Status PCIe slot and the SATA interface card

[Yoast]

I have been looking for benchmark results of disks connected through the SATA interface card and the PCIe slot, but haven't seen anything so far. As a matter of fact, I have not seen any news about a working PCIe SATA interface card at all. What I have come across is a solution for a working PCIe NVMe card, but only after removing a resistor. Bullet64 reported the following:

Yes, i have remove the resistor on preproduction rockpro64!!!! Please take care, that is not without danger!

My resistor has removed a specialist.

After this on NVMe Card the red LED is ON And the NVMe card works.

On the SATA-Card is an white(?) LED. But this LED isn't ON. So maybe wrong pcie-regulator ???

His solution is working for the NVMe card, but not for the SATA card and this applies to a pre-production board. I have no intention to removing resistors so my questions are the following:

1) Can someone confirm that the PCIe SATA board is working without the need to remove resistors?
2) Is the board that is currently (6/12/2018) available for sale still a pre-production board or are there modifications applied (such as differences in resistors)?

Depending on the answers and status of the board I will either order one or still wait a bit for a future revision.

[pfeerick]

To the best of my knowledge, the current boards are still pre-production / developer / early adopter boards, so "under construction" warning apply.

I haven't modified my board yet (it's about to go under the knife), but I have seen at least one report that the SATA card does work - but if that is with or without a modification I can't say.

[Yoast]

To the best of my knowledge, the current boards are still pre-production / developer / early adopter boards, so "under construction" warning apply.

I haven't modified my board yet (it's about to go under the knife), but I have seen at least one report that the SATA card does work - but if that is with or without a modification I can't say.

Thanks for the info! Do you remember where you saw the report of a working SATA card?

[pfeerick]

Thanks for the info! Do you remember where you saw the report of a working SATA card?

Frank (Bullet64?) mentioned it on his site - https://frank-mankel.org/post/170 - but it probably came from the IRC chat.

A little later - (I had yet to boot the rockpro64 this morning so held off posting till I had) - I tried the SATA card on 0.6.51, and no luck, so thought I'd try what Frank hinted at in his post about changing the jumpers so changed them and tried again, and it now does appear in the lspci listing at last. No drives connected, and no light on the card, but making progress. Before lspci -t was giving me "-[0000:00]-" and nothing on a -vvv. So something strange going on there with what appears to be simply a socket redirect. Either that, or I got the rockpro64 on a good boot. It's a unstable tempermental beast at times... seems fine once it boots... but sometimes its a 50/50 whether it boots or crashes during bootup.

Code:

pfeerick@rockpro64:~$ lspci -t

-[0000:00]---00.0-[01]----00.0

pfeerick@rockpro64:~$ lspci -vvv
00:00.0 PCI bridge: Rockchip Inc. RK3399 PCI Express Root Port Device 0100 (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
    Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
    Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort+ <TAbort+ <MAbort+ >SERR+ <PERR+ INTx-
    Latency: 0
    Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 238
    Bus: primary=00, secondary=01, subordinate=01, sec-latency=0
    I/O behind bridge: 00000000-00000fff
    Memory behind bridge: fa000000-fa0fffff
    Prefetchable memory behind bridge: 00000000-000fffff
    Secondary status: 66MHz- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- <SERR- <PERR-
    BridgeCtl: Parity- SERR- NoISA- VGA- MAbort- >Reset- FastB2B-
        PriDiscTmr- SecDiscTmr- DiscTmrStat- DiscTmrSERREn-
    Capabilities: <access denied>
    Kernel driver in use: pcieport

01:00.0 SATA controller: ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1062 Serial ATA Controller (rev 02) (prog-if 01 [AHCI 1.0])
    Subsystem: ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1062 Serial ATA Controller
    Control: I/O- Mem- BusMaster- SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
    Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
    Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 237
    Region 0: I/O ports at <unassigned> [disabled]
    Region 1: I/O ports at <unassigned> [disabled]
    Region 2: I/O ports at <unassigned> [disabled]
    Region 3: I/O ports at <unassigned> [disabled]
    Region 4: I/O ports at <unassigned> [disabled]
    Region 5: Memory at fa010000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [disabled] [size=512]
    [virtual] Expansion ROM at fa000000 [disabled] [size=64K]
    Capabilities: <access denied>

[Bullet64]

That's exactly what happened to me with the SATA Card.

[Tigger]

To the best of my knowledge, the current boards are still pre-production / developer / early adopter boards, so "under construction" warning apply.

I realise that you started of with "To the best of my knowledge". But what you wrote is the opposite of what @tllim wrote earlier on 29-04-2018 (see quote below).
Could either of you two confirm what is right ?
This (and some other trivial questions for which I will open a new thread) prevent me from ordering.

..........

2. The ROCKPro64 still in early stage development cycle, the current batch is only suitable for developer and early adopter.

Good news, the Rockpro64 boards tested well and pilot production just started. However,this batch has one wire modification due to PCB layout error, and the issue (at eMMC area) has been fixed and now functional.

I'm a developer but definitely not an early adopter. Will the next batch of June, be a production run, or still a pilot production run ?

..........

The next batch should be product run unless this batch burn-in test result call fro another pilot run.

..........

[pfeerick]

I realise that you started of with "To the best of my knowledge". But what you wrote is the opposite of what @tllim wrote earlier on 29-04-2018 (see quote below).

Could either of you two confirm what is right ?
This (and some other trivial questions for which I will open a new thread) prevent me from ordering.

Go with what TL said. But keep in mind 1) That statement is from about six weeks ago and 2) There are unresolved issues still, so unless they are found to be solely software related, there may be a need for another pilot run. So I would not be placing any orders until you hear people starting saying it's stable, and that no green wire fixes or other board mods are needed.

[Tigger]

I realise that you started of with "To the best of my knowledge". But what you wrote is the opposite of what @tllim wrote earlier on 29-04-2018 (see quote below).

Could either of you two confirm what is right ?
This (and some other trivial questions for which I will open a new thread) prevent me from ordering.

Go with what TL said. But keep in mind 1) That statement is from about six weeks ago and 2) There do are unresolved issues still, so unless they are found to be solely software related, there may be a need for another pilot run. So I would not be placing any orders until you hear people starting saying it's stable, and that no green wire fixes or other board mods are needed.

Thanks for your honesty.
I'll be holding off for now, because I just read the thread about the NVMe and SATA PCI-e cards issue. Damn the road to glory is rocky.

[Yoast]

Looks like the PCIe issues are resolved in the second batch:

...
About PCIe - the delay in sharing information is largely due to 1) the issue was identified recently (2 weeks ago) and 2) and since it requires a minor hw mod, potential software solutions had to be considered first and this took some time.

I'm sure that updated schematics will be uploaded in the future too.

edit: yes, the second batch resolves all known issues.

Thanks for the message Luke. Am I correct to understand that the PCIe issues are resolved as well in the second batch (I just want to confirm this so that I can order or still wait a bit longer)?

They are yes. Just one transistor had to be removed from the PCB, thats all.

[Luke]

Looks like the PCIe issues are resolved in the second batch:

...
About PCIe - the delay in sharing information is largely due to 1) the issue was identified recently (2 weeks ago) and 2) and since it requires a minor hw mod, potential software solutions had to be considered first and this took some time.

I'm sure that updated schematics will be uploaded in the future too.

edit: yes, the second batch resolves all known issues.

Thanks for the message Luke. Am I correct to understand that the PCIe issues are resolved as well in the second batch (I just want to confirm this so that I can order or still wait a bit longer)?

They are yes. Just one transistor had to be removed from the PCB, thats all.

Just to make it clear, this doesn't mean that software bit related to PCIe is super stable - but the cause of the hardware not working has been identified an solved. That said, in the last pre-release PCIe has been stable for me.