tomorrow, I will have in my hands, one Serial ATA Kit for my B&W G4
although, it cost me almost $100USD for the kit, which downright sucks, but I would have ended up paying more for an ATA/100/133 card, which would have sucked even more.
I was looking at ATA/66 cards, and they started at like the $40 range, but I looked at PCI SATA Cards, and they started about $55+ and thought, that if I ever wanted to move to a new tower, it would be better for my money to go to something that is more up to date. Best of all, the card is BOOTABLE!!!
I got the card from OtherWorldComputing. Which it sucks with Mac components that you have to spend SOOOO much to get a card that works with the Macs.
Anyways, I will let you know when the box opens and I can smell the "New Bounty" smell that you get when you get something TOTALLY awesome and put it in a machine, and notice it speed up like 2-3x than it was before that.
I dunno if I should put it in the 66Mhz PCI slot and move the RADEON to the 33Mhz PCI, or should I put it in the 33Mhz and leave the RADEON in the 66Mhz Slot.
Does anyone know if there would be an advantage with that? I know the 66Mhz Slot has a maximum of 266MB/s throughput, and since the RADEON is a 32MB 7000, would I see a performance drop? I don't use the machine for gaming, but I use it for OS X. Just casual browsing and stuff.
Any Suggestions?
BTW: the drive is a 160GB Drive, runs at IDE 133, but I got a convertor for it that allows me to connect it up to an SATA connector. Since the only SATA drives I have are for my 1.4TB RAID in my PC, i would rather use a convertor than screw up my RAID and have to redo it again. Especially with the backing up of over 900GB of Client's data :-S
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ACard SATA 2-Port PCI Mac Card
Suck it and see. Testing of your own usage is the only way to determine what works for you.
Given that you don't use the Mac for gaming, I'd try the SATA card in the 66MHz PCI slot and save up for a big SATA drive with a big cache. 2D performance of the Radeon card is not accelerated by the 66MHz slot. On the other hand, the ACard site doesn't say anything about 66MHz PCI (maybe I missed it).
Your current Parallel ATA drive with adapter will not deliver true SATA performance, but it will still be pretty quick for still/moving video I/O. But until you have a true SATA drive to test, you won't know.
I've already posted my thoughts on the matter.
My strong suspicion is you won't see any (meaningful? any at all?) difference sticking the card in the 66Mhz slot, but the only way to find out is to try.
Just don't get your hopes up that this is going to make a blue silk purse out of your rotting sow's ear.
--Peace
After doing minimal amounts of research, I haven't found anyone anywhere that is using the 66MHz slot for anything but a graphics card, regardless of platform... in fact, several sources say that no other kind of card will work in that slot. It is known as the graphics slot. What I thought was way wrong. What I thought was that in newer computers, most of the PCIs were that same type of 66Mhz slot, and the graphics slot changed to be even faster... but this isn't the case at all. Apparently, graphics slots are for graphics cards, and the other PCI slots are for everything else, and never the twain shall meet. That being said... go for it, and prove us wrong (let us know... does the card even fit in that slot? does the OS recognize the card in that slot? does the card work in that slot? ... and only then would we care about benchmarks).
coius,
This is the route I think I'm taking... ATA-5 cards that can take 4 drives (not necessarily hw RAID)... I haven't been able to find anything but ATA/133 cards... like all the others just died off or something... so if it isn't too much trouble, links plz!
also, if your interested, I have some fuzzy benchmarks in this post... I edited, so it didn't requeue... and so probably no one's seen it.
If the card doesn't support 66MHz mode it'll just run at 33MHz in the 66MHz slot. Thus, unless the card specifically supports it it won't do anything different at all by being in that slot.
So what about PCI-X 66? Is there a technological difference between it and the 66mhz slot in the B&W? The B&W's slot is a short slot, so that limits a lot of the possibilities. In the other thread E referred to above, someone was suggesting putting a fast SCSI card in the B&W's 66mhz slot and putting the video card in a 33mhz to take better advantage of the 66 slot, but now that I think of it, all the SCSI cards faster than 66mhz that I have do not have a short pin connection. The only SCSI card for a short slot which I have is the older ATTO ExpressPCI PSC card which I believe is only capable of 40mhz bursts, so gain in the 66 slot, if it did happen, would be negligible--or do I know what the heck I'm talking about? I was watching this auction a few days ago thinking if I won it, I could try the card in a B&W's 66 slot, but slapped myself to reality about the short slot. The guy who won got a great deal. I was thinking of trying to bid over him, but checked out his other wins and saw that he tends to lay down high bids early, so I didn't bother.
There is a vast difference between the MHz speed of the PCI bus and the MHz speed of the SCSI bus. The card adapts between the two and the MHz at one end don't change when the other end does. SCSI at 5, 10, 20, 40 MHZ is it's own bus system separate from the PCI (local) bus of the computer.
Short vs long slots define the major difference of 32-bit PCI and 64-bit PCI (which is different from the 32 vs 64 bit of the CPU). The visual/physical difference of 33MHz vs 66 MHz PCI is the placement of the keys in the slot.
Any number of PCI cards are 66MHz-capable, what immediately comes to mind are some of the fast SCSI cards I've seen. Also, don't confuse 66MHz with 64 bit PCI cards, the jobbies with the extra-long connector. A card may be any combo of speed and bus width.
As for the 66 slot in a B&W - you can use any PCI card in there you like, but for most people the display card is the one place a bottleneck becomes readily apparent.
I doubt you'll see any benefit to using the SATA card in the 66, but as others have suggested - give it a try in the various slots and see how your sow's ear / / / errr, super-swell PowerMac takes to it.
dan k
it seems that since I put the card in, the system has slowed to a halt, but I suspect other problems than the card could make. I have been having issues with hang-ups and other things (Video Corruption) that started before the card.
It seems like the card works like advertised, but right now, I don't see too much difference, but I know that the card is not the bottleneck :S
So, what I am going to do, is work on the machine, pull of Tiger, throw on Panther, and adjust some stuff, and see if I can get it running properly again. The thing has enough ram (768MB) and I had to pull a 128 Stick which seems to be causing the hangups, since then, it hasn't hung up.
I am just trying to figure out why the machine has become sluggish all of a sudden. I just reinstalled the system right after it got corrupted, and then ended up reinstalling the iBook OS's, since it wouldn't even boot right after I connected to the Machine through FWTDM. So far, it doesn't seem to have been worth it to get the card.
Too soon to tell! Rebuild that thing right, you know what I mean, one piece at a time, from scratch. And IMO using Panther isn't going to help or hurt... but a fresh install of Tiger might make a world of difference (AND eliminating hw & ram issues-- what are the other cards?). Can't you do a normal install booting off the DVD? A nice clean zeroed hd to start with wouldn't hurt either.
I dunno if the DVD of Tiger I have is defective, but I can't get it to install, unless I copy the Data (Clone) onto a partition of a hard drive, then install it from that.
Right now, i got all my stuff backed up and whatnot, and am going to do the blow-away and reinstall of OS X on the tower. I got everything checked over inside, and used my MacTest Pro Disc to boot into 9, and check the system out, then I booted into my TechTool Pro disc, and did tests with that.
They all came out with errors on drives, and some ram issues. I figured out which RAM dimm it was, pulled that, and the system was stable, but it was painfully slow when it came to launching applications (even after redoing the prebindings) and it was popping up Permission errors left and right, and in some cases, was not even able to fix them. The techtool disc also said stuff like "Invalid Folder count -59" and I couldn't fix it in that.
I am giving it another shot, but so far, i have not seen a reason why my money I spent on this card was not a waste.
The firmware on the B&W is up to date?
I pretty much decided I'd had it with upgrading my B&W after:
A: In trying to upgrade it from 576MB I went through every 256MB DIMM in the house (Taken from retired Pentium II/III machines) and didn't find *any* that didn't cause kernel panics under OS X. (Some of these DIMMs had been running for *years* in the x86 boxes under Linux without any problem at all.) I've known Macs to be picky about RAM but this was ridiculous.
B: Installing a (supposedly Mac compatible) USB2 card caused *nothing* but trouble. (Depending on which slot it was in and whether I had one or two video cards installed the machine would either not boot, not see the card, or see the card but slow to a dead halt whenever a device attached to the card was accessed.)
B&W G3s are old. Their PCI bus sucks. (Same chipset as the Beige G3, itself fairly infamous for PCI suckage, with a really hackish PCI-PCI bridge tacked onto an essentially overclocked frontside bus which only ran at 66mhz in a weak attempt to compensate for the lack of an AGP slot.). They were fast machines eight years ago but they're *not* anymore, and their motherboard was at its limit then. No matter what upgrades you stick in it it's still a dog, simply because it lacks the sheer *bandwidth* to compare with a newer machine.
I still used the G3 until recently, mind you. (I moved and the new house isn't wired for ethernet yet, so it's pretty useless.) I just lowered any expectations I had for it to fit what it was actually capable of. :^b
Anyway. As to to drive errors you've mentioned, are you getting them on the drive attached to the SATA card? If so, well, those PATA-SATA converters are *bad*. Don't use them. Period.
--Peace
Just got done installing 10.3.9, HUGE increase in speed. So I have finally found what I was looking for. Apps open pretty much instantly (or within 3 seconds) compared to the 15-30 seconds it would take to open under the IDE 33MB/s Bus.
I like what I have seen, and like how fast it can deliver the data. I have been able to run between programs, as well as boot the system in a very fast manner. The system boots within 25-35 seconds (Haven't timed it, but that feels about right) and flies under heavy loads (like opening 3 programs at the same time, while playing music, etc...) I will do more tests, but I feel the card was justified now.
No, it is using a bridge connector. however, looking on the NewEgg site, people with powermacs were commenting that they did not cause corruption compared to the cheaper ones. I don't think it was from the adapter, so much as it was the bad ram that kept crashing the machine. My iBook had problems before, but that was due to another issue, i just think it exacerbated the issue when I hooked it up to a system that crashed in the middle of data transfered to and from the iBook through the iBook being in FWTDM. So it could have been that since it crashed while transferring data to the iBook, it could have not only corrupted the file, but also the directory (no other files were corrupted, other than the transferred ones)
Dunno if that makes a diff with your setup, but did you initialize the HD on the new card?
dan k
Yes I did. It seems to be stable now, and is fairly speedy, compared to the original config, and before the problems I had before, it is pretty much a rocket ship. about as responsive as my iBook G4 1.2Ghz is. It opens apps just fine. in fact, some apps load faster than on my iBook. Go Fig...
So what's your configuration now? SATA in the 66mhz slot, video card in the next slot over? What's the processor?
I haven't planned to install Tiger on my B&W because I expect it would bog it down and slow things up. Don't know if that is the actual fact.
Eudimorphodon, some of your recent posts suggest you're not in the greatest mood lately. You just hurt my 3 B&Ws' feelings. My main B&W--my main machine: 500mhz G4, ATA133 card with matching harddrives, Radeon 7000 64mb, 1 GB matching RAM, Firewire/USB card. Runs fine, no problems at all. Rolls over, fetches, lays quietly by my side. Threw away the firewire module--yuck. But my other two B&W's do have particular problems. One out of three probably would be the odds with B&W's.
SATA Card is in the 33Mhz Slot, since the card is not rated for 66Mhz at all (site says it will run at 33Mhz Speed) so I got it in the longer 33Mhz 64-bit slow (only using 32-bit though)
as far as Dankephoto's inquiry about slots, there IS a card that runs at 66Mhz on a 64-bit slot, there are also 66Mhz 32-bit cards. I have seen them on OWC's page. However, be prepared to pay $200+ for them, since they run at the full SATA3 specs.
I decided to leave the RADEON 7000 (32MB) PCI Card in the 66Mhz Slot, since I did find that it DOES take advantage of the 66Mhz Bus. However, it would be stupid to put it in a 33Mhz slot, which it will be crippled, as well as put a 33Mhz card in a 66Mhz slot. that would be just plain dumb to do that
So here's the specs of the machine:
Blue & White Rev. 2
G4 400Mhz Zif (Yikes! pulled CPU)
768MB PC-100/133 RAM. Two of them are matched sets (256MB Each) one is a PC-133 512MB DIMM (runs at 256, no problems)
160GB ATA-6 (133MB/s) 7200 RPM Maxtor drive. Bridged from IDE->SATA 1.5
ACard SATA 1.5 PCI Card. 32-bit, 33Mhz, Slot 3
FW/USB2.0 Belkin Card running in Slot 2
RADEON 7000 32MB Mac Native PCI. Runs at 66Mhz, 32-bit in Slot 4 (small slot, not full 64-bit one)
DVD/CD-RW (Maddogg Combo)
Zip 100 Drive.
Both the DVD and the Zip are on the native Bus (Secondary IDE, tried it on primary and it bitched at me)
IDE Primary: Not used
FW Module is still in it, however, that wasn't the cause of the problems, the RAM was. Once the 128 Stick was taken out, problems went away.
Machine has been running for several hours, no problem. Narry a hiccup when doing heavy tasks, like playing Video (DVD or AVI) and moving windows/browsing the web
I am extremely happy with my purchase. I have noticed a TREMENDOUS improvement over the stock 33MB/s
The Next thing I want to do, is sell the Board and the Zif G4, and do the ATX Hack, get some new ram, and backplane, then upgrade the board in the machine to the highest I can do. Pref. dual CPUs
Was thinking a dual 867Mhz System with 512-1GB RAM
Since the cases are pretty much standard (and I like the idea of a frankenmac) I would keep the case, and find the easiest/best solution for a full upgrade in the inside
I am looking for the 17" CRT monitor that shipped with these series of machines (BlueBerry Studio Display, i think...) must have a VGA connection. I want to make the machine as complete as possible. I would be willing to pay $50 for it. I am hoping for the Omaha NE area (zip code 68132) USA
I've never owned one, but I think I've heard that all those Apple CRT's had heat problems similar to the CRT iMacs. They come up on Craigslist over here fairly often for cheap--less than $50. You might want to keep an eye on your local Craigslist or keep an eBay search for "Apple monitor Omaha."