Is AHCI supported on this motherboard (NM10 chipset)?

Hi,

I intend to order a Jetway NC94FL-525-LF mini ITX Atom motherboard.

http://www.jetway.com.tw/jw/ipcboa [...] 4FL-525-LF

This board has an Intel NM10 chipset. From what I can see in the user manual, there is no BIOS setting to set SATA to either IDE or AHCI mode.

I've read here and there that, in order to get AHCI, the chipset has to support it *and* the motherboard has to enable it.

Some Jetway motherboard like the NC96 also have the NM10 chipset and in the BIOS settings there is an option "JMicron 36x SATA mode" that can be set to either "IDE" or "AHCI+IDE" mode. This can be seen on page 29 of the manual here: http://www.jetwaycomputer.com/down [...] 6/NC96.pdf

Obviously the NC96 has an independant JMicron SATA controller, instead of the built-in SATA controller of the NM10. I suspect Jetway added this controller for PATA support, as it seems to be the NM10 does support AHCI.

I have two questions:

1) How can I know if AHCI is indeed supported on the NC94FL motherboard?

2) If AHCI is indeed not enabled by the motherboard/BIOS, is there a utility like an USB boot disk that could enable it programmatically (I doubt this is a hardware feature) prior to booting on the SSD?

Thanks
MB

AHCI is supported in the NM10 Express Chipset.

The BIOS setting you're looking for is:

BIOS main menu screen --> Integrated Peripherals --> Onboard SATA Function

There are two possible settings: Compatible or Enhanced.

Compatible = IDE emulation mode

Enhanced = AHCI mode