Latest Firmware for ASM1064/1166 SATA Controllers

I purchased both the 10Gtek PCIe x4 ASM1166 card and a no-name PCIe x4 ASM1166 card from a Chinese seller, both on Amazon. The 10Gtek had an incompatible flash chip (not to mention a really old firmware version), so I couldn’t flash the firmware. The no-name card, however, worked fine. It came with 221118-0048-00, but since I wanted hot plug support I flashed 221118-0000-00. This is the no-name card - Amazon.com: PCIE 4X SATA Card 6 Ports,with 6 SATA Cables and Low Profile Bracket, PCIE to SATA 3.0 6 Gbps Controller, PCIE to SATA Expansion Card,SATA Controller,SATA PCIE Card,ASM1166 Chips : Electronics.

I would say stay away from 10Gtek card.

My ASM1166 came with 221118-00-48-00. I desoldered the EEPROM before dumping it with a CH341A programmer. My dump is originally 512KiB but the ASM116x flashing tool found on Silverstone’s site doesn’t accept it; seems like it only will take 128KiB.
I trimmed it to that size, the data after the 128 KiB mark on the EEPROM was all zeroes anyway.
I flashed the 003E file shared earlier on this thread, rebooted, tested with ATTO disk benchmark and then flashed my trimmed ROM and did the same to verify that I dumped and trimmed correctly.
No in-depth testing, since I’ll flash 003E again, but here you go:

Use the trimmed rom with the tool on Silverstone’s site.

PS: I usually lurk on this forum but made an account to share this. :slight_smile:

EDIT:
The 003E fw that I downloaded earlier was not okay.
I only performed PCIe bus resets, after turning power off and on again I kept getting PCIe communication errors which made some other PCIe devices unresponsive. I ended up desoldering the EEPROM again and flashing it with my CH341A programmer.

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Thanks for this 0048 version I will try it out soon.

Also for anyone who inadvertently bricks their 1166/1062 adapters trying wrong flash/corrupted etc out it can some times be recovered if you cannot boot/post anymore with the card plugged in cos it’s bricked/garbled by hot-plugging the asmedia PCIe card after windows has loaded then using the asmedia windows based flash tool to flash. PCIe standard supports hot-plugging of cards and is actually part of the standard, however Windows of itself does not.

I’ve recovered at least one bad flashed card using this method when the computer was just hanging on boot and wouldn’t continue due to garbled flash. It’s a similar method to hot-flashing a bios chip, but you do this at your own risk. It worked for me as a last resort instead of binning the card, but there is always a risk that you could fry your motherboard. I think it works because while windows doesn’t detect the post boot hot-plugged SATA adapter, the flash software itself does, but you can’t boot with a bricked card which prevents the flash in any case.

Like I said last resort stuff.

I actually ended up not getting that card as I realized that, in upgrading my system (Asus TUF X99 mobo to Asus ROG STRIX X870E-E) I would be saving the SATA slot that I needed by going with an M.2 drive. I’m now only using the 4 SATA ports on the mobo plus my LSI SAS2 2308 Mustang controller card (8 SATA cables). I have not yet hooked up all the drives, still getting the basics configured.

I also use 3 LSI Falcon 2008 4 port SATA cards (not SAS) as well as the various ASM cards, which maximizes any x8 slot being fully x8 and can offer all the bandwidth to cope with any SSD at full speed, unlike the x4 or should we say really x2 ASM cards.

Problem with these server cards is they need their own 40mm fans ghetto rigging as they get hot otherwise and are meant for server racks that constantly have airflow not desktops, which then takes the slot below it out of commission due to the fan. I can’t always be bothered with deploying them just out of convenience, as the smaller asm cards don’t need fans.

See if this package helps for unbricking 1064… 20x series FW and docs/flasher. Might have to make a dos floppy similar to ASM 1062. It’s a 2020 firmware and not a windows flasher.

ASM1166-SPI-Flash-Update-SOP-A10.zip (740.4 KB)

I can’t remember where I sourced it.

I can confirm the trimmed 128K 0048-0000 .rom works on all my 6-port ASM 1166 adapters without issue. Obviously no hotplug anymore. But with system drives this isn’t really an issue.