The Adaptuque: A Warm Little Hat for your stock Adaptec Expander Firmware
Adaptuque is an in-progress patch series for 12Gbps SAS3 expanders based on Adaptec's reference expander designs. These cards currently include the AEC-83600 and AEC-82885T sold by Adaptec/Microchip, IBM, Lenovo and others, as well as the nearly identical Intel RES3TV360 and RES3FV288. HP's SAS3 cards are also similar, but different enough that they're not currently supported.
The patch set is not standalone firmware; it must be applied to the stock firmware as downloaded from the Adaptec or Intel download sites. This extra little dance is necessary to avoid distributing any Microchip-copyrighted software. Sorry. The goal here is to make a really good piece of kit even better, not take a shot at Adaptec/Microchip, so I hope you understand. Hopefully someday Adaptec will grant permission to just offer firmware directly, but they have not.
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Fully configurable SGPIO output via a simple persistent configuration utility. Take complete control of backplane indication via the SES (SCSI Enclosure Services) state available in the expander.
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Configurable port assignment and mapping, supporting up to 32 (yes, a full 32!) direct attached drives per expander. This includes drives hung off passive backplanes.
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Bugfixes. No more expander hangs, crashes, or garbled output on several common SES requests, etc.
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Etc, as the need arises.
tldr, No; this patch does not enable or expose any features that aren't already supported in some way by the stock cards, and you obviously can only use it on a card you've bought, using firmware you already have. I have the individual right to modify cards I own for my personal use, and so do you.
That said, it is reverse-engineed from firmware pulled off of second-hand cards, and cross-referenced against firmware binaries made available for download by Adaptec and Intel. The clickwrap EULA expressly forbids reverse engineering, which I have done. Technically, that is a breach of civil contract. However, I have no interest in harming Adaptec's trade secrets, copyright, or intellectual property. The patch isn't looking to pick any fights, just improve the firmware.
The patch itself is original code that replaces segments of the stock firmware. It does not include any of the original firmware itself. It has to be applied to a firmware package downloaded from an official source. When applied, the patch creates a normal firmware update that fixes bugs, streamlines a little nastiness, and adds some configurability. That's all. It flashes with Adaptec's standard utilities, makes no permanent changes, and the card can be reverted to stock firmware at any time.
Perhaps Adaptec will be fine with all this; I'd love to be able to upload the extensive Ghidra files involved in writing these patches. But for now, that's a no-go.
More to come, this is currently mostly a placeholder.