Hi!
Yesterday I've setup a server with Adaptec's 1210SA SATA Controller and 2 SATA disks. According to the kernel changelog the controller is supported since 2.6.2
I've installed Debian on an IDE disk, built a 2.6.3 kernel with CONFIG_SCSI_SATA_SIL, rebooted and the kernel detected the controller plus both SATA disks (sda, sdb). As the next step I wanted to create a software raid 1 with the 2 SATA disks. Because it took mdadm forever to finish, I checked /proc/mdstat and saw a progress bar with a rate of 12MB/s!