Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Intel X99 SATA controller vs SATA port multiplier enclosure

Recently, I upgraded a computer with an old AMD Phenom II x6 CPU and a Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H motherboard, along with DDR3 memory, to a brand new Intel Core i7-5820k and MSI X99A Raider motherboard .

I was able to use my SANS port multiplier enclosure successfully with the AMD SB750 SATA controller when in running in RAID mode.

This is, sadly, not possible at all with Intel, as Intel has decided not to support port multipliers at all on any of their controllers.

Other features lost in the X99 chipset "upgrade" :

- Firewire 1394 support - which I need for my audio recording. I had to purchase a separate Firewire card for this.

- PCI support . No longer will I be able to use my Symbios PCI SCSI card to read my DDS-2 and DDS-4 tapes on OS/2. There are PCIe SCSI controller options, but none that work with OS/2. Fortunately, I have other computers that still support PCI, all of them with AMD CPUs & chipsets.

- this might make some people laugh in late 2015, but the floppy interface on the motherboard is also gone. Yes, my computer really still has an internal 3.5"1.44MB floppy drive. It's just not hooked up to the motherboard anymore since there is no plug for it. Don't ask me why I need it, but I do.