Maxing out the 9500

[Gil]

Anyone wanna sell me one of these ROM's?

That is, if my 9500 is willing to show me it's RAM slots. (seriously, I'm terrified of that thing)

 

[Lateralus]

You can always do a Full-ATX conversion.

 

[Gil]

You can always do a Full-ATX conversion.

How would I go about doing that? I've never worked with cases much before, and when I have, I almost always broke something.

I'd probably be willing to gut it and send the parts to anyone who would be up for the challenge, but that could be risky.

 

[Lateralus]

http://xlr8yourmac.com/systems/MacinPC_ATX_case/index.htm

 

[Gil]

http://xlr8yourmac.com/systems/MacinPC_ATX_case/index.htm

Yikes! 8-o :O

 

[Bunsen]

Sonnet Tempo USB2/FireWire PCI.

I realise you have lots and lots of slots, and you're going for SATA drives anyway, but if you want to save a slot and can stand ATA drives, you could also consider the Sonnet Tempo Trio - Firewire, USB and ATA on one card.

I think I heard from someone on here that SIIG's matching card is Mac compatible too.

 

[Leografix]

Hmm...

I´m upgrading my 9600 right now, too. To me it doesn´t make much sense to use SATA so I took two Sonnet 133 ATA cards, one serving the CD ROM and three disks (80 GB each) and the other one 4 disks (also 80 GB each) to the bottom of the 9600 case by using two double carriers from a G4 system. It runs with a Sonnet G4 800 MHz but with the classic OS solely. I never had much fun in using OS X on an old world machine.

The double carrier system on bottom of the case blocks three or four PCI slots (depending on the height of a hard disk) but as I´m only in need of a high speed ethernet and a SCSI card (for external tape backup devices) this doesn´t bother me that much.

Alltogether this box acts as a local network ShareIP server - I once thought about configuring it as an old world high end audio production system but a gave a QucikSilver a better chance in this: can run classic OS and Mac OS X and bounced to double 1,6 GHz.

J

 

[Brooklyn]

Why not use SATA? (out of curiousity)

 

[Leografix]

Well, SATA doesn't justify the costs for itself in an old world system, besides this I think that older hard- and software doesn't take that much advantage of a SATA system as promised by Sonnet and others.

J

 

[paws]

I want a SATA card for my 7500 for the sole reason that I'd like to be able to buy new, quiet disks that'll be useful even if the PowerMac dies and I decide not to get another one... Buying used IDE drives (or used SCSI drives and ->50 pin adaptors) just seems like a bit of a waste when you can get brand new SATA drives for next to nothing.

 

[Gil]

I want a SATA card for my 7500 for the sole reason that I'd like to be able to buy new, quiet disks that'll be useful even if the PowerMac dies and I decide not to get another one... Buying used IDE drives (or used SCSI drives and ->50 pin adaptors) just seems like a bit of a waste when you can get brand new SATA drives for next to nothing.

That's exactly how I see it.

 

[Lateralus]

If somebody is looking to upgrade an older Mac and doesn't already have an ATA-100/133 setup, I think it'd be stupid to pursue one over an S-ATA setup.

We're at the point where S-ATA is both cheaper and more widespread.

 

[Unknown_K]

It depends, most of the throw away computers and drives you find today ane still EIDE, and I don't see the need for a 200GB+ drive in a 9500 so ATA cards (now worth much less then they used to, and are OS 7 compatible to boot) are still nice to have on PCI Powermacs.

 

[Lateralus]

But if you're looking to upgrade an older machine, especially going to the extent of upgrading the entire drive system and buying a controller card, chances are you aren't going to do it with thrown away parts.

S-ATA cards are cheap. Large S-ATA drives can be had for under $50 from places like NewEgg. IDE/ATA is just, IMO, silly to pursue if you planning on buying all the parts you're going to need anyways.

 

[Gil]

It depends, most of the throw away computers and drives you find today ane still EIDE, and I don't see the need for a 200GB+ drive in a 9500 so ATA cards (now worth much less then they used to, and are OS 7 compatible to boot) are still nice to have on PCI Powermacs.

Who says it has to be 200GB+? I was gonna put in a 10 GB, at the max. I use hardly any storage.

Now my 500GB USB Hard Drive, is a SATA drive, as discovered by a Google search. I might pop the case open and shove it in my 9500 if I get the SATA card.

 

[Gil]

And we're back, after a 4+ hour dreadful attempt t oget video. Turns out my one and only monitor, in which 5 computers are sharing, finally kicked off.

Anywho, I got my nice little 15 inch LCDer hooked up. Everything is beautiful.

I have this generic FireWire card I got a few years ago. I think its the exact same one as on the OWC store, but I bought mine from eBay. I read somewhere here that ANY OCHI compatible card will work with OS 8.5+? This is OHCI compatbile, and have it installed in my 9500 running OS 9. However, it's not doing anything. I don't know if I need a driver, as it's generic. System Profiler just lists it as "PCI Card" with nothing specific in the card data/description.

Any ideas?

I suppose that the system recognizes the card, is better than nothing.

 

[paws]

Have you installed the Firewire extensions?

 

[Gil]

Have you installed the Firewire extensions?

Yes.

 

[paws]

Have you tried plugging anything into it?

My Echo soundcard shows up as 'PCI Card' and works fine.

 

[Gil]

Have you tried plugging anything into it?
My Echo soundcard shows up as 'PCI Card' and works fine.

Ah thanks, it worked!