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PCI-X sATA compatible cards
- Thread starter ivelegacy
- Start date
The only Macs to ever ship with PCI-X slots had their own onboard SATA controllers and no provision for additional internal disks, so this likely isn't very well known as such cards would have had an extremely small buyer base, unless they had external SAS or eSATA connections, for use with a disk shelf, but for the G5 era, Apple's recommendation for large scale external storage was FiberChannel, they had their own host card and the XServe raid used FC for connection. Apple later replaced the XServe RAID with a different FC shelf that used SATA disks internally, I don't remember off hand what year that was.
Ultimately, I'm not aware of any functioning PCI-X cards for the mid-generation Power Macintosh G5s that had them outside of cards for Avid ProTools. Anything else would almost certainly have been a plain PCI card.
The datasheet suggests it works with Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5, so if you believe that and have a Mac with PCI-X and some solution (such as a G5 Jam) for mounting drives or a card faceplace adapter to use an external disk shelf, then it could be worth trying, if you can find one.
Good luck!
Ultimately, I'm not aware of any functioning PCI-X cards for the mid-generation Power Macintosh G5s that had them outside of cards for Avid ProTools. Anything else would almost certainly have been a plain PCI card.
The datasheet suggests it works with Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5, so if you believe that and have a Mac with PCI-X and some solution (such as a G5 Jam) for mounting drives or a card faceplace adapter to use an external disk shelf, then it could be worth trying, if you can find one.
Good luck!
Notably, that card is only 3.0 gigabit, so it will do a little bit, but not much, for performance over built-in SATA on those machines, and realistically only if you use SSDs. If raw performance is the goal, a PCIe host adapter for 6-gigabit SATA (or: one of those carriers for m.2 drives) in one of the last-gen G5s may be better suited.
Note that I missed from the manual, it appears this card supports normal PCI connections, just in 64-bit slots. It was noted somewhere on here most Power Macintoshes from the blue-and-white G3 forward have 64-bit PCI slots, so that's more encouraging than if it were actually limited to PCI-X slots specifically. However, the manual doesn't mention Mac OS or OS X compatibility or show any procedures for using it in a Mac at all, so unless someone actually has one, you'd basically need to get one and be the first to try. A quick google didn't turn up anything for me.
Also interestingly, the two pages of the datasheet I linked earlier disagree on OS support. The list of specs shows Mac OS X, but the written specs only mention Windows, BSD, and Linux. The datasheet really disagrees with itself (or lists irrelevant points) on a lot of issues.
Also interestingly, the two pages of the datasheet I linked earlier disagree on OS support. The list of specs shows Mac OS X, but the written specs only mention Windows, BSD, and Linux. The datasheet really disagrees with itself (or lists irrelevant points) on a lot of issues.
Thanks for your answer.
Do you remember a working model of FC-PCI-X card?
I might use linux, and a FiberBridge (FC to SATA-multilane), to access my hard drives.
Apple built its own PCI, possibly PCI-X, and PCIe Fiber Channel cards. They may have been rebranded from an actual FC chipset vendor like QLogic, I haven't ever looked closely enough at FC to know.
What's the goal here? There's an extremely good chance starting with a PowerPC Macintosh may not be the best idea.
What's the goal here? There's an extremely good chance starting with a PowerPC Macintosh may not be the best idea.
