Tyan S2885 MoBo (dual Opteron 242): instalation from 2004.0 just proceeded smoothly. After the compilation of kernel 2.4.6-gentoo-rc1 disk(s) at SATA iface cannot be used as bootable disk if compiled into kernel. As a module loaded via initrd it works without problems. Possible reason: the detection of SIL-3114 does not proceed before an attempt to access root disk. SIL-3114 (oppositely to SIL-3112) is not listed in ./drivers/ide/pci/siimage.[ch], nor in ./include/linux/pci_ids.h, only in ./drivers/sata_sil.c. Workaround: after filling of the appropriate value is pci_ids.h and just repetition of lines for SII-3112 in siimage.[ch] with 3112->3114 change it works even in kernel; the disk(s) is/are accessible as IDE disk(s), but it is possible to boot from it/them. I am not sure, if this is correct, but it works...
in my experience, I've learned that SiL should go out of business
Eeeh? There are MANY board equiped with Sil-3114 chip (Abit, Tyan....), some of them are really good, expensive and new ones. If kernel tree still supports (for example) S3 video cards, it would be at least not too nice to left users with good MOBO's out of the game, just because of a few lines of source code... or not? And impossibility to boot from a decent SATA disk Linux distro is quite close to the policy of M.... - if your hardware does not work with out sw - throw it away and buy new one...!
Problem solved by hw: after re-flashing of BIOS to the newest one + setting 'PNP OS' = 'Yes' it works flawlessly.
