Re: No NCQ support on X61s Ultrabay? (Intel ICH8 SATA controllerquestion)

From: Matthew Wilcox
Date: Fri May 01 2009 - 07:35:46 EST


On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 10:21:08PM -0600, Robert Hancock wrote:
> I'm suspecting that that Ultrabay slot might be using the PATA ports on
> the chipset, with a PATA-SATA bridge chip or something. I haven't seen
> an Intel chipset with some SATA ports using AHCI and some in PIIX mode
> before, the ones I've seen with both had the PIIX mode driving PATA
> ports. If it is indeed bridged through PATA on that laptop, there's no
> way you're going to get any NCQ support on that slot.
>
> I don't know why Lenovo would do that, as it would kind of cripple SATA
> drives in that slot, but hardware people do some bizarre things
> sometimes..

I have to agree with Robert. If you look at the ich8 data sheet
(313056-003), the mobile version has 3 ATA ports and 1 IDE port "that
can be electrically isolated". See pages 41, 43, and 50-51. on page 41,
it says the IDE port has "Tri-state modes to enable swap bay".

So I don't blame Lenovo for hooking up the Ultrabay slot using the IDE
port. They were pretty much told to do it.
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