>Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2002 14:42:49 -0600 >From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Does anyone know any info on converting a Promise Ultra66 IDE >controler to wprk >in a mac? > >I have the PDC20262 >chipset, if that helps.
Peter H is the expert on this, but I've dabbled as well. The short version is that if you wish to convert just one card it isn't worth the trouble. Just find someone selling the Mac card on Ebay or something. I did my conversion for fun more than anything else. The easy method is to get a legitimate VST card, get a Promise Ultra66 card, lay them side by side and move components until they're identical. This is difficult with the later Promise cards as they changed some of the resistor placements and designations, but still not too hard to figure out if you go by the resistor numbers. Two of the resistors that need moving are under the Flash memory chip (the 32 pin DIP on the left side of the card). So you need to be a good enough solderer to remove a 32 pin DIP without damaging the card. This is challenging as you must get all 32 pins loose and getting the solder out of those holes while the pins are still in them is a pain. Alternatively, you can clip the pins on the Flash chip and remove the pins one at a time, but then you must supply a replacement memory chip. If you do not get a very specific and hard to find replacement which will likely cost you $6 - $10 the card will not be flashable. Once you have the Flash chip removed, install a 32 pin machined pin socket in its place so that if you screw something up, you won't have to desolder the chip again, you can just pull it from the socket. The other challenge is getting the Mac firmware into the Flash memory (or EPROM or EEPROM) chip you install. If you have an EEPROM programmer (a couple hundred plus dollar device usually) you can hack away at the firmware updater for the VST card and maybe succeed at extracting the code that needs to be written into the Flash chip. If you go this route, you can substitute an inexpensive EPROM chip for a dollar or two, but as I wrote above, it will not be flashable on the card. You'll always have to program it on a programming machine. Note that the firmware updaters for the VST card check to see if there is already a version of the VST firmware installed and will not work if there is not. I don't know if this is true of OWC's OSX updater, but it's true for the earlier VST updaters. So even if you have a blank Flash chip to install in your converted card, you can't just flash it with the Mac firmware using the firmware updater from VST. It won't recognize the card. A second method, is to take the chip from the legitimate VST card (risking damaging it), copy it using the EEPROM programmer, program the contents into the chip you carefully removed from the Promise card, and voila, you have a card that appears to be a VST card in every way except the silkscreened writing on the card. This you could get done at any PC shop which has an EEPROM programmer, which many do for programming BIOS chips. So why not get a PC shop to do the copying with the earlier mentioned method? Because, with the first method, you're probably going to go through so many iterations trying to hack the actual firmware code out of the installer that you'd make a score of trips to and from the PC shop. Since they're likely to charge you at least $5 a pop, that gets expensive. A third method is to take the flash memory chip off of your legitimate VST card (again, risking damage to your working card) and install it loosely in the socket you've installed in your hacked Promise card. Now run the Mac firmware updater. When you get to the last screen before it writes the firmware contents, carefully (oh, so carefully) remove the legitimate flash memory chip, and install the one that you desoldered from the Promise card. Obviously you leave the modified Promise card in the PCI slot and the power on while you're doing this. Because the legitimate chip was installed up to this point, the installer recognized the card, and it will now write the Mac firmware to the Promise flash memory chip, giving you a Mac capable card. The third method is the one that I used. I found that it worked best to use two sockets. I put one socket on the hacked Promise card. And I inserted the flash memory chips in their own sockets and then plugged socket into socket. I did this because the pins of a machined pin socket are much straighter and more rigid than the pins of a DIP chip and so are easier to insert and remove without exerting a lot of force which might dislodge the PCI card from its slot. So, if you can successfully and non-destructively desolder the flash chips from the cards you can do this modification without too much trouble. However, it still requires an example of a legitimate card, or at least a converted card, in order to make it work. I don't remember which resistors to move, or I'd tell you. All my cards are in VST configuration now, so I don't know what I moved from where. I do know that you must pull the 66 MHz half-size metal can oscillator from the Promise card. It's not present on the VST. I guess it gets its signal from the PCI bus clock, although that's only 33 MHz. This is also why it's not worth it if you just need one card. You either need expensive equipment and hacking skills, or an example of the VST card to work from. If you're going to buy a card to copy, and you only need the one card, then just use that card. Jeff Walther P.S. Peter, in one of your posts you mentioned that the Mac configuration is a RAID configuration. How does the card provide RAID support? I thought that was all done through software using SoftRAID, not as a hardware RAID. If there's a way to get it to do hardware RAID, I'd love to know about it. P.P.S. The fact that the VST card was bundled with a full upgradeable copy of SoftRAID and was well under $100 for a long time made it a great buy back when. -- PCI-PowerMacs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... 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