Reverting Back To Older Firmware for Sonnet Tempo-X eSATA 4+4 Card

[David Smith]

Is there anything in the Read Me files that mentions reverting? If not, I’d contact Sonnet support and ask them.

Regards,
David

[Bob Zelin]

I have been running 2.0.4b9 (not b1) without issue. Try that.

Bob Zelin

[Simon Sommerfeld]

Hi fellas,
Can I ask why the need to revert to the older firmware?
I’m also running that card and have found it has issues with my Kona2. i.e. boot problems and drives not mounting.
I’m on 2.0.3 and would like to upgrade.

Best,
Simon.

Simon Sommefeld
Redwood City CA

[Bob Zelin]

when you say your drives are not mounting – I dont’ know your system or situation, but in the PCI-X MAC’s (that use the Kona 2), you need to put the Kona card in slot 4, and the Sonnet X4P card in slot 2 or 3, and for now, don’t put ANY other cards in your system. When your system boots up, if you have a port multiplier drive array, it takes TIME for it to “come up to speed” – you can see the blue LED’s on the back of the drive array – until you have 5 LED’s lit up solid, you will not see your drives mount. This is not a problem – this is the way the Silicon Image chip set works. This upsets a lot of people, when their MAC is booted up, and they don’t see the SATA drives in the port multiplier chassis, until about 45 seconds after bootup. You can see the progress of the drives coming up by looking at the blue LED’s on the back of the chassis. New firmware will not help you.

bob Zelin

[Simon Sommerfeld]

Thanks for your info, Bob.

The latest: In the time between my last post and your reply, I updated my Kona2 drivers. Don’t know if this in particular has helped the booting and mounting problems, but everything is working OK for now, so fingers crossed it will stay that way. Kona has always been in slot 4 (3 didn’t work at all) and am not using port multiplication.

The history: The system worked great until the addition of the Kona2. Soon after, two drives (non RAID) got corrupted data (they are shot), the computer often wouldn’t boot (totally black screen requiring hard shut down), all drives on the card often wouldn’t mount and the Sonnet card started malfunctioning and required replacement (green and amber lights showing where they shouldn’t). Even with the new card there were still the odd booting and mounting problems. I’ve systematically disconnected the internal and external drives and pulled the cards to see what gives and have come to the unscientific conclusion that the cards “sometimes just don’t play well together”.

The system:
G5 Dual 2.0 (8 slot RAM model)
4.5 GB memory
Sonnet Tempo PCI-X eSATA 4+4 card in slot 3. The card has 4 internal and 4 external ports and is running four internal SATA2 drives (two are RAID 1) and four external SATA2 drives (two are RAID 0)
TransIntl Swiftdata 200 – 3 internal drive expansion bracket
Sonnet Fusion 400 external chassis (not port multiplied). This card, (the only internal/ external card non PM card available) is no longer sold by Sonnet because of Euro lead-free legislation (or so they tell me).
Kona2 in slot 4. Newly updated to latest drivers.
AJA Io. Newly updated to latest drivers.
OS-X 10.4.8
FCP 5.0.4 (non Universal)

Best,

Simon.

Simon Sommefeld
Redwood City CA