> > Do you remember whether you were using both built-in nForce4 SATA
> > controllers at the time where you only had two SATA drives? In my case,
> > I have to disable APIC if I want to use both controllers.
>
> Short answer: looks like the 1st 2 were on the same SATA controller.

I'm wondering whether your motherboard actually had automatically disabled
the second SATA controller when you only had your first 2 disks.


> Long answer:
>
> FreeBSD called the 1st two ad4 and ad6, which are both on atapci1.
> The additional disks are called ad8 and ad10, which are both on atapci2.

In case you still have some old dmesg outputs, was this atapci2 device
also detected when you only had 2 disks?


> Default NetBSD kernels of course just start numbering from 0, so
> no helpful clues there.

In my case (NetBSD 3.0 install CD), I get the following when both
SATA controllers are enabled:

viaide0 at pci0 dev 6 function 0
viaide0: NVIDIA nForce4 IDE Controller (rev. 0xf2)
[...]
viaide1 at pci0 dev 7 function 0
viaide1: NVIDIA nForce4 Serial ATA Controller (rev. 0xf3)
[...]
viaide2 at pci0 dev 8 function 0
viaide2: NVIDIA nForce4 Serial ATA Controller (rev. 0xf3)
[...]

When I disable `SATA Port 3, 4' in BIOS, then I get:

viaide0 at pci0 dev 6 function 0
viaide0: NVIDIA nForce4 IDE Controller (rev. 0xf2)
[...]
viaide1 at pci0 dev 8 function 0
viaide1: NVIDIA nForce4 Serial ATA Controller (rev. 0xf3)
[...]

There is no viaide2 there, and the SATA controller that has been
disabled actually is the device number 7 (viaide1 from the
previous dmesg).


> Where in the BIOS did you find the controls to enable/disable the
> individual SATA drives?

I cannot really enable/disable each SATA port individually, so I believe
that these controls enable/disable the SATA controllers (and each SATA
controller is connected to two SATA ports).

In my card's BIOS, there is an `Advanced' tab, with an `Onboard Device
Configuration' menu, wich has an `IDE Function Setup' submenu. In this
submenu, I can enable/disable the following options:

- OnChip IDE Channel0
- OnChip IDE Channel1
- IDE DMA Transfer Access
- SATA Port 1, 2
- SATA DMA Transfer
- SATA Port 3, 4
- SATA2 DMA Transfer
- IDE Prefetch Mode

In case you want more details, you can look at page 4-25 of the manual
available here:

http://dlsvr02.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/socket939/A8N-SLI%20Premium/e2128_a8n-sli_premium.zip

Gregoire.