Nice Mac PCI SATA card on ebay

[mraroid]

Folks....
 
I was going to post this in the trading area on this forum.  But I thought it might apply to users here. I hope I have not broken any rules....
 
This is a PCI SATA card made for Macs, that is suppose to have the ability to not only boot you into OS9 but also early flavors of OSX. 
 
https://www.ebay.com/itm/4-Port-SATA-PCI-Card-for-Apple-Macintosh-Mac-OS-PowerMac-G4-SSD/132581321334?hash=item1ede766a76:g:uhEAAOSwef9a0SBX:rk:2f:0
 
I bought one but it has not arrived so I can not confirm this.  A person on the MacRumors forum says he has this card and can confirm that it will boot you into OS9.  He has had this card for a while, and it did not come from this bunch now for sale on ebay.
 
A word of caution - Also on the MacRumors forums was a post from someone who bought a Sonnet PCI SATA card only to find out that someone had flashed it for Windows.  After contacting Sonnet and working with others, he was unable to flash it back so it would work with a Mac.
 
I do not have any direct knowledge that the 4 cards for sale on ebay right now work in a Mac.  I can post my results when the card arrives.
 
To some, the $50 for the card (free shipping) is too expensive.  For me, who has been searching for a card like this, it is a OK price.
 
Now, if only I could find a Mac ATA PCI card.....
 
mraroid
 
 

 

[Bolle]

This is your standard chinese Sil3114 card. I have one of those and it only runs in OSX (with stock firmware though. I am not able to boot from it but that might work with a different firmware...

There are similar looking cards with the Sil3112 chipset that will work in OS9 when flashed with the correct firmwarw.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

There's a related listing makes me wonder if this $15 Adaptec-Dual-Channel-Ultra-IDE-PATA-ATA-133-PCI-Controller, might be flashable?



There's a $9 SATA card as well, but I can't identify the chipset. Since it does RAID, it seems doubtful.

Interesting that the Chinese Sil3114 is X only, I wonder if a Mac/AMIGA co-op buy might enable a short run of Mac OS/AMIGA OS SATA cards to be had? Silly notion, but gotta ask. [}]

 

[mraroid]

This is your standard chinese Sil3114 card. I have one of those and it only runs in OSX (with stock firmware though. I am not able to boot from it but that might work with a different firmware...

There are similar looking cards with the Sil3112 chipset that will work in OS9 when flashed with the correct firmwarw.

I did note that on the ebay post, it said it would not work with OS9.  Perhaps the person on MacRumors that bought a card that had been flashed to give him OS9 support... ???

 

[mraroid]

I looked at that card myself Trash.  I sure wish I could buy a card to give me ATA support.  Is RAID an issue when people flash cards?

I see that shipping is free.  $15.00 is not a huge gamble if it fails.  Because of the chip set, it may be possible to flash this card?

mraroid

 

[mraroid]

There are similar looking cards with the Sil3112 chipset that will work in OS9 when flashed with the correct firmwarw.

Can you suggest one Bolle?

mraroid

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

RAID is an added complication, that's all. Are all these cards flashable? Can the ROMs of Mac OS 9 and below compatible boards be read, copied and tested with a socket installed? I imagine the ROM contents could be had from the flash files of the various successful conversions, no? I never got the flashing thing noodled out, trying a bunch of ROMs in an installed socket makes more sense given my stone age ROM Emulation addled wits. :blink:

 

[mraroid]

All....

I ended up buying this card on ebay:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/4-Port-SAT...h=item1ede766a76:g:uhEAAOSwef9a0SBX:rk:2 f:0

It arrived yesterday. Last night I tried to do a install with it in my blue & white G3 running at 400Mhz. I used a 64GB Sandisk solid state drive.

I have not upgraded the stock CD optical drive. The only CD OSX version that I have is Panther. So I loaded that. I made two partitions in the SS drive - one was Mac OS extended and one was Mac standard. I loaded Panther with out issue onto the extended partition. I can reboot into Panther and I can shut down the machine and boot into Panther. I was using the top SATA port in the card - the one closest to the rear of the computer. I put the card in the PCI slot furthest from the slot the video card is in. Using the drive tools in Panther I can see both partitions. I only played around in Panther for about 5 minutes.  I found Panther to be quite snappy.  I can open and close windows quickly and move around quickly.  The improvement over Panther on a SS drive and a IDE bus, vs Panther on a SS drive and a SATA PCI card is quickly apparent.  I am a happy camper.  I may see an even greater speed improvement when I move to the 500Mhz G4 Yikes! motherboard.

This morning I booted to my apple branded OS 9.2.1 CD. I was unable to see the SS drive at all. I will experiment more today to see if I can get the SS drive to see OS9. Anyone think that if I had a CD of OS 9.2.2 things would be any different? If I had partitioned the SATA card using Tiger would that have helped in installing OS9? I will report back after my ongoing OS 9 install attempts today.

The fellow from MacRumors corrected himself.  After some testing, he posted that no, he was not able to boot into OS9 with this card - He had used the internal IDE bus to boot to OS9.

So, the good news for me is that I have a PCI SATA card that I can use that will let me boot to a flavor of OSX.  If I install a second SSD and connected it to the internal IDE bus, will both hard drives be able to see each other?  If not, how can I boot from OS 9 to OSX and back again?

I am searching for a Mac PCI IDE card.  If folks can flash SATA PCI cards, then one would think the same thing could work for a PCI IDE card. I have yet to flash anything and know next to nothing about it.  But it looks like I will have to learn.

If you do not care about booting into OS9, this card, which is still available on ebay, would give you a speed boost. Three cards are still available.  $50 plus free postage in the US.  I do not know the seller.  His feedback is 99.8.  No paperwork arrived with this card, so I am not sure what to google to find a manual or other info for this card.

mraroid

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

You should see the OS9 drive in X without a problem in your configuration AFAIK.

 

[mraroid]

You should see the OS9 drive in X without a problem in your configuration AFAIK.

OK.  I am working on it.  No luck so far.....

jack

 

[mraroid]

Update.....

I have been playing around with my new PCI SATA card.  No matter what I do, I can not get it to recognize 9.2.2.

I can install 9.2.2 onto a solid state drive using the built in IDE bus.  I can install Panther on a solid state drive connected to the PCI SATA card.  But I can not figure out how to boot from one to the other because neither one can see the other drive.  I am unable to get 9.2.2 to load from the PCI SATA card.

Could it be that Apple has some obscure (well, obscure to me) key command that will let me boot between two drives?

I am waiting on some option pins that will let me set the speed of the processor in my Yikes! motherboard.  Maybe when I move to a G4 and Tiger, things might work a little better?

Over on the MacRumors forum, the PCI SATA folk are going to post information for me so I can dump the contents of my ROM. They want to to look at it.  The thought is that if I can install a different ROM chip, it may be possible to flash my card.  After that, the SATA card will let me boot to OS 7.5 to at least Tiger.  That would be ideal.  One SS drive for 9.2.2 and another SS drive for OSX.  My PCI SATA card has 4 SATA ports on it.  Some folk believe all 4 SATA ports will work, and some think only 2 SATA ports will work.  Four would be nice, but two working SATA ports is fine with me.

This is turning into a very fun project.  Thanks to all for all the help.

mraroid

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

OSX on the SATA card should see the OS9 boot drive, but the OS9 boot drive will never see any drive connected to that SATA card as I understand what you're saying. IOW you should be able to choose the OS9 drive with something like the Startup Disk control panel from X, but that's a one way street. You won't be able to do the same to set that invisible SATA boot disk from the OS9 control panel. As a workaround you could set an OSX partition on the IDE drive as the boot default from OS9 and then from X on IDE, set the faster SATA drive as your boot disk  .  .  .  if it's bootable to begin with on that card that is. I'd make sure that works before trying anything else.

IIRC there are ways to allow you to tab or spacebar through available boot drives but you need to get into A system far enough to allow for that, so who knows which will show up. Dunno, nice can-o-worms. :lol:

 

[Cory5412]

This SATA card is not compatible with Mac OS 9. To my knowledge, no 3114-based cards are.

The auction said right on it that Mac OS 9 is not supported.