AHCI SATA controller not detected

blt2b · Oct 2, 2024

SleepWalker I am back for 5 days to the location where I can physically test and re-do an installation and make some tests, I would love to see if you have any advises or suggestion

Many thanks in advance

blt2b · Sunday at 3:08 PM

Hi SleepWalker it has been a long time, but wanted to test on 15.0 I am wondering if by chance you have a u-boot and dtb working on 15.0 ?
I was unable to make it work so I check here by chance if you have something I would be very happy to test as I am for a week landing tomorrow where I have my Helios64
Many thanks

bgavin · Sunday at 3:46 PM

I have problems with JMicron controllers in pure windows environments and intel chipset mainstream boards.

Phishfry · Sunday at 5:36 PM

SleepWalker has not been seen in quite a while. Hopefully he is alive and well.

Regarding your problem the rockpro64 has a u-boot port and it works well.

You might find some PCIe devices will not work on the board. I did. But I also had M.2 NVMe working on a adapter card.

There is a FreeBSD Image for 15.0-RELEASE and ROCKPRO64. Have you tried it? It should work out of box.

You may need to enable an overlay for PCIe bus speed.

blt2b · 2026-01-21T21:52:11+0000

thanks Phishfry
I tried to write a SDCard with 15.0-RELEASE for ROCKPRO64 and it is working fine for the OS part it is booting and all good BUT..I am missing the most important thing for Helios.. the drives. The controler is not recognized (I don't hear the drives) so it definitely missing something during the boot, would you guide me on how to add the overlay for the PCIe bus ? It is like I am very close to make it work..

dmesg
pcib1: <PCI-PCI bridge> at device 0.0 on pci0
pcib1: failed to allocate initial memory window: 0-0xfffff
pci1: <PCI bus> on pcib1
ahci0: <JMicron JMB58x AHCI SATA controller> at device 0.0 on pci1

Many thanks in advance

Phishfry · 2026-01-21T22:35:25+0000

I doubt the overlay would make anything work for you in this case.. You would need to look at pciconf -lvbce to determine PCIe bus speed. If GEN1 apply this overlay:

Post in thread 'RockPro64 with PCIe slot'

Oct 23, 2022

Phishfry said:
I see my PCIe bus is only running at GEN1 and GEN2 is possible. Anybody figure this out?

Mine shows Gen2 for NVMe:

Code:

nda0: nvme version 1.2 x4 (max x4) lanes PCIe Gen2 (max Gen3) link
nda0: 244198MB (500118192 512 byte sectors)

Probably because of "max-link-speed". Don't know if it has real impact on performance.

Code:

grep -A5 pcie0 my.dts
&pcie0 {
        bus-scan-delay-ms = <1000>;
        ep-gpios = <&gpio2 RK_PA4 GPIO_ACTIVE_HIGH>;
        max-link-speed = <2>;
        num-lanes = <4>;
        pinctrl-names = "default";

blt2b · 2026-01-21T22:38:58+0000

Phishfry said:
I doubt the overlay would make anything work. You would need to look at pciconf -lvbce to determine PCIe bus speed. If GEN1 apply this overlay:

Post in thread 'RockPro64 with PCIe slot'

Oct 23, 2022

Phishfry said:

I see my PCIe bus is only running at GEN1 and GEN2 is possible. Anybody figure this out?

Click to expand...

Mine shows Gen2 for NVMe:

Code:

nda0: nvme version 1.2 x4 (max x4) lanes PCIe Gen2 (max Gen3) link nda0: 244198MB (500118192 512 byte sectors)

Probably because of "max-link-speed". Don't know if it has real impact on performance.

Code:

grep -A5 pcie0 my.dts &pcie0 { bus-scan-delay-ms = <1000>; ep-gpios = <&gpio2 RK_PA4 GPIO_ACTIVE_HIGH>; max-link-speed = <2>; num-lanes = <4>; pinctrl-names = "default";

JohnnySorocil

here is how it looks like in my system :

 

pciconf -lvbce

pcib1@pci0:0:0:0:       class=0x060400 rev=0x00 hdr=0x01 vendor=0x1d87 device=0x0100 subvendor=0x0000 subdevice=0x0000

    vendor     = 'Rockchip Electronics Co., Ltd'

    device     = 'RK3399 PCI Express Root Port'

    class      = bridge

    subclass   = PCI-PCI

    cap 01[80] = powerspec 3  supports D0 D1 D3  current D0

    cap 05[90] = MSI supports 1 message, 64 bit, vector masks

    cap 11[b0] = MSI-X supports 1 message

                 Table in map 0x10[0x0], PBA in map 0x10[0x8]

    cap 10[c0] = PCI-Express 2 root port max data 128(256) RO NS ARI disabled

                 max read 128

                 link x2(x4) speed 2.5(2.5) ASPM disabled(L0s/L1)

                 slot 0 power limit 0 mW

    ecap 0001[100] = AER 2 0 fatal 0 non-fatal 0 corrected

    ecap 0017[274] = TPH Requester 1

ahci0@pci0:1:0:0:       class=0x010601 rev=0x00 hdr=0x00 vendor=0x197b device=0x0585 subvendor=0x197b subdevice=0x0000

    vendor     = 'JMicron Technology Corp.'

    device     = 'JMB58x AHCI SATA controller'

    class      = mass storage

    subclass   = SATA

    bar   [10] = type I/O Port, range 32, base 0, size 128, disabled

    bar   [14] = type I/O Port, range 32, base 0, size 128, disabled

    bar   [18] = type I/O Port, range 32, base 0, size 128, disabled

    bar   [1c] = type I/O Port, range 32, base 0, size 128, disabled

    bar   [20] = type I/O Port, range 32, base 0, size 128, disabled

    bar   [24] = type Memory, range 32, base 0xfa000000, size 8192, enabled

    cap 01[80] = powerspec 3  supports D0 D3  current D0

    cap 05[90] = MSI supports 8 messages, 64 bit, vector masks enabled with 8 messages

    cap 10[c0] = PCI-Express 2 legacy endpoint max data 128(512) FLR RO NS

                 max read 512

                 link x2(x2) speed 2.5(8.0)

    ecap 0001[100] = AER 2 0 fatal 0 non-fatal 0 corrected

    ecap 0003[150] = Serial 1 0000000000000000

    ecap 0004[160] = Power Budgeting 1

    ecap 0018[1b8] = LTR 1

    ecap 0019[300] = PCIe Sec 1 lane errors 0

    ecap 001e[900] = L1 PM Substates 1

I haven't touched dtb or u-boot like I did in the past as I wanted to try with stock 15.0 first

Phishfry · 2026-01-21T22:42:46+0000

blt2b said:
link x2(x4) speed 2.5(2.5) ASPM disabled(L0s/L1)

It is running at the correct speed.

Phishfry · 2026-01-21T22:45:15+0000

blt2b said:
ahci0: <JMicron JMB58x AHCI SATA controller>

Controller looks like it is working fine.
I never dug into these Helios devices. Maybe there is some special quirks to get the drives to spin up...

blt2b · 2026-01-21T22:47:40+0000

I see that u-boot on github has a rk3399-helios64.dts, and I see a lot of tweaks, I just don't remember where to put it for the system to consume ?

covacat · 2026-01-21T22:57:01+0000

what dtb are you using. the helios64 dtb has specific regulators / pinctrl for the drives

blt2b · 2026-01-21T23:00:11+0000

I am trying to build u-boot as we speak but still not on dtb, where can I find it ? should I just copy it to /boot/dtb ? thanks

covacat · 2026-01-21T23:07:39+0000

built from u-boot src top with
cpp -nostdinc -x assembler-with-cpp -I dts/upstream/include/ ./dts/upstream/src/arm64/rockchip/rk3399-kobol-helios64.dts |dtc -I dts >rk3399-kobol-helios64.dtb
its from u-boot-2025.10
copy it somewhere on the file system and add this to loader.conf

mydtb_name="/c.dtb"
mydtb_load="YES"
mydtb_type="dtb"

replace /c.dtb with the actual full path of the file

blt2b · 2026-01-21T23:25:22+0000

covacat said:
built from u-boot src top with
cpp -nostdinc -x assembler-with-cpp -I dts/upstream/include/ ./dts/upstream/src/arm64/rockchip/rk3399-kobol-helios64.dts |dtc -I dts >rk3399-kobol-helios64.dtb
its from u-boot-2025.10
copy it somewhere on the file system and add this to loader.conf

mydtb_name="/c.dtb"
mydtb_load="YES"
mydtb_type="dtb"

replace /c.dtb with the actual full path of the file

thanks for the explanation.
I just tried but during the boot I see :

don't know how to load module '/rk3399-kobol-helios64.dtb'
I tried to move into another location just to proof and the error message was file not found, so it seems that it can find it but doesn't know how to load

(I changed my loader.conf like yours only changing the filename)

covacat · 2026-01-21T23:36:14+0000

it has to load it if the loader.conf is ok
alternatively stop loader with escape
at the loader prompt
unload all
load kernel
load -t dtb /path/to/file.dtb
boot

blt2b · 2026-01-21T23:40:59+0000

covacat said:
it has to load it if the loader.conf is ok
alternatively stop loader with escape
at the loader prompt
unload all
load kernel
load -t dtb /path/to/file.dtb
boot

victory ! manually loading it is working ! I can see the drives ... will check if they are functional.
Many many thanks you make my night !

AHCI SATA controller not detected

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