

incidently i notice an allwinner tech's private venture A10 "cubieboard" now has a sata port on board, hopefully he will have sata working on both a linux source and also ICS (his ICS released for the mele's he was selling didnt work with SATA or cetrtainly the drives i tested it with unlike mele's which worked perfectly with all drives) which may help as well

rgds

ian