Rock 3A SATA over USB3 (SerDes)

Is there any status on the ability to use the native SATA interface over USB, as was advertised as being an option? Seeing as this feature would most likely require a kernel overlay, is this overlay available for manual enabling?

I realize that breakout cables don’t exist just yet, but I’m willing to work around that in order to get native SATA and not need a USB adapter.

Thanks,
Nexus

The cable is in production now. You can make one by yourself referring the diagram below:

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Wow, thank you for that wiring diagram! That’s a lot more than what I was expecting to get, but it’s appreciated!

I would assume there’s some kind of enable I have to do software-side.
Is there an overlay or something that I need to enable to get this to work?

Thanks again,
Nexus

Thx for this nice update.
Quick clarification: you mentioned the cable is now in production.
But, I could not yet find it in the store.
Can you let us know when it gets added to the store?

Thx!
PS: I’m somewhat less adventurous than @Nexus to make my own cable, in this particular case.

Hi @jack,

We used that cable option, but we could not see SSD under /dev/sd*, is there any configuration needs to be done? Thanks.

You need to configure the dtbo to change mux from USB3 to SATA as well. Do you know how to modify device tree?

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Hi @jack, thanks for your support, but I do not how to modify. Is there any guide? Thanks.

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Hi, is there any guide for it?

Hi, how can we change device tree, is there anyone who can help? Thanks…

Hi, we have supported this in the latest image release, add rock 3a usb3.0 otg port to sata0 and add rock 3a usb3.0 host port to sata1.
You can check with your image by “ls /boot/dtbs/4.19.193-*rockchip/overlay/
If there have rock-3a-sata0 and rock-3a-sata1, it means it is already supported.
You just add follow this https://github.com/radxa/kernel/tree/stable-4.19-rock3/arch/arm64/boot/dts/rockchip/overlay#readme

We will publish a wiki page as soon as possible to tell you how to use.

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Hi @jack! Will this cable work on rock5b also? Which dt modifications should I do?