Haiku AHCI support

What does that mean? AHCI is the greatest thing since sliced bread. One interface to rule them all. One interface to find them. Them SATA harddisks.

Serial-ATA host controllers manufactured during the last two years are all slightly different, from the programming interface side of view. You need an extra driver for every one of them.

Intel decided time was ready for a generic standard, and invented AHCI, the Advanced Host Controller Interface. The specification was published in 2004 and you can get motherboard featuring those controllers right now.

I recently bought an Asus P5W DH Deluxe motherboard, which features the Intel 975X (ICH7R) chipset. Additionally, it uses an Jmicron JMB363 controller, which is also AHCI compliant. There is also a Hardware RAID controller Silicon Image 4723 included, but I'm not using it. It offers real hardware RAID (no driver required, you have to use a jumper to select the RAID mode) but as there is only Windows software available to be notified about RAID failure. For me it doesn't make much sense to utilize it, as at the moment I'm only running Linux at this computer.

I'm using Linux for Haiku development, and have setup the crosscompilation environment. Once the AHCI driver is ready (or when I decide to add an additional PATA harddisk), it will be possible to run Haiku on this machine.

On this website, Intel lists the following chipsets as AHCI compliant:

Intel® 631xESB/632xESB I/O Controller Hub
Intel® 82801HR/HH/HO I/O Controller Hub (ICH8R)
Intel® 82801GBM I/O Controller Hub (ICH7M)
Intel® 82801GR I/O Controller Hub (ICH7R)
Intel® 82801GH I/O Controller Hub (ICH7DH)
Intel® 82801FR I/O Controller Hub (ICH6R)
Intel® 82801FBM I/O Controller Hub (ICH6M)