If you aren't going to spend the money for a real, hardware RAID controller, then just spend the money on a good IDE or SATA controller. Disable any "RAID" modes, and use
gstripe(8),
gmirror(8),
graid3(8), or
zfs(8).
The PseudoRAID/software RAID controllers are really nothing more than disk controllers with drivers that implement software "RAID". Better to just use real software RAID that can work on any disk controller.