On Jan 19, 2009, at 11:38 PM, insightinmind wrote:
>> Later, a few ATA/100 vendors went back and offered an upgrade for >> their ATA/100 products, which would add the LBA48 property, but that >> upgrade didn't increase the throughput of the card, which remained at >> ATA/100. > > I think my Sonnet ATA100 does support large drives ... believe its > actually Acard or Firmtek brand: > Name: Ultra-Tek100P UltraTek is the brand under which FirmTek marketed some of its early products (ProMax was the first). FirmTek was a true innovator, and it was the creator of most of the early PCI ATA card firmware releases (it did not design the hardware). However, that early FirmTek firmware all has a certain flaw, which flaw was perpetuated throughout the /33, /66, /100 and /133 product families. Perhaps FirmTek didn't fully understand certain important aspects of the Mac, in general, nor the SCSI Manager 4.3, in particular. (I don't claim to fully understand them, either). Whatever the reality, the architectural flaw was repeated even by FirmTek's competitors, most notably ACARD, because what FirmTek did, in error, on its very first product, the ProMax 33, it perpetuated through all of its remaining products. As FirmTek was not then a hardware manufacturer, it gained relatively little from its position as a firmware vendor. Therefore, for SATA, FirmTek decided to become both a firmware and a hardware vendor. Matters little, now, as everybody and his/her uncle can do SATA, and Silicon Image has what is perhaps the best line of SATA products. FirmTek was left in the dust. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed Low End Mac's G3-5 List, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list?hl=en Low End Mac RSS feed at feed://lowendmac.com/feed.xml -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
