> IDE PCI cards appear as SCSI cards for some reason, I think that is what > you are referring to.
This is because at the time Firmtek was designing their Mac ROM for the Promise ATA/33 card, the only model device which would work was one which was modeled as if it was a SCSI device. Sadly, Firmtek made a mistake in their ROM and it was almost SCSI. That is, it was modeled as if it was SCSI, but it was not precisely the same as SCSI. Firmtek did not go back and correct their error (the damage had already been done), and now with the Promise ATA/66 and subsequent cards, Firmtek had to replicate their error, lest the later cards would reject a drive which was initialized under the flawed ATA/33 card. So, everyone who came afterwards ... ACARD, etcetera ... simply propagated Firmtek's original mistake. So ... any device which is attached to an ATA card will: 1) have to have a Mac ROM, and 2) will have to be modeled as an almost-SCSI drive. There was another consideration: in order for the drive to be bootable, it had to be one which OF recognized, and SCSI was the easiest choice as G3 and later Macs had IDE in the ROM, but not the pre-G3 Macs. A pre-G3 Mac, say a 9600, can have up to five ATA cards, each with four drives. But, you say, a 9600 has eight slots. True, but one of those is reserved for the video card as the 9600 doesn't have on-board video. That leaves seven available slots, doesn't it? Well, yes, but the interrupt controller gets hopelessly confused of more than five ATA cards are installed. It really doesn't matter if four cards are on one "Bandit" controller chip and one is on the other "Bandit" or if three and two or if two and three ... the maximum is five, period. The machine will not POST if more than five are installed. Of course this limit is only seen on 9500 and 9600 models. I suppose it could also be seen on Apple Network Servers (ANS), but no-one made an ATA card for that beast. RAID cards, sure. For and ANS the best bet is an ACARD "SCSIDE" card inside one of the SCSI drive trays. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, 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] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
