Radxa Hexa SATA card

#1

I just noticed this particular product: https://radxa.com/products/accessories/m2-to-hexa-sata-adapter/

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It’s Radxa ASM1166 m.2 card. So far not much than card, some photos, no docs and availability, just brief specs.
I guess it’s like always for other asm1166 m.2 cards: 2x pcie 3.0 to 6x sata card.

I’m really curious about this card and it’s features, would like to clarify several things,
I have few those generic, noname cards (v1.1, v1.2 or some unversioned):

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Like radxa version its based on ASM1166, only small changes between those.

Are there any benefits for Radxa version of this card? Almost same functionality, but Radxa version:

  1. don’t have UART pins as well as i2c? Is this somehow wired into m.2?
    Frankly I don’t know what we can do with those, usually card should sit in m.2 slot and just provide sata interface for system,
    UART console in generic cards reports some firmware version and “NoGrant”, I guess it’s used for firmware update. I wish I could use it to get some information (connected/disconnected drives, activity, leds?). Maybe i/2c is compatible with SGPIO? I could not find or confirm anything related to those on my cards, and here no such pins?

  2. No heatsink?
    This chip heats up significantly. v1.0 has no heatsink and those dies in few weeks. Why radxa version skipped this? Any newer design or chip upgrade?

  3. ASM1166 firmware,
    those generic cards usually have old firmware with no ASPM or hotplug support, some users upgrade firmware using the one from silverstone base ASM1166 pcie card
    Will radxa have any firmware customisations to this card? Will it support those two features out of box?

  4. Any other benefits for this type of card from radxa? Price? Support?

  5. On photos we can see two of those in Rock 5 ITX+, clearly it should work with Rock 5B+ and 5B with bifurcation adapter. Are there any changes for that in radxa version?

  6. Can we expect any linux software for ASM1166? I could not find any tool to upgrade firmware under linux, anything for ARM etc. If board will be supported for Rock 5 ITX maybe there are some tools for this platform?

Anybody from @radxa have more info on those? maybe @setq or @jack ?

Radxa M.2 E key to SATA breakout card
Radxa M.2 E key to SATA breakout card
#2

Hi @melo,

Can you respond to these questions?

1 Like
#3

@melo can You help? :slight_smile:

#4

Sorry for keeping you waiting.

  1. The UART and I2C signals have not been brought out in the current version.

  2. We will ship the product together with a heatsink.

  3. The current version supports the hot-plugging and ASPM functions.

  4. the price will bring you great surprises. Stay tuned!

  5. when the M.2 to Hexa SATA Adapter is used in conjunction with one of the M.2 M Key connectors of the ROCK 5B / 5B+, there is a problem of structural interference.

  6. We will provide the flashing tool.
    https://dl.radxa.com/accessories/m2-to-hexa-sata-adapter/tools/

2 Likes
#5

No problem, card is still not available, so no worries, but I can compare those with generic ASM1166 cards

What is purpose of those two? I could not find anything about those regarding ASM1166, i2c reports something at 900k baud rate, but not much else than some firmware hash, is it used for firmware upgrade?
Is there any chance to use i2c or uart for leds?

Will this be glued to chip?
I have card that has place for nvme drive, but not such thick card like any generic asm1166. It would be gret for me to design own cooling for that,

Great!
Any customisations for radxa version?

Great :slight_smile:

Oh, I need it for 5B, will it not work? What is the problem?

At this moment it return cloudflare error, I’ll check that for sure :slight_smile:

#6

Will not stick to IC.

#7

Generic version.

#8

This is due to the interference of components near the M.2 M Key Connector of 5B and 5B+.

#9

Ok, I see updated radxa docs, one photo with heatsink:

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Generic version of ASM1166 card seems to works on 5B, is there anything I need to check additionally?
If card is connected what problem should occur? should it be detected? link down? not stable connection?

Right now it’s working. Linux flash tool + docs and ROM, is there x86 linux version too for some SBCs like radxa x4?

#10

The inductor near the M Key of 5B/5B+ has structural interference with the Hexa SATA Adapter Board.
Without 5B using an acrylic board to reinforce the board, there is no interference issue.
However, after adding the acrylic board, there is interference issue.

The flashing tool for x86 linux version has been uploaded.

#11

OK, so it’s about thickness of card. This is easy to solve by extending m2 port with something like this:
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or just super extra careful handling without bottom plate. From my experience those sata ports are so fragile that You need to take car off the board on every change.
It would be way much better to put sata ports on some flex and additional board.

Thanks! :slight_smile:

@melo, can You please say anything about those missing UART/I2C pins? I know that radxa card has don’t have those, but there have to be something about that in tech docs. Somebody already asked here for possibility to control LED’s via those on backplane, is this somehow an option?

#12

Wow thank you Radxa. I can’t believe the firmware tools were available for years but all prior manufacturers (not counting Silverstone who released a Windows Flasher Tool) just did not make those available.

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#13

There is some strapping, maybe it is the reason there is nothing there on the UART:


It is marked as to be used for testing, probably it should be used together with the TESTNET or SRIS_EN … but it is only my guess.
There are similar spec documents for a smaller brother, they have some extra details:
https://gitcode.com/Open-source-documentation-tutorial/b96a4/blob/main/ASM1062_Data Sheet_R1_3.pdf
https://wenku.csdn.net/doc/2fua97ftxf
https://gitcode.com/open-source-toolkit/47986
https://www.station-drivers.com/index.php/en/component/remository/Drivers/Asmedia/ASM-106x-Sata-6G-Controller/lang,en-gb/
There are also GPIO. I couldn’t find any information about them, but it could be that they can be used to get the HDD statuses like on the JMB585, where they are used to get this information (from the JMB585 demo board spec):

  • GPIO 1~5: SPI interface
  • GPIO 6~10: SATAx LED : SATA Portx PWM (PHY Ready/ Link Busy/ Sleep Dim)
  • GPIO 11~15: Disk PWR CTRL: outputs high level when IC has been powered after 5 or 10 or 15 or 20 and 25 seconds (SSU).

I contacted reedstone support, they say that the functionality to get the status information from the UART/i2c is “reserved in public firmware versions and not publicly available.These functionalities can only be achieved through customized firmware, and customization services are exclusively offered to companies.”
Maybe Radxa can request such firmware for the next version of the board. I was told that physical pins will be available in the next version of “Radxa Hexa SATA card” but it is not clear if they will provide only HDD activity statuses for LEDs or something more, like error statuses from PCIe AER? or what JMB585 does.

1 Like
#14

Dmitry, thanks for Your details,
I was able to connect to UART with my ASM1166 cards, but there is not much there, only some info about firmware and some, non changing debug info,

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NoGrant sounds like it stopped to report anything, maybe shorting those test pins would change it.

Many backplanes uses their own i2c/uart to get leds to work. It would be awesome to get this to work with ASM1166. Maybe it’s just about wiring gpio from SBC and sending right stuff via sgpio.

#15

I wanted to ask when card will be available to find out that it’s already on ali.

At this time it’s most expensive ASM1166 m.2 card on ali, $25 card + $10 shipping.
cheap alternatives starts at $12 with free shipping, maybe even less with some promo codes. This is price level of branded versions like iocrest or silverstone (still shipping is huge compared to others).
I’ll get two with next order, but for sure it’s rather expensive choice :slight_smile:

I checked both tools, x86 version is v1.1.1.0, ARM is v1.0.0.0, can we get update?

Some problems I got,

  1. no option to dump current firmware (only display info, erase, upgrade)
  2. no option to choose which device I can use (I connected two, seems that it wants to update two)
  3. some typos on messages, info about unsupported card in same line,