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Quadra 630 PATA: Slave Capable?
- Thread starter Floofies
- Start date
Elfen
Well-known member
A majority of Blue/White G3 Towers wont do Slave Drives either, it depends on what ROM version is on the machine.
The same with some early Dark Grey G4 Towers as well, again, it depends on the ROM version.
Elfen
Well-known member
I remember in one school I worked at, they had 2 Dark Grey G4 Towers; one was a Apple Workgroup Server and the other was an ordinary G4 Tower for the teacher's station. The G4 Server had 2 IDE Drives while the regular tower had one and no matter how much I tried, I could not add a second drive to it. I talked to the Apple Guy about it. and he stated that it had to do with the ROM version for the machines but trying to pull the wool over my eyes by saying "Because this one is a server and needs to have 2 hard drives and your teacher station does not need to have 2 hard drives." I held in my "Yeah right..." to myself.
So it is something to do with the ROM, whether in the IDE Section or the main section remains to be seen. But for some reason Apple sold these machines with a cable that can handle 2 drives and mounting hardware for a second drive. I'm guessing that there is a firmware update that can fix this "issue" and one can have 2 IDE Drives on a G4 Tower of that vintage.
So it is something to do with the ROM, whether in the IDE Section or the main section remains to be seen. But for some reason Apple sold these machines with a cable that can handle 2 drives and mounting hardware for a second drive. I'm guessing that there is a firmware update that can fix this "issue" and one can have 2 IDE Drives on a G4 Tower of that vintage.
CC_333
Well-known member
Were those Yikes towers? I know from experience that the Sawtooth, and subsequent models, can support slave drives just fine.
Although, Yikes G4's should work just as well, as Apple had presumably fixed the problem by then (since the Yikes logic board is based on the same architecture as the B&W G3, albeit with upgraded ROMs (which are not known to be buggy), the Yikes could be thought of as a "Rev. 3" B&W G3 with a factory installed G4 upgrade and fancy new colors applied to the exterior. That being said, one can fix the problem in an earlier B&W by installing a Yikes LB. The only obvious difference is the lack of an ADB port.)
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Although, Yikes G4's should work just as well, as Apple had presumably fixed the problem by then (since the Yikes logic board is based on the same architecture as the B&W G3, albeit with upgraded ROMs (which are not known to be buggy), the Yikes could be thought of as a "Rev. 3" B&W G3 with a factory installed G4 upgrade and fancy new colors applied to the exterior. That being said, one can fix the problem in an earlier B&W by installing a Yikes LB. The only obvious difference is the lack of an ADB port.)
c
It is literally a broken chip on the board, not a ROM issue, that prevents early B&Ws from running a slave drive properly. The UDMA/33 IDE ports in those boxes are run by an add-on IDE controller by CMD and the rev used on the early boards has a hardware issue that causes corruption. Any B&W that has an internal drive bracket that can take two drives *should* have the updated chip.
I will note in passing that in my experience all IDE equipped macs, at least up until the AGP models, are sort of picky/flaky about what IDE drives they'll get along with, master *or* slave. My B&W wouldn't work at all with IBM Deskstars and also didn't like a Western Digital drive I tried in it once. Had similar experiences with the IDE port in my Rev. B iMac. Put in a different drive (Maxtor drives always seemed to work for some reason) and they're fine.
johnklos
Well-known member
The IDE interface in the Quadra 630 can be any size and is pretty flexible, although I admit to never trying to use a slave. I've tested a 2 TB drive. I suspect that a drive that's larger will work, but that many of the programs and perhaps the drivers might not work beyond 2 TB since most of the code is based on SCSI, which is usually set up to use up to 2^32 blocks of 512 bytes (which is 2 TB).
The B&W's IDE has a hardware limit of 128 gigabytes because of the 2^28 block limit. This can be worked around in software, but it's slow and someone would have to rewrite the Mac OS driver.
We've done that for NetBSD on Sun Netra X1:
aceride0 at pci0 dev 13 function 0: Acer Labs M5229 UDMA IDE Controller (rev. 0xc3)
aceride0: bus-master DMA support present
aceride0: using PIO transfers above 137GB as workaround for 48bit DMA access bug, expect reduced performance
The B&W's IDE has a hardware limit of 128 gigabytes because of the 2^28 block limit. This can be worked around in software, but it's slow and someone would have to rewrite the Mac OS driver.
We've done that for NetBSD on Sun Netra X1:
aceride0 at pci0 dev 13 function 0: Acer Labs M5229 UDMA IDE Controller (rev. 0xc3)
aceride0: bus-master DMA support present
aceride0: using PIO transfers above 137GB as workaround for 48bit DMA access bug, expect reduced performance
Compgeke
Well-known member
I've only ever had them show the first card only. All my adapters are passive master/slave so top CF card is master and bottom's slave unless you move a jumper to swap that around.
On old PCs that's generally fine and works as intended although on Macs it's always just shown the first card.
On old PCs that's generally fine and works as intended although on Macs it's always just shown the first card.
Elfen
Well-known member
Most of them have a Master/Slave Jumper for the cards with no jumper being Cable select like on an IDE Drive. Some just have 1 jumper for both cards (where one becomes master and the other becomes slave) and others have a M/S jumper on both sides.
The problem is this. There is no electronics on the card at all, just the board, the jumper(s) and the slots for the CF Card. There might be a couple LEDs but that is it. So putting in a Dual CF-to-IDE Card reader with just one card in it should work. It does not. Turn on your machine, and you get a grey screen after RAM Test. Sometimes you may get a mouse pointer but most of the time you don't. The Mac just sits there doing nothing. Put in a Single CF Card reader and it works fine. And this is on every singe Mac I tried it on with every type of CF-to-IDE Card reader I own. And I can not explain why other than the Mac implementation of the IDE Port is broken.
Edit: I have a few Single CF-to-IDE Readers that have a second side that is blank (no hardware on it but adding hardware will make it a dual CF reader), and they work fine. But add the hardware like I did a couple of times and it fails on the Mac but works on the PC. WHY?!!!
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Floofies
Maker of Logos
I think CF is a whole other can of worms, but it's related to a bigger problem with the onboard ATA controller. It's very likely the only way to get 2 PATA drives on the Q630 ATA bus is with separate RAID controller hardware, which would trick the 630's ATA controller into seeing only one drive. At that point it's pretty much useless (IE just go with one big drive) unless you wanted RAID in the first place (for backup redundancy).
Elfen
Well-known member
Adding another controller to the 630 (or any other Mac Desktop with a PCI slot) should work. But off the bat, as is on a naked Mac, it wont work. And that is the nature of the beast. Not all of us can find a PCi Card that will work on a Mac - let alone a 68K Mac. And many PCI IDE/ATA cards are PC only (too bad that Maxtor/Promise card does not work on a Mac!). So we are stuck with what we have.
Now, if you (anyone out there) has a PCI IDE/ATA card that does work on a Mac, even on the 68K Mac, Share the Wealth Of Information Because I Want To Know!!!!
Now, if you (anyone out there) has a PCI IDE/ATA card that does work on a Mac, even on the 68K Mac, Share the Wealth Of Information Because I Want To Know!!!!
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