Sonnet TSATA question

[MJ313]

Can I hook up a CD or DVD drive (SATA interface) to a Sonnet TSATA PCI card? Or can only hard drives be hooked up to that card? This would be in my 7600 running 9.1.

Thanks all

 

[Macdrone]

Not sure, might have a driver issue. Driver is for SCSI and IDE for removable media, sata may not allow the drivers to do their job.

I'm no software or hardware engineer but I'm guessing that it would not work correctly as hard drives don't have drivers like cd/DVDs and zips do.

 

[trag]

Not sure, might have a driver issue. Driver is for SCSI and IDE for removable media, sata may not allow the drivers to do their job.

I'm no software or hardware engineer but I'm guessing that it would not work correctly as hard drives don't have drivers like cd/DVDs and zips do.

Optical drives work fine on the Acard 6880M and 6820M.   The TSATA may perform differently.  It's by a different company and has different drivers, which may not support the optical drive commands.  It's SATA instead of IDE/ATA so there may be important differences in how driver commands are transmitted.   Still, I think if you already have the TSATA card, it's worth trying.   If you don't, you might look for the Acard 6290M.  I believe that's the PCI to Serial ATA card from Acard.  

 

[waynestewart]

You might have to talk to Acard to see if anyone even has one for sale. I can't seem to find anyone that has one for sale

 

[MJ313]

Thanks guys, that's all real helpful. I don't have it yet, so it's why I was asking. I hadn't heard about the Acard as a possible solution, so I will look into that. Cheers all-

 

[trag]

You might have to talk to Acard to see if anyone even has one for sale. I can't seem to find anyone that has one for sale

I was watching a 6290M on Ebay recently.   Not sure if it's still there...

Bah.  I think I had a 6890 watched, which is the PC version.  It's probably convertible, but not easily.  At least a few resistors to move and I'm not sure anyone's actually converted the 6890.  There were conversions for the 6280 and 6880.   I also see a 6290 on Ebay, but no 'M' versions at present.   They used to be not uncommon.

Plenty of 6280Ms for about $20 available, but unless you're willing to use PATA drives or PATA to SATA converters that doesn't help much.  Does give you four drives instead of two.

 

[waynestewart]

I got curious

I have some Sonnet Tempo SATA cards and a SATA Blu-ray combo drive.

I tried them with my MDD G4 running 10.5 and it worked

I then tried them with my 8600 running 9.2.2 and it worked.

I then tried booting off an 8.6 CD with the same 8600 and it worked

Someone is sure to ask about Blu-ray disks. Both 9.2.2 and 10.5 see the disk but can’t read the format. If you had a Blu-ray disk in HFS extended then I don’t believe you’d have a problem