Shuttle SN78SH7 - success, and starting AHCI driver port from OpenBSD.

[Matthew Dillon]

    I've upgraded my test boxes to a new generation.  The Shuttle SN78SH7
    barebones (meaning one must buy the cpu, memory, and drives separately),
    with a Phenom x4 cpu pretty much just works.  Everything probes and
    it boots up without complaint.  Dmesg output is here:

	http://apollo.backplane.com/DFlyMisc/ShuttleSN78SH7.txt

    This baby doesn't have any PS/2 connectors.  The keyboard/mouse is
    all USB, and does appear to work just fine.

    I also went with both a SATA HD and a SATA DVD-RW, so no IDE stuff at
    all in my box.

    I got the whole mess from newegg.com, it was delivered smartly and
    ridiculously cheap for the horsepower it represents.  I already had
    the hard drives.  Everything else came to less then $600 per box
    (shuttle, cpu, memory, DVD-RW).

    --

    In anycase, the major reason for updating was to get some test boxes
    worked up with native AHCI hardware so I can port the OpenBSD AHCI driver.

    So I am now officially porting that driver and I expect to have it done
    for our July release.  OpenBSD has a very nice implementation which fully
    supports command queueing and being able to separate out the AHCI
    support from the NATA driver will allow us to slowly phase-out the NATA
    driver for all-SATA systems.  I also think we can get removable SATA
    working (something we want since ESATA is becoming the new standard for
    external hard drives).

					-Matt
					Matthew Dillon 
					<dillon at backplane.com>