Yeah, I figured the MP extensions were going to be bad once I got past Mac OS 7 since Daystar lost their license (which apparently included even supporting their clones) before it got much further than that. I was hoping to at least get 8.1 on it. I can try again, but a lot of the issues with that Daystar go beyond just the MP extensions and into some bizarre hardware behavior. This thing is on the top of my list for a component-level refurb. Maybe that'll help, and if it doesn't, then oh well, it was going to need one soon enough and the Daystar is rare enough that it should absolutely have one at some point.
Were these machines always so painful? Maybe I'm misremembering, or maybe age hasn't been kind to them.
- Thread starter The Finale of Seem
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I did try some minimal configs. Sometimes they were better, sometimes not. Sometimes it was something particular that should work (none of these machines could reliably use a video card past a Rage 128 when I know for absolute certain that they could back in the day, same with OS 9 compatible USB cards beyond just that Opti chipset), sometimes it was other goofiness. They're definitely not operating as they should, or at least as they did once upon a time. Like I said in another reply, I'm hoping a component repair will get them back to normal levels of possessed.
Is the SD adapter performant enough to match 166? You're going to need something at least at a UHS-I class to get 100MB/sec transfer speeds (compared to ATA/166 speeds of 166MB/sec). Most of the adapters I've seen are IDE to SDHC, which is usually 25MB/sec read and 10MB/sec write. That's a pretty big drop in read/write performance over a native device -- big enough to be noticed, and possibly enough to really impact usability.
I can get some numbers, but when I tested it vs. BlueSCSI on the internal fast SCSI on the PTPro (10 MB/sec), it was at least four times faster read and write. Maybe not 166, but a lot better.
With the original PCI bus, there are significant overheads and you'll never attain the stated maximum throughput of 133MB/s, let alone 166MB/s using an "ATA/166" card; good quality SD and CF cards used in good quality adapters provide improved performance over IDE-based spinning media any day of the week.
The tipping point to look for something better/faster would be in later PPC Macs, but OldWorld earlier PCI Macs enjoy these cheaper solutions.
One caveat is some Macs there are compatibility issues using flash-based adapters such as these so there is some experimentation at times to find out what works.
The tipping point to look for something better/faster would be in later PPC Macs, but OldWorld earlier PCI Macs enjoy these cheaper solutions.
One caveat is some Macs there are compatibility issues using flash-based adapters such as these so there is some experimentation at times to find out what works.
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You sure that's ATA166 and not a mistype? I thought UDMA-7 didn't find much purchase as SATA showed up and didn't really get used in desktop systems much at all. I don't recall ever seeing a Mac card for it, but I'd be very curious about it if I'm wrong on that.
Indeed it is. This is what happens when you have brain farts when you are otherwise occupied mentally by other things. It’s an ATA 133 card.
