Sonnet Tempo ATA66 Drive Capacity?

[l008com]

I found a Sonnet Tempo Ultra ATA66 on ebay. Not the 133 or sata card I really want, but realistically it should be fine. I found a spec sheet on the card, on Sonnet's website. But I couldn't find any mention anywhere about max drive capacity.  I know with IDE, there was a limit for a long time, 128 GB i think? Anyone know if this card has such a limit? 

http://www.sonnettech.com/publicfiles/pdfs/pdf_datasheets/tempoa66_datasheet.pdf

I don't see it listed, unless I'm blind. But I do see 7.5.3 through OS X listed, which is music to my ears.

 

[bibilit]

Not sure a 100 % but i don't think the card will be responsible for any limit, the mother board in the other hand will.

 

[trag]

Some of the ATA cards did have the 137 GB limit and there were intricate work arounds available. And some of the cards updated their firmware to do away with the limit. I can't remember wrt that particular card though. You might look for an Acard 6280M or 6880M instead. They turn up under $30 from time to time. If you're set on the Sonnet try searching on xlr8yourmac.com. There should be plenty of info in the archives.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

The official definition of ATA/ATAPI-5 (the standard that defines the Ultra DMA/66 transfer speed,) has the 128 GB limit.

BUT, late in the time of UltraATA/66, some controllers used some of the ATA/ATAPI-6 standard, allowing them to access larger drives. Unfortunately, if the vendor doesn't tell you, the only way to find out is to test it.

My only PCI add-in ATA card is a Promise UltraATA/100 card, so I can't answer for your specific card.

 

[l008com]

It's weird that sonnets on spec PDF for this card doesn't mention it. I assume that means they did what you mentioned, and implemented it in a way where there was no limit. But it's all moot now anyway, the ebay seller wants too much money for the card, so I'll keep waiting for a better deal. 

 

[trag]

There's a Sonnet ultra 66 on Ebay for $30. I hope that is not the one you thimk is too expensive...

 

[Anonymous Freak]

The other option is that it was made before there were 120+ GB hard drives, so they simply didn't even think to list it.

The ATA/ATAPI-5 standard (the official standard that added the 66 MB/s speed,) was finalized in February 2000. While 120 GB drives were released in early 2001, from what I can find.  While yes, the 128 GB limit was known, and even the necessity to mitigate it was well known by the time Ultra-ATA 66 came out, it might not have been something that was felt "worth pointing out" in consumer-level products yet.

 

[trag]

Agreeing with Anon. Freak. My leaky memory suggests that the ATA-66 cards were updated for OSX support but not for LBA48 (big drives) support. I know this is the case for the VST Ultratek-66. The 100/133 cards support bigger drives. There was also a hard drive driver workaround from Intech.

 

[l008com]

There's a Sonnet ultra 66 on Ebay for $30. I hope that is not the one you thimk is too expensive...

It was. But you inspired me to keep haggling and I bought it for $20 shipped. That's pretty reasonable. I'd rather a tempo trio with firewire and USB too but who knows how long until one of those pops up. 

 

[Anonymous Freak]

So, digging through my add-in card collection, it turns out I *DO* have a Sonnet Ultra/66 card!  Unfortunately, I have no >120 GB parallel ATA drives to test it with!

(My hard drive drawer goes from 540 MB up to 120 GB parallel ATA, then one 40 GB Serial ATA, then the next SATA up is 500 GB.)

 

[waynestewart]

I have 2 Sonnet Tempo ATA66 cards. I tried them with a 400gb drive

in a beige G3 running 9.2.2. It wants to format it at 128gb.