Just to say "well done! Great progress!".

I haven't made any new progress myself as I'm still waiting for the cheapo usb/esata dongle I ordered on ebay to salvage its esata connector.

Keep up the good work!

Well, well, well...

So, I found a surface mounting ferite of unknown impedance and DC resistance of 0.2 ohm in my box of bits, and a 1uF capacitor (C196). I soldered both on the PCB, and booted the SheevaPlug. Result: +3.3V delivered to SoC, but "Warning Sata is Powered Off" in dmesg...

OK, I think I understand a bit better... The filter circuit isn't just to pull up an "enable_sata" pin, it's actually powering the SATA circuit in the Marvell SoC, hence the low DC resistance of the ferite?

So am I mesuring in the right place, but with the wrong ground reference! What are you using for the ferite? I've tried using a 100 ohm resistor instead, without succes... Since the circuit is just a filter to deliver a nice clean +3.3V to the Marvell SoC, I don't see the need for a ferite here. Any idea?

Hi everyone,

So I was quite busy yesterday trying to get the SATA port working, task that has been quite unsuccessful so far...

I took a photo of the PCB to show the various points of interest:


Without soldering anything yet, I took a few voltage mesurements on the various pins:
- (1) : 1.55V
- (2) : -1.75V

Both mesurements are relative to (3), the ground pin.

Of course, at this stage, I'm surprised because I was expecting 3.3V on pin (1), as per the schematic:



So if anyone has an explanation, because I don't understand these readings.

PS: for those looking to purchase a eSATA connector: try eBay, there are loads of very cheap (5-6 euros including postage) USB->eSATA dongles for sale. Should be pretty easy to unsolder the eSATA port...