Plextor PX-712SA Using VIA SATA Chipset

[Ian]

You might want to think twice about buying a PX-712SA if you have a non-Intel chipset. I've been trying to get it to work with my ASUS K8V SE Deluxe and haven't had a lot of luck.

Here is is reading a single layer DVD-ROM disc using the onboard SATA controller (not the Promise RAID):



The transfer speed seems to be limited to about 4000K when reading both DVD's and CD's. I haven't bothered trying to write anything yet.

Has anyone else seen this with VIA or non-Intel chipsets?

[ClayBuster]

Here are my results using it with the onboard Silicon Image 3114. The results were the same using the $13 Sil3112 add-on card

[Ian]

Hopefully its just a VIA issue. I'll have to talk to ASUS and Plextor about it. Thankfully I also have a P4 system here.

[shimman]

via chipsets are most issue prone from my experience...most notorious problems were related to pci latency problems & corruptions due the that problem

[Impulse]

My boss bought a PX-712SA a few weeks ago and has been having grief burning consistantly and this may be the reason why: he has the same board you tried this out with, Ian. Now I know that he is not alone...he's been burning some things for me with some Verbatium 4x media (burning at 8x) and had quite a few of them fail with DVDShrink...I told him to burn them at 4x and just to use the full version of Nero (5.10.42) and the problem seemed to go away. But maybe this was just a stopgap solution...let me know if you find out anything else.

[rdgrimes]

Now you know why most drive makers are holding off on releasing SATA burners. The available SATA controllers do not properly support ATAPI devices, or the commands used by various programs to communicate with them. The SIL controllers seems to allow them to work well enough as readers and writers, but things like firmware flashing and testing will be troublesome. One would think that Plextor would inform buyers of which controllers don't work, as they certainly know.

[ClayBuster]

I have flashed the Pioneer 107, Plextor 712A, And various Lite-On drives using the SATA Adapters and never had a problem UNTIL I tried ripping a dvd in the 712A with the adapter connected it just kept telling me there was some copyright stuff wrong. It also would not play a DVD that had any kind of encryption.

The adapters worked fine with all the other drives though.

The Q-Check scans between the 712A and the 712SA were Identical.


The 712SA I have works fine on the Sil 3114, 3112 and the onboard Intel SATA interfaces.

[wicked1]

ive got the same adapters as claybuster hooked to my onboard silicon image controllers without any problems. Flashed them and all without a hitch. My Plextor 708 when hooked to my firewire converters wouldnt flash without fubaring my firewire converters. I am happy with my setup.

[hoxlund]

whats up with the 2 SATA drives (plextor 712sa and msi xa52p) being intel only, i mean i don't care i own a 875pe chipset mobo

but id like the amd people to experience the SATA optical drive goodness too

[stevehp]

In its current interation the VIA 8237 is mainly a raid only controller they don't have a non-raid sata implementation like that of intel.

Don't think for one minute that's this is an old via chipset problem I'm pretty tired of hearing people putting down VIA for it's past problems and mistakes the 8237 integrated sata is, and still is the best sata implementation one of the first that bybassed the pci bus Intel was next to do the same.

Like rdgrimes said before most controllers don't properly support ATAPI devices until second generation sata comes then we will see controllers that will support optical drives properly. It might also be a good idea to find someone that owns a Nforce3 250 board and try Nvidia's integrated sata to see how that works with the SA.

[Kennyshin]

My Nforce 3 board has only Silicon Image 3114 chipset. I use it for SATA RAID 0 because it's fast for the money.

I like VIA products generally. It's not good though VIA's latest LAN, USB, 1394 products are often behind Intel counterparts. Having 2 Gigabits by Intel in a motherboard is good, for instance. However, a VIA chipset motherboard that costs US$30 to US$40 with support for Prescott processors is probably the best buy for the budget-conscious.