On Oct 5, 2008, at 1:08 PM, Dana Collins wrote:

> I was thinking more of drives connected to 3rd party controller cards
> (like my Siig ATA-133 card) i.e. a drive not connected to the host
> busses found on the motherboard.

The same rules apply.

The PCI cards simply present a SCSI Manager 4.3 software interface  
image to the Mac, and then translates that to equivalent ATA commands.

If a PCI card (which usually has two 40-pin connectors) has both  
connectors empty, then the host sees no bus.

Once a connector and its attached cable has at least one drive  
attached, the host sees a SCSI bus and its attached drive or drives.

The limitation ... at least on the old six-slot machines ... was four  
such cards [ * ] .


[ * ] For example, a 9500 or 9600, which has six PCI slots, five of  
them usable for expansion, has these SCSI buses, in the maximum  
configuration case (assuming PCI cards for all except the mobo's SCSI  
buses):

SCSI Bus 0 (10 MB/sec -- primary 50 pin internal connector), IDs 0  
through 6, with the machine's basic hard drive being ID 0 and the  
machine's basic CD-ROM being ID 3, thereby leaving IDs 1, 2, 4, 5 and  
6 available

SCSI Bus 1 (5 MB/sec -- external 25 pin connector and secondary 50  
pin internal connector), IDs 0 through 6, normally not used for basic  
drives, but intended for external drives

SCSI Bus 2 (speed dependent upon the card, but in the aggregate the  
throughput is about 40 MB/sec) ID 0 and 1 on first connector, ID 2  
and 3 on second connector [ first PCI card ]

SCSI Bus 3 (speed dependent upon the card, but in the aggregate the  
throughput is about 40 MB/sec) ID 0 and 1 on first connector, ID 2  
and 3 on second connector [ second PCI card ]

SCSI Bus 4 (speed dependent upon the card, but in the aggregate the  
throughput is about 40 MB/sec) ID 0 and 1 on first connector, ID 2  
and 3 on second connector [ third PCI card ]

SCSI Bus 5 (speed dependent upon the card, but in the aggregate the  
throughput is about 40 MB/sec) ID 0 and 1 on first connector, ID 2  
and 3 on second connector [ fourth and last PCI card ]

The machine does not care if there are three such cards on the  
highest-numbered slots (which have its own bus controller) and one on  
the lowest-numbered slots (which shares its bus controller with the  
video card) or if there are two such cards on each bus controller.

The machine will hang in Power-On System Test if a fifth PCI ATA card  
is installed.




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