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RocketRaid 3520 in Mac Pro

SamPotts

SamPotts

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 25, 2010
278
59
Sydney, Australia
I have googled to death but I can't seem to find an answer. I'm trying to find out if i need to do anything special to get a RocketRaid 3520 to boot on a mac pro. I've not received the card yet but I see talk of flashing the card to EFI firmware but there is no sign of this on their site (even the pc site). I can see a driver and the web gui but nothing else. There's EFI firmware for 3522 but clearly that won't be right for the card (internal vs. external).

Any help/advice appreciated.

Specs of the machine are:
2006 1,1 Mac Pro
E5345 QC 2.33GHz x2
24GB RAM
2 OCZ Vertex 2 60GB (going to be RAID0 on the card)
1 Intel x25M G2 (VMs etc)
1 OCZ Vertex 30GB (scratch)
4x2TB WD Greens
 
This may or may not help you but: I built a hackintosh and put a 2720 in it. The 2720 isnt officially supported for Mac, but the 2722 is. It's the same card, except internal vs external. I installed the driver and web interface and everything on it works fine. The card uses the same controller and everything, the only difference is the configuration of the ports.

You are basically in the same situation I was in, so I would assume it would work.
 
In terms if the firmware and card, internal and external ports themselves don't matter (just a different connector). But the port count does (i.e. you won't want to flash say 8 port version to anything but the internal or external 8 port cards using the same processor and other components - which is why sticking to the same series works; anything else, port counts or series, and you could brick the card <assuming you won't be able to re-flash it with the correct firmware>).

That said, Highpoint is a horrible company to deal with. They don't design or manufacture their products, so the Support Dept. doesn't know much about what they sell (means you're on your own for anything past say where to connect the cables). Nor do they support their products for long. That particular card is also near EOL it seems (pages are showing discontinued at sites I buy RAID cards from; BTW, the Intel IOP341 released in 2006).

Specifically with the EFI (EBC actually), there's been all sorts of problems (removed the firmware from the support site, but won't remove the "EFI boot support" terminology from their product pages).

So to save yourself a lot of hassle, I'd recommend sending it back as soon as it arrives, and get a different card (Areca ARC-1880i would be a good choice, and is a much better card). Even though it's a bit more money, it's 6.0Gb/s compliant and will be supported a good while by a company that designs and makes their own products (at least 5 years, and it released less than a year ago; support is substantially better than Highpoint as they can actually help you in a real jam).
 
Well finally after about 5 or 6 messages in the support portal I have managed to get some EFI firmware out of them. For anyone looking for it I've chucked it up here:

http://c.d034.com/4omV

I've not tried it yet but I shall report back once I've given it a go tonight.

Cheers for everyones replies. I figured it might be similar but they list different firmware so I didn't want to completely kill the card. Even though it's not mega money, it'd still be a pain to get another one.

If I was buying again I'd definitely get an Areca 1880i, it looks like a better card but is twice what I paid for the 3520.

Here's hoping its faster than the software RAID with the SSDs...
 
Success! It now boots from the 3520 with the above firmware.

Does anyone know if this card would be ok in the 4x slot? It's in the 8x slot at the top but it's heating up the drive above it a fair amount (49c) ?
 
SamPotts said:
Success! It now boots from the 3520 with the above firmware.

Does anyone know if this card would be ok in the 4x slot? It's in the 8x slot at the top but it's heating up the drive above it a fair amount (49c) ?
Click to expand...
49C is fine, so don't sweat it. Leave it where it is. :D
 
Hi there, I have the exactly same card and Mac Pro 1,1
when i first insert the card into the system and bootup, the config screen came up for the PCI-Express speed setting. that is a good thing, as the system as lease see something has been added....

I placed the card in the top slot for 8x speed for initial setup as i wanna minimize any potential issue....

then i installed the OS X driver in 10.7 GM, strange enough, the WEBUI is up but i cannot see any controller....and i cannot flash the EFI firmware into the card, as "there is no controller detected"!

I though it was the driver issue with 10.7, so I chunk in a spare drive and install a fresh snow kitty (10.6) then combo update to 10.6.7....by that time, I was able to flash the EFI firmware, and i installed the OS X driver for the card is 10.6, and reboot....annoyingly, web interface is up again, but no controller is found again! I try the same command for flashing the EFI firmware, and it again said "there is no controller detected"!

Help please ........:(:(:(

Thanks in advance......this is my very first post by the way, I hope i can contribute to MacRumors later...

Den
 
Firefox.app said:
Hi there, I have the exactly same card and Mac Pro 1,1
when i first insert the card into the system and bootup, the config screen came up for the PCI-Express speed setting. that is a good thing, as the system as lease see something has been added....

I placed the card in the top slot for 8x speed for initial setup as i wanna minimize any potential issue....

then i installed the OS X driver in 10.7 GM, strange enough, the WEBUI is up but i cannot see any controller....and i cannot flash the EFI firmware into the card, as "there is no controller detected"!

I though it was the driver issue with 10.7, so I chunk in a spare drive and install a fresh snow kitty (10.6) then combo update to 10.6.7....by that time, I was able to flash the EFI firmware, and i installed the OS X driver for the card is 10.6, and reboot....annoyingly, web interface is up again, but no controller is found again! I try the same command for flashing the EFI firmware, and it again said "there is no controller detected"!

Help please ........:(:(:(

Thanks in advance......this is my very first post by the way, I hope i can contribute to MacRumors later...

Den
Click to expand...
A couple of things...

What are you trying to use for drivers under Lion?

I ask, as it seems previous drivers with Areca's (what worked under 10.6.x) don't under Lion. This has relevance, as Areca is the ODM for Highpoint on their true hardware RAID cards. So those users have had to go to the support site and get recently updated drivers designed for Lion (10.7).

So the moral to all of this is check Highpoint's support site for Lion compatible drivers for that card. :p BTW, I wouldn't recommend Areca's drivers unless as a last resort (never their firmware, as one wrong move, and you'll brick the card; wrong drivers OTOH just = big mess, but can be fixed by the user).

Also, Safari tends not to play well with web based controller access (firmware updates in particular, tend not to actually take), so switching to another browser, such as FireFox might be a good idea for card management.
 
nanofrog said:
A couple of things...

What are you trying to use for drivers under Lion?

I ask, as it seems previous drivers with Areca's (what worked under 10.6.x) don't under Lion. This has relevance, as Areca is the ODM for Highpoint on their true hardware RAID cards. So those users have had to go to the support site and get recently updated drivers designed for Lion (10.7).

So the moral to all of this is check Highpoint's support site for Lion compatible drivers for that card. :p BTW, I wouldn't recommend Areca's drivers unless as a last resort (never their firmware, as one wrong move, and you'll brick the card; wrong drivers OTOH just = big mess, but can be fixed by the user).

Also, Safari tends not to play well with web based controller access (firmware updates in particular, tend not to actually take), so switching to another browser, such as FireFox might be a good idea for card management.
Click to expand...

Not much in particular to work under Lion, but since i am keep the old setup of Snow Kitty in another spare drive, I am risk free to test. I have got 3 Samsung SLC SSDs and trying to run them in RAID 0 for OS, 2x2TB of RAID 1 and 1x3TB HDD to timemachine them all...all these thing can be done with software raid with an additional SATA card, but the performance will not be impressive,thats why i need a hardware raid card to achieve the best out of this configuration......

also may need to note that, i have not attached anything to the RR3520 yet, as I was trying to see the Card up and running before i attach any HDD to it...does it make the card "not detected"?

thanks for the response, i thought the thread was dead....:rolleyes:
 
Firefox.app said:
Not much in particular to work under Lion, but since i am keep the old setup of Snow Kitty in another spare drive, I am risk free to test. I have got 3 Samsung SLC SSDs and trying to run them in RAID 0 for OS, 2x2TB of RAID 1 and 1x3TB HDD to timemachine them all...all these thing can be done with software raid with an additional SATA card, but the performance will not be impressive,thats why i need a hardware raid card to achieve the best out of this configuration......

also may need to note that, i have not attached anything to the RR3520 yet, as I was trying to see the Card up and running before i attach any HDD to it...does it make the card "not detected"?

thanks for the response, i thought the thread was dead....:rolleyes:
Click to expand...
I'm still subscribed to it, so when you posted, it came up when I checked User CP. ;)

As per your situation, at least you have the ability to test. But if you're running SSD's, you may need to move them to a 6.0Gb/s card to get their full throughput per drive (just a thought, even though I suspect that they're 3.0Gb/s models since they're SLC based).

There's been a recent post about an announcement by Highpoint regarding their drivers (look here). I suspect this will only be the case for the simple controller cards though, as I can't imagine their RAID products being capable of just running off of OS X's built in SATA drivers, or that the hardware is suddenly going to run on Apple's RAID drivers for the Apple RAID Pro (LSI = ODM, and it's built around a PPC chip, not Intel IOP).
 
Still no luck with the card, all it seems the card is detectable after a fresh OS X (10.6 and 10.7 both), but gone invisible after the hightpoint driver/software installed...the difference after the driver/software is the web interface is up, but the card itself is become "undetected".....and no controller present in the web interface....

Really want to contact SamPotts to see what experience he can share with me to get the card working....why MacRumors does not have something like "Private Message" features for members to communicate each other privately....

sigh....now the $250 card and $400 SSDs are just sitting here and doing nothing....
 
Firefox.app said:
Still no luck with the card, all it seems the card is detectable after a fresh OS X (10.6 and 10.7 both), but gone invisible after the hightpoint driver/software installed...the difference after the driver/software is the web interface is up, but the card itself is become "undetected".....and no controller present in the web interface....

Really want to contact SamPotts to see what experience he can share with me to get the card working....why MacRumors does not have something like "Private Message" features for members to communicate each other privately....

sigh....now the $250 card and $400 SSDs are just sitting here and doing nothing....
Click to expand...
There is a PM function, but there's a minimum of 5 posts before you can use it, and both members have to opt for such communications (otherwise the person you wish to communicate with, will never get the PM you sent).

For further information, check the FAQ section.
 
Sorry I missed this completely. Mine was also a real pain to get installed and working 100%. From memory I deleted the standard osx highpoint kext file as it was stopping the card being detected properly. I'll grab the filename later when I get home.
 
Last night was awesome, first, I got my X3565 replacement from ebay, and they are up and running, now Mac Pro 1,1 with 8x3Ghz cores and 16GB of ram....:D

then i found a driver page from hightpoint with the version number a bit different to the one i used to have. link below

http://www.hptmac.com/product.php?_index=40&viewtype=download

After the driver is installed, the card is present in the "About this Mac", which is a good sign...but the Web interface is not up this time, I have the feeling that the new web interface program is some sort of conflicting with the previously installed web interface. I am gonna try a fresh install later with the driver and web interface....I did not see this the removing kext message from SamPotts until now, so i assume it does not matter for the driver i found from the link above.

also need to noted that, only use the Driver for Snow Leopard, not the driver for Mac, it is a bit confusing, as Snow Leopard is still Mac.....:cool:

Snow Leopard Driver also work for Lion as well !!:rolleyes:
 
Last edited:
reebzor said:
This may or may not help you but: I built a hackintosh and put a 2720 in it. The 2720 isnt officially supported for Mac, but the 2722 is. It's the same card, except internal vs external. I installed the driver and web interface and everything on it works fine. The card uses the same controller and everything, the only difference is the configuration of the ports.

You are basically in the same situation I was in, so I would assume it would work.
Click to expand...

Hey reebzor,

Can you confirm you put a 2720 in your hack? I'm having a hell of a time with this. With the card inserted it takes too much space in BIOS and the AHCI BIOS from my mobo can't load. Lion won't load with the mobo in IDE mode, nor connected to the 2720 as a JBOD.

I thought a firmware update might help me out, so I brought it to work and threw it in my 2009 Nehelam Mac Pro w/ SL. Installed the drivers for the 2722 but it won't load. No answer on the web interface at the address supplied in the help (localhost 7402 or something). The kext does not appear loaded. The web interface is listed as a process in Activity Monitor.

So I went a lil further and opened up the installed KEXT, and changed the IOPCIPrimaryMatch value to 0x27201103 instead of 0x27221103 but still no dice.

Could really use your help here if you've indeed got the 2720 working.
 
SamPotts, if you're still around I'd like to get more info on how to get this working and what kexts you replaced.

It seems that with Lion and Mountain lion, u cannot use 32-bit kext's anymore. I was going to attempt to change the hardware ID of one of the existing kexts.

Can you provide any more insight?
 
Hey,

I've not had this card for a while. I'm now rocking an '09 Mac Pro with a ATTO H644 card instead. I didn't replace the kexts, from memory I simply removed the standard OSX ones to force it to use highpoint's drivers instead.

I can't for the life of me remember where they were located but a quick Google should sort it? I used the latest drivers. I have two here, v2.05 and v1.33 but not sure which I ended up using, sorry. Here they are though, if they're of use:
1.33: http://c.sampotts.me/KTj7
2.05: http://c.sampotts.me/KTGD

I'm sure they're available on the Highpoint site but just in case. Sorry I can't be of much more help...
 
Thanks, got it working!

I had the older 1.33 drivers which weren't working.

The 2.05 drivers work like a charm on OSX 10.8.2 - Just had to delete the stock HighpointIOP.kext BEFORE installing the drivers.

Also, had to download MountainLion-v2.1.3 Web GUI since it's not included in the 2.05 drivers for some reason (but the 1.33 did?). I just went to the Highpoint Mac website and clicked on a random card that is supported to install the Web GUI and it detected my card just fine!
 
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