Sata controler recomendation?

[zerotypeq]

I've got my b&w g3(450mhz) with 1gig of ram and I'm not using it for too too much, but what I am wanting to put it to use for is a file server to do this I would need to put in for now a 1tb drive and eventually 2. Hell, might as well future proof this concept (a little atleast) Lets say for argument sake that I'd need to put 4 drives in (2 for storage 2 for mirrored backup). So, my main questions are what would be a good (relatively cheap if possible) sata controller card that would support up to 2 drives as needing 2tb of mirrored backup isnt needed immediately and I could always add another in the future.

Also, it will be used for streaming SD/HD video and probally will be used for downloading/uploading torrents so would the 10/100 card in it be fine or would it be worth upgrading to a 100/100 card and if so recommendations that area to save from vncing into the box to do torrents does anybody also know of a client for osx that allows a web interface to download torrents?

 

[Mike Richardson]

Gigabit card is only useful if you also have a Gigabit switch and another Gigabit machine on the network, and you are streaming files between those machines. It will not help with BitTorrent because your internet connection speed is almost certainly far less than the 100 Mbps limit of Fast Ethernet.

Even HD content is usually not more than 20 Mbit/sec so you could have four HD streams running smoothly over Fast Ethernet.

With that said - if you have a Fry's nearby look for the AirLink Gigabit PCI Card. It's usually dirt cheap and the chipset is compatible with OS X out of the box (personally tested on Leopard - probably works in Tiger as well).

Transmission BitTorrent client has a web interface.

 

[zerotypeq]

Well, I guess thats something I can hold off on for now, but it is good to know that that card will work for when it is needed I'll keep it in the back of my mind for incase the increased speed seems necessary, but got any recomendations on compatible sata controllers?

 

[MacJunky]

Get a couple cheap Sil3512 based cards from newegg or something and flash them with wiebetech TCS1-1 firmware.

No drivers to install, bootable. Only down side is only two ports and no OS 9 compatibility. I do not know how low of a version of OS X it would require as a minimum though.

http://i27.tinypic.com/11h6ky8.png

 

[zerotypeq]

Thanks for that info and I am running tiger, it runs great on the b&w (well good enough anyways) since all it is running transmission and serving up files to my house (or will be doing anyhow).

Any recomendation on actual cards to use? (such as maybe the card you are using) and a guide on flashing them? I'll do some googling, but just incase theirs some weird thing to not do that I should be aware of I'd rather just go ahead and ask here, ha.

 

[MacJunky]

I described what I did here:

http://www.macmod.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=3522

But just look around on newegg for Sil3512 cards. It is a really straight forward process to flash and if the card does not accept the firmware then get rid of it and try something from a different brand.