Mac Pros extra two internal sata ports broken since Leopard 10.5??

I have a Mac Pro and according to xlr8yourmac.com and the newertech website, there are four sata ports for your hard drives PLUS an additional two more sata ports directly on the motherboard. Through a complicated and difficult disassembly, it is possible to dissect your mac pro and install their cable which they sell for about $30, and get at the rear of your mac pro housing connectors for these two internal sata ports. In short, it's nothing more than an extension cable that fits into a neat housing at the back of the mac pro. You can then plug up to two esata drives into those jacks and they are basically hooked into the macpro motherboard. I ordered this cable and it worked splendidly since 10.4.8 and for 10.4.9 without any issue (that I could tell). I was even able to raid them together etc etc. (edit to be clear I mean I had two Lacie 500Gb drives with esata, firewire 800, 400 and USB 2 on them).
When I installed 10.5 it was all broken!! What a disaster. I can't use these drives on the firewire bus (which by the way they work fine on) because I am already tieing up that with other devices and drives. I need these extra two buses, plus they were **** fast before- I guess it's the same bus as the internal drives get.
I have contacted Lacie - no luck - and also newertech, and did so again today, but so far no luck, and apple, no luck and even submitted a feedback request back when we were on 10.5.1 (just released at that time), and no luck. I hoped 10.5.2 would restore this functionality.
I was told Apple do not normally go out of their way to kill unintended functionality but could this be the case on this occasion?

www.xlr8yourmac.com its over my head but...
A Copy of the April 23rd, 2007 news page post is below (in reply to eSATA Extender cables (w/PCI slot bracket) from Newer Tech for use with the 2 unused ports on the Mac Pro motherboard.)
" this may be of some interest for your readers.
From the Intel 631xESB/632xESB I/O Controller Hub data sheet:
"Hot-Plug Operation
Dynamic Hot-Plug (for example, surprise removal) is not supported by the SATA host controller. However, using the PCS register configuration bits and power management flows, a device can be powered down by software, and the port can then be powered off, allowing removal and insertion of a new device. "
(I asked if he knew of any way to do that in OS X.)
the SATA controller does support AHCI mode, which enables hot plugging (same as with the raid southbridges ICH6R - ICH8R which support hot plugging with raid drivers from Intel without Intel assuring this).
But it does not support AHCI if the PATA port is used as in the Mac Pro. And without AHCI there is no way to do hot plugging.
Using a SATA DVD drive may not mean AHCI is used automatically. The controller has to be switched from IDE to AHCI mode. Maybe the Mac Pro does it on startup or some EFI specialist can finds out how to do that.
BTW Tiger can handle an ICH8R in AHCI mode on all SATA ports without a problem.
Kind regards,
Martin S. "
Info/Tips on using Spare SATA Ports with Windows: (from Jan 15th, 2008 news page) This may have come up in the past and I'd forgotten it (don't own a Mac Pro yet) but in reply to a post yesterday (1/15/2008) on the Pioneer SATA Blu-Ray reader/Superdrive combo drive, a reader mentioned the spare SATA ports are not usable in Windows XP at least with the standard drivers with Bootcamp. (Most readers have used the ports in OS X although I've not searched drive db reports for anyone that mentioned using Bootcamp/Windows also. BTW - The spare ports are bootable for OS X use, as noted in this article - although drives are not shown/usable when booted from Windows with standard drivers.)
(Update) Here's a reader mail w/tips on using the spare ports with Windows via a replacement chipset driver install and grub bootloader edit:
" after finding this thread in the onmac forums I finally was able to get my pioneer sata drive to work under bootcamp. Basically you have to do the following:
- Install Win XP and ubuntu linux with a pata dvd drive in XP, change the ide 2680 driver to the intel ahci driver found here (downloadcenter.intel.com) S5000 Based Server AHCI SATA Storage Driver for Windows.
- Boot into ubuntu and change the stage1 file of the grub bootloader to this:
http://www.olofsson.info/grub/stage1
This keeps the mac pro in ahci mode when booting a foreign OS
Now you can boot windows using the linux partition, this will start grub and keep the mac pro in the correct mode
I also installed Refit to make things a little easier but as far as i know using Alt key when booting should work too.
if anyone tries this and has any questions feel free to ask
-Forrest"

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