PCI SATA card for Blue & White?

[mraroid]

Hello....
 
I was reading about a older card from Sonnet called a Sonnet's Tempo Serial ATA PCI adapter card:
 
https://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempo_serial_ata.html
 
I went looking for a used one, but could not find one.
 
Are other companies making PCI SATA cards that I could use in my Blue & White?  I did a search on Amazon and ebay and did not find anything that I thought would work. 
Many are available, but all I could find were PCI SATA cards for PCs.
 
Thanks
 
mraroid
 

 

[Cory5412]

The card pictured, and as far as I know every single SATA card compatible with older Macs is based on the SIL3112 chip. This is the only SATA card for Macs that need to run Mac OS 9.

In another thread, you've been given a link to a MacRumors thread about flashing them. We probably have such a thread here, and some people such as @defor have trading post threads selling them.

I believe you might need to use a PC with a PCI or PCI-X slot to flash them, but I don't know the details.

 

[mraroid]

In another thread, you've been given a link to a MacRumors thread about flashing them. We probably have such a thread here, and some people such as @defor have trading post threads selling them.

I  must have missed that.  I will look again for that info.  I am unsure what "flashing" is, but will look into it.

I believe you might need to use a PC with a PCI or PCI-X slot to flash them, but I don't know the details.

So, are you saying that cards like the Sonnet I posted the picture of (PCI cards made for older Macs) are not made any more, so one needs to flash a PC card? 

Thank you for your help.

mrroid

 

[mraroid]

Cory....

While reading up on the B&W, I come across Mac ATA controller PCI cards.  It appears that the PCI ATA cards can pass data faster the the ATA bus installed in the B&W.  But after a little searching around, I did not find any.  Is this the same story as the Sonnet PCI SATA cards?
 
mraroid

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Absolutely, substitution of higher level ATA rev cards and SATA cards would be like installing NuBus cards to do the same thing, getting around the very slow SCSI implementation bottleneck of Macs in that era. Installing a Fast/Narrow SCSI card would be roughly analogous to an ATA card as a Fast/Wide SCSI II card like the JackHammer would be to SATA.

 

[mraroid]

Absolutely,

Got it.  Thank you Trash.  Now all I need to do is find some old cards....

mraroid

 

[Cory5412]

are not made any more, so one needs to flash a PC card

Unfortunately, to my knowledge, no cards based on the SIL3112 chipset are made any more.

I would try your SSD on the G3's onboard ATA bus if you have an adapter for it to see if it seems fine before bothering with an ATA card, but that's just me. After having dealt with it a bit in my QS today, I'm extremely disillusioned with the idea of using the ATA buses in my QS'02 for anything once I start getting SATA cards in.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Finding a SATA card compatible all the way back to the B&W might be problematic, dunno. Finding an ATA card that's compatible back to 9500 era machines for the B&W isn't a bad idea and not all that tall an order.

 

[Cory5412]

Finding a SATA card compatible all the way back to the B&W might be problematic, dunno

The SIL3112-based cards are compatible with every Mac that has PCI slots. I know several people running them in PCI clones. 

 

[ArmorAlley]

I have 2 SSDs running off a Sonnet card in my B&W G3.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

The SIL3112-based cards are compatible with every Mac that has PCI slots. I know several people running them in PCI clones. 

Thanks for that info, I must have missed it in the discussion.

 

[mraroid]

In another thread, you've been given a link to a MacRumors thread about flashing them. We probably have such a thread here, and some people such as @defor have trading post threads selling them.

I found this forum on the web and joined.  I searched and search, but I could not find a thread that talked about flashing.  If you see it again, could you post a link? 

Thanks for the help.

mraroid

 

[Cory5412]

Here's the reference I was using: 



I don't personally go to MR very often.

There's also some information on this thread:

 

[mraroid]

Unfortunately, to my knowledge, no cards based on the SIL3112 chipset are made any more.

Am I understanding correctly that this chipset would allow one to boot to OS9 as well as OSX as the Sonnet card can? 

I would try your SSD on the G3's onboard ATA bus if you have an adapter for it to see if it seems fine before bothering with an ATA card, but that's just me. After having dealt with it a bit in my QS today, I'm extremely disillusioned with the idea of using the ATA buses in my QS'02 for anything once I start getting SATA cards in.

I used the original 5GB mechanical hard drive for a day or two after I cleaned up the B&W.  I had enough parts laying around the house to roll in a solid state drive.  Almost all of my posts I have made have been while the SS drive was installed.  It is shockingly slow.  So I went looking for a PCI SATA card (no luck!).  Then, while reading about the B&W, I read about PCI IDE controller cards for the Mac and how they were much faster.  If I can not learn how to boot OS9 and a OSX on the same drive, I have a back up plan.  I will run one SS drive with OS9, and the other SS drive off the a PCI IDE card as well.  I can buy cards that do this stuff for windows machines going as far back as XP and probably further.  I did not know this was not the case for older Mac computers until I started looking for cards.  I am trying to learn about flashing at the moment, but coming up short.  Maybe when I move from a 400Mhz G3 to a 500Mhz G4 things will move a little faster and I will give up.  I am waiting on option clips for the motherboard before I can roll the Yikes! 500Mhz board into the B&W.

You have been of great help.  Thank you so much.

mraroid

 

[Cory5412]

Am I understanding correctly that this chipset would allow one to boot to OS9 as well as OSX as the Sonnet card can? 

Yes. The Sonnet card is an SIL3112 card.

It is shockingly slow

At what? SSDs don't improve compute speed, they reduce seek time whichusually means files load faster and sometimes means applications launch faster, but Classic Mac OS has horrifyingly bad i/o code and likely only benefits a certain amount.

If you are utterly dead set on getting a SATA card, I'm interested in your perception as to whether or not it helps.

 

[mraroid]

Here's the reference I was using: 

I don't personally go to MR very often.

Thanks!

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

SSDs don't improve compute speed, they reduce seek time whichusually means files load faster and sometimes means applications launch faster, but Classic Mac OS has horrifyingly bad i/o code and likely only benefits a certain amount. 

For things like playing around in Classic versions of Photoshop with swap disk activity or for database work I'd think it should help tremendously in workflow, no? It's all in the applications.

 

[mraroid]

Yes. The Sonnet card is an SIL3112 card.

Got it.  Thank you.

At what? SSDs don't improve compute speed, they reduce seek time whichusually means files load faster and sometimes means applications launch faster, but Classic Mac OS has horrifyingly bad i/o code and likely only benefits a certain amount.

Moving around, opening and closing apps in windows seemed snuggest to me with OS9.  If I moved to a PCI IDE controller card,  it will not improve the speed of OS9? The same for OSX.  Would moving OSX to a IDE controller card make OSX more snappy?  It looks like cards are no longer available to do this.  So I am probably stuck with the built in IDE bus.  Took a quick look at the links you posted on flashing (Thanks!).  It looks like the card they were using is also a old card which I can not find on Amazon on ebay.  :-(

If you are utterly dead set on getting a SATA card, I'm interested in your perception as to whether or not it helps.

I will post my benchmarks as soon as my stuff arrives.  But with the lack of any PCI card support, I suspect the B&W will come out stock but for SS drives behind the built in IDE bus.

mraroid

 

[Cory5412]

it should help tremendously in workflow, no?

Absolutely, but that's not compute speed, that's disk read/write speed and random seeks are critical for that.

EDIT: I think I've said this here, I know I've been saying it a lot on either twitter or IRC, this specific issue is what made my PowerBook G4 feel so insufficient so quick. I mean, the G4 was a bad CPU and the PowerBook G4 was a bad laptop, but it would have been slightly less bad if Apple had adopted 5400RPM mobile disks when they became available.

If I moved to a PCI IDE controller card,  it will not improve the speed of OS9

Just casually, I use 9.1 on an 8600/300 with a SCSI2SD v6, a G3/300 (Beige) with the stock hard disk, a TiBook/1000 with a newer hard disk, a QS'02/800 with its stock hard disk, and an iMac G3/400 with its stock hard disk.

Generally, when the disk is already spun up, everything happens very quickly and I would be surprised if an appreciable speedup was possible.

There is probably some improvement possible, notably the 8600/300 gets started on requests very quickly.

Would moving OSX to a IDE controller card make OSX more snappy?

IME, back in the day with (again) my blue 450 on a yikes board, OS X 10.3 was "fine" - probably faster and its GUI more responsive overall than OS 9, but that's just because OS X is objectively a better OS that works better on all hardware.

OS X, I would expect to take better advantage of faster disk interfaces. (Also more RAM).

However, before looking at IDE, I"d go back on ebay and search "sil3112" once more because I did and found two different cards. Both should be flashable to work in Macs. They ship from Israel, so it's worth looking a little further afield, but it's not strictly speaking entirely impossible to find that card if you want it.

Unfortunately, I don't know off hand of any SATA Cards that work for data disks but not for boot disks, that would be nice.