[Dell Latitude D630, Precision M4300 laptop SATA-2 unlock]

[SPC76]

Hello guys,

First of all I would like to say I'm totally new here (I accidentally found this forum through Google) and I'm not very familiar to the customs here on this forum so if I do or say something stupid please forgive me. Secondly, I'm from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, therefor English is not my native language, so excuse me for my poor English

I have a Dell Precision M4300 mobile workstation and my girlfriend has a Dell Latitude D630 which both have an Intel Mobile 965 chipset (Santa Rosa). A couple of months ago I upgraded both laptop harddrives with an OCZ Vertex 2 120GB SSD.

Although the Intel Santa Rosa chipset supports SATA-2 with a thoughput of 300MB p/s, Dell have capped the SATA-2 port in the BIOS to SATA-1 (150MB p/s) to lower powerconsumption, which crippled the performance of my two Vertex 2 SSD´s The maximum read/write (285MB/275MB) speed of the SSD is roughly cut into half.

I have already contacted Dell support about this problem, but due tot the fact both laptops are considered end of life no further BIOS versions will be released (latest BIOS updates are from a year ago) to solve this problem.

Is there someone on this forum who can unlock the SATA-2 ports of both my laptops? Any help is much appreciated!!!

Best regards,
SPC

[gabiz_ro]

Intel Santa Rosa 965 is northbridge
SATA is related to southbridge.
What is your southbridge?
What BIOS use M4300 and D630?
(D630 I think is some custom Phoenix Dell BIOS)
Give us a chipset registers dump of SATA controller and a dump of memory mapped region of ABAR
Read datasheet of sourhbridge to find that.

[SPC76]

Intel Santa Rosa 965 is northbridge
SATA is related to southbridge.
What is your southbridge?
What BIOS use M4300 and D630?
(D630 I think is some custom Phoenix Dell BIOS)
Give us a chipset registers dump of SATA controller and a dump of memory mapped region of ABAR
Read datasheet of sourhbridge to find that.

Hello gabiz_ro,

Thank you for your reply. Both Dell Precision M4300 and Dell Latitude D630 laptops uses an Intel 82801 HEM\HBM (ICH8M) southbridge chipset.

More info about the Intel Mobile 965 Express Chipset:
http://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/datasheet/316273.pdf

I really have no idea what BIOS Dell uses, it is for sure a special developed or modified BIOS by Dell.

I'm not very familiar with register and memory dumps, and I have no idea what ABAR means Just tell me where or how I can get the info you need and I'll do my best

Best regards,
SPC

[gabiz_ro]

You need to use some tools like PCIScope or RW-Everything.
First you need to find in what mode operate SATA controller.
Read chipset registers, for SATA controller at offset 90h you can find what is (or from hardware id)
at offset 24h you find memory mapped region for AHCI operation if SATA is working in AHCI mode here is defined capabilities of SATA controller.

[SPC76]

You need to use some tools like PCIScope or RW-Everything.
First you need to find in what mode operate SATA controller.
Read chipset registers, for SATA controller at offset 90h you can find what is (or from hardware id)
at offset 24h you find memory mapped region for AHCI operation if SATA is working in AHCI mode here is defined capabilities of SATA controller.

Hi gabiz_ro,

Once again thank you for your help. I will try to get the info you need asap.

Best regards,
SPC

[avinkool]

According to me The Latitude D620 weighs 4.7 pounds, and the abject archetypal includes a 1.67GHz Intel Core Duo T2300 processor (667MHz front-side-bus) and 2M of L2 cache. There is an advantage to advancement to a Core 2 Duo T7X00 processor (667Mhz font-side-bus) with 4M of L2 cache.

[charliec]

You need to use some tools like PCIScope or RW-Everything.
First you need to find in what mode operate SATA controller.
Read chipset registers, for SATA controller at offset 90h you can find what is (or from hardware id)
at offset 24h you find memory mapped region for AHCI operation if SATA is working in AHCI mode here is defined capabilities of SATA controller.

Hi gabiz_ro,

Once again thank you for your help. I will try to get the info you need asap.

Best regards,
SPC

SPC,

Did you ever get anything figured out for this? were you able to 'unlock' the d630's sata controller? using hdtach my hard drive burst rate maxes out at 150MB/s, so I imagine I am running into this artificial limit and would like to increase it to 300MB/s if possible.

thanks!

[SPC76]

You need to use some tools like PCIScope or RW-Everything.
First you need to find in what mode operate SATA controller.
Read chipset registers, for SATA controller at offset 90h you can find what is (or from hardware id)
at offset 24h you find memory mapped region for AHCI operation if SATA is working in AHCI mode here is defined capabilities of SATA controller.

Hi gabiz_ro,

Once again thank you for your help. I will try to get the info you need asap.

Best regards,
SPC

SPC,

Did you ever get anything figured out for this? were you able to 'unlock' the d630's sata controller? using hdtach my hard drive burst rate maxes out at 150MB/s, so I imagine I am running into this artificial limit and would like to increase it to 300MB/s if possible.

thanks!

Hi gabiz_ro,

No, I still have not found a solution for the capped SATA-300 controller from the Dell Latitude D630 series. To be honest, I've have been very busy lately and did not take any action since my last reply

This capped SATA-300 controller issue does not only exist on the D630, but it affects all Dell business series and even the professional series laptops (I also have a Dell Precision M4300 with the same problem) with a Intel GM965 (Santa Rosa) chipset. The chipset does support SATA-300, but Dell capped the controller speed in the BIOS to save power and extend battery life.

I contacted Dell support about this issue, and asked about a possible future BIOS update which will unlock the SATA-300 controller, but according to Dell this product has already reach "End of Life" status, and therefor there are no new BIOS updates in development

Any tips, suggestions for solving this issue would be much appreciated

Best regars,
SPC

[gabiz_ro]

First make sure SATA controller is working in AHCI mode.
(I don't have any one of this notebooks and Deel was stupid enough and in many capable models AHCI wasn't enabled)
For this use "PCI Scope" ,you can find it over net.
To check that, read PCI registers of SATA controller D31:F2 (device 31,function 2)
Compare offset 90h to information from datasheet of ICH8. If value is 40h then is AHCI for sure.

If I recall my memories back,you need to find AHCI memory space.
This is at offset 24h into PCI registers of SATA controller D31:F2 (device 31,function 2)
By example:
In left panel select 1F:02 Intel corporation 82801 .... SATA AHCI
In right panel go to PCI registers
Check offset 90h
-

Code:

90h 40h Unknown BYTE Mixed

value 40h means SATA is working in AHCI mode,that's OK
Then check offset 24h
-

Code:

24h E0200000h Base Address Register 5 DWORD Mixed

That means ABAR (memory space mapped to AHCI) is starting from E0200000h

Read datasheet of ICH8 to find more.
Continue with example.
Now there is need one program to read-write memory addresses,you can use "hardware direct" for that
Read memory from address E0200000h (this is my case and example,your could be other address)
According to datasheet default value for ICH8M is DE127F03h convert that to binary and check bits 23:20
value of this set SATA speed and in default value is 0001 that means controller is working in SATA I 1.5Gb/s

Most probably Dell doesn't bother to change controller speed.
So read value,convert it to binary, bits 23:20 from 0001 change them to 0010 convert new binary value to hex and write it back to memory.

Make a test to see if speed changed.
If is working then you must find a way to write this after BIOS initialization or even at boot stage.
Or more risky and harder to patch BIOS to do this before booting.

[riprop]

Hi,
I also tried to set up SATA2 on Dell precision M4300 by steps you described, but stack it and need help. I'm using Lubuntu 11.10
I done till now:

1. List SATA controller address:
# lspci | grep SATA
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA AHCI Controller (rev 02)

2. Read BYTE (=.B) from location 90h to confirm is it 40h which means AHCI mode:
# setpci -s 00:1f.2 90.B
40

3. Read DWORD (= double word = 4 bytes = .L) from location 24h to find ABAR
# setpci -s 00:1f.2 24.L
f6ffb800

4. Read memory at offset f6ffb800, expecting to get DE127F03
# hexdump -C /dev/mem
...
00100ff0 a4 27 37 8d 3f e7 57 f3 ad 48 d3 5c ab 4c 26 ec |.'7.?.W..H.\.L&.|
hexdump: /dev/mem: Operation not permitted

but there is no such address, I get "Operation not permitted" after 00100ff0 adress

Can you tell me what I did wrong ?

Thanks.
Best Regards!