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Beige G3: PCI SATA, is it an option?
- Thread starter sigtau
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if you want bootability, there's only a few Mac-compatible pci SATA cards. The most common are based on the SIL3112 chipset, but stock PC Cards will require an eprom reprogramming to function. On the upside, they work well with classic MacOS as well as MacOS X as they emulate a bootable SCSI adapter.
I'm not aware of any PC "RAID" cards that can be reflashed, so it's unlikely your card will be able to function natively, except a slim chance as a secondary (not bootable) card in OS X.
You COULD get a SATA to IDE adapter- I've had good luck with these in a number of IDE-ony Macs, or you could buy a genuine Sonnet Tempo SATA card or reflash a compatible card. Sometimes both originals and refreshed cards go up for sale on the trading post.
I'm not aware of any PC "RAID" cards that can be reflashed, so it's unlikely your card will be able to function natively, except a slim chance as a secondary (not bootable) card in OS X.
You COULD get a SATA to IDE adapter- I've had good luck with these in a number of IDE-ony Macs, or you could buy a genuine Sonnet Tempo SATA card or reflash a compatible card. Sometimes both originals and refreshed cards go up for sale on the trading post.
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Are IDE drives getting that hard to find? There are ROM limits on the size of the IDE HD you can use on a Beige G3 (max is 128GB, and you need an 8GB partition or smaller for the booting OS). Adaptec SCSI cards also work well if you have some 68pin or SCA drives laying around.
Sonnet Tempo SATA cards will work and since they have their own ROM you can use any size up to a couple TB. There are a few choices for Mac IDE controllers as well.
Sonnet Tempo SATA cards will work and since they have their own ROM you can use any size up to a couple TB. There are a few choices for Mac IDE controllers as well.
For OSX you need an 8gb or smaller partition. For OS 9 you can use anything up to 128gb on the built in bus.
Just to update this, I ended up getting a SCSI card that did 68-pin HD SCSI, and used a 152GB hard drive I had laying about that does 10K RPM (this thing is LOUD) and it's working wonders in a triple boot scenario. 9.2.2, 10.1, and Lubuntu are all running aside from one another in this configuration, though I had to format using FWB because OS 9's installer doesn't seem savvy enough to handle large partitions.
The built-in IDE/PATA in the Beige is *slow*. It's only 16 MB/s theoretical. So, if you have a slot, some kind of disk interface card is a boon. However, one also needs to replace the stock hard drive, as I found that the hard drive that shipped with my Beige G3/300 had a media speed of around 10 MB/s regardless of how fast an interface it was connected to. The stock hard drives that Apple shipped were also *slow*.
Acard also made some SATA cards that will work with the Macintosh. Typically, they added an M to the end of the model number if it was for Mac. So 6290M and 6890M for PCI SATA Macintosh adapters from Acard. I think there were a few other models as well, but those are the ones I remember.
Acard also made some SATA cards that will work with the Macintosh. Typically, they added an M to the end of the model number if it was for Mac. So 6290M and 6890M for PCI SATA Macintosh adapters from Acard. I think there were a few other models as well, but those are the ones I remember.
I'm too lazy to try to find a mirror of the explanation why, but I vaguely recall reading that *technically* that isn't quite true, and that the 8GB "limit" can get you even if you're running OS 9. TL;DR, said vague recollection is that the classic OS will blithely install in a larger partition on those machines, and will by all appearances work fine, but if for some reason certain parts of the OS/System File later end up being moved above the 8GB mark (because you upgrade the OS at some point while there are already other files on the disk, or whatever) it will fail. Apple didn't discover this issue until later because they never sold the machines with IDE drives big enough to be affected, which is why OS 9's installer doesn't have a block to save you from it. OS X "knows".
But yes, IDE and SATA cards are a legitimate workaround.
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Yes, that's what I recall reading as well.
Anyway IDE PCI cards are well worth stocking up on for these old machines since they are so cheap now with the move to SATA.
Beware that the 8GB limit for your bootable volume is still present even on controller cards if I remember right. I think it had something to do with OF not beeing able to read files from HFS+ beyond 8GB. So you might still need to have your OS install inside the first 8GB of your drive (or a xpostfacto helper drive/partition for OSX) even with SATA cards.
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Built in video is fine for OS 9. I concentrate mostly with storage speeds since that is the weak link so SCSI or IDE card, USB, and either a capture card or better video. 10MB Ethernet you can live with for most tasks.
I'm pretty sure that's not true, IE, that the limitation is *explicitly* a bug in the driver for the IDE chipset. No such limitation applies to SCSI cards so far as is documented, which would be the case if it were an HFS+ problem. The same bug exists in the firmware for the Rev A-through-D (trayload) iMacs. (It's sort of mysterious why Apple never fixed it for the tray-loaders, because the iMacs had flashable firmware, unlike the Beige. They *could* have fixed it, at least in theory. My guess why they didn't is just something along the lines of "that's not how Apple rolls". They never sold them with drives big enough to have the problem, so not their business.)
