Old Socket-754 Motherboard help, SATA not working

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Limp Gawd
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Recently got a FIC K8-800T socket 754 for the original Athlon motherboard. https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/fic-k8-800t#downloads
There are two SATA slots in there but neither seems capable of running a SATA device Hard Drive or DVD. I've tried just about everything, enabling/Disabling SATA in the bios. Toggling IDE and SCSI. It seems to be running the latest bios I can find on the web from Dec 2013. Out of ideas at this point so wondering if anyone here may help.
 
clear the bios? what do you mean by "neither seems capable of running a SATA device"? like the bios doesnt see them or the os installer doesnt?
 
I did try clearing the bios. So the mb has two SATA slots. If I plug any time of SATA device (500GB sata, 1TB sata, DVD sata) the bios does not see it. Does not auto-detect in the BIOS and does not appear during the BIOS boot sequence.
 
see if a dvd drive will power up. caps on the board all look good? the sata is supposed to be bootable right? i dont remember using sata that far back...
 
DVD drive powers up. Interesting, if I unplug the sata HD the sata DVD now shows up in the boot sequence but won't get past the initial post. Maybe there's something wrong with the onboard SATA controller?
The CAPs on the MB mostly looks good. a few of the ones around the DDR DIMMs are slightly buldging
haven't tried usb boot yet, i should give that a try if I ever get past the bios.
 
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Some of those older Southbridges on VIA boards are very flakey with SATA 2 and _especially_ SATA 3.

I remember having to use the drive manufacturer's tools (on a Samsung drive) first on a newer PC to downshift the drive to a lower SATA level and only then it would show up and work on the retro one.
 
Early SATA was very sketchy, and many boards used third party controllers. A lot of these controllers were really bad and unstable, on top of needing special drivers. Plus a lot of them could not be used as a boot drive, and would only work with a limited amount of drives.
 
That makes sense. I didn't even know there were different SATAs! So I 2003 mb would be sata 1....
I'm reading that in theory they should all be compatible but I guess sata 1 sometimes worse than ide!
 
RecentlyAdded said:
That makes sense. I didn't even know there were different SATAs! So I 2003 mb would be sata 1....
I'm reading that in theory they should all be compatible but I guess sata 1 sometimes worse than ide!
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SATA had three major revisions - 1.x (150MB/s), 2.x (300MB/s), and 3.x (600MB/s). There were tons of different chipset vendors that made the SATA controllers. Even on modern platforms where most SATA are provided directly by PCH, you can still see third party controllers from commpanies like ASMedia or Marvell to provide more SATA port on some motherboards.

In theory even SATA 1.x is faster than IDE. You're looking at 150MB/s vs 100 - 133MB/s. But with older platforms, IDE peripherals should give you far less headache so it's better in that regard.
 
It's been a VERY long time but if I recall correctly the VIA VT8237 controller on your motherboard doesn't recognize anything other than SATA1 drives. It was a problem fixed with later revisions of the controller (VT8237A (maybe) and VT8237R) I believe. SATA2 and 3 are supposed to default back to SATA1 but I don't know how good that functionality is in practice.
 
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gtrguy said:
It's been a VERY long time but if I recall correctly the VIA VT8237 controller on your motherboard doesn't recognize anything other than SATA1 drives. It was a problem fixed with later revisions of the controller (VT8237A (maybe) and VT8237R) I believe. SATA2 and 3 are supposed to default back to SATA1 but I don't know how good that functionality is in practice.
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This is absolutely correct.

SATA II / III drives present a nightmare for this Southbridge, and they can't work in SATA I mode with this chipset.

In some Socket 754 motherboard BIOS settings there is an option to run your SATA drives in IDE emulation mode, but I'm almost 100% sure that VIA VT8237 Southbridge-based boards don't offer this option.

The only way you're going to be able to get a SATA II / III drive to work is to get a PCI SATA controller card, and use that instead of that awful VIA Southbridge. You can find those PCI controller cards pretty cheaply, I'd imagine.
 
As far as I remember SIS chipset for Pentiums had the same problem. Only compatible with Sata 1 and some Sata II but not all (probable those that could retrofit entirely in Sata 1 mode).
 
RecentlyAdded said:
I much appreciate education and history lesson I'm getting, thank you!
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One of the problems you may encounter with SATA 1 (150 mb/s) is the hard drive itself. By the time SATA II (300 mb/s) came out ... hard drives had to be jumpered to be compatible with SATA I... by the time SATA III (600 mb/s) hard drives and SSDs came out the jumper block on the hard drive disappeared. The jumper block was between SATA connector and legacy Molex / SATA Power connectors... you had to read up on the products white page (manual) on which jumpers to bridge on the drive to lock it to SATA I (150 mb/s)... As I recall SATA III drives are backwards compatible with SATA II (300 mb/s), but not SATA I (150 mb/s)...
Been a long while since I played with 1st gen SATA, but this was a stumbling block when drives got newer, long before SSDs too... so, look for a 1st gen SATA drive... or a 2nd Gen SATA II drive with a jumper block on the drive
 
Fuck those jumpers, good riddance lol.

I do have to say, NVME is a treat.

Much love for old hardware though, without it, we wouldn't be here.

But good riddance.
 
Unabomber said:
This is absolutely correct.

SATA II / III drives present a nightmare for this Southbridge, and they can't work in SATA I mode with this chipset.

In some Socket 754 motherboard BIOS settings there is an option to run your SATA drives in IDE emulation mode, but I'm almost 100% sure that VIA VT8237 Southbridge-based boards don't offer this option.

The only way you're going to be able to get a SATA II / III drive to work is to get a PCI SATA controller card, and use that instead of that awful VIA Southbridge. You can find those PCI controller cards pretty cheaply, I'd imagine.
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Interesting. That's either info I forgot or never knew at all.
OP mentions they tried a DVD drive and I am wondering would an optical drive ever need to be beyond SATA I standards and be backwards compatible, or would manufactures likely have upgraded to SATA II/III components when they became cheaper nullifying the SATA I compatibility.
 
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