>Although it appears that Promise makes Sonnett's ATA cards their PC cards >aren't flashable to Mac.
ACARD's UATA cards are FLASHable between PC and Mac versions, and back. ACARD is the only end-to-end manufacturer of such cards I am aware of. Because the other manufacturers (Sonnet, SIIG, UltraTek, et. al.) are not end-to-end manufacturers, and depend upon one company for their hardware manufacturing (Promise, e.g.) and another company for their firmware development (FirmTek, e.g.), these companies have insisted on special designs to combat and eliminate "diversion" of the lower cost PC cards to the higher cost Mac cards. These special designs ranged from the simple (externally programmable pins in the LSI chips in the early cards) to the complex (special runs of the LSI chips in the later cards). As it is, it is nearly impossible to "divert" a UATA/100 card, and it is quite impossible to "divert" a UATA/133 card [ * ] . Take a look at a Promise UATA/133 card. The LSI chip is a PDC20269. If you examined the size of the on-chip EEPROM, you would likely discover that its capacity is 512 kbits (64 kbytes). Take a look at a Sonnet UATA/133 card. The LSI chip is a PDC20269M. If you examined the size of the on-chip EEPROM, you would likely discover that its capacity is 1024 kbits (128 kbytes). The Mac firmware will not fit in a 64 kbyte ROM, so Game Over! There are also the usual subtleties of the PC-only version being either non-RAID or RAID, whereas the Mac-only version is RAID. Bottom line is the manufacturers have gotten together to do everything within their collective powers to prevent "diversion" of cards sold for use in PCs. And, I have, in general terms, described some of the techniques used to prevent such "diversion". This "diversion" must have significantly eaten into some company profits, as FirmTek, the usual supplier of firmware for Mac-only UATA cards, decided to get out of the firmware-only business for its next generation, Serial ATA (SATA). For SATA cards, FirmTek has cut out the other manufacturers altogether, and it makes both the card and the firmware, under its own name. [ * ] For the current generation of UATA cards, the formerly external EEPROM (FLASH) was moved from outside the LSI chip to inside the LSI chip. For the earlier generation of UATA cards, the EEPROM (FLASH) chip type (signature code) was intentionally different between the two, so that a Mac FLASHer could not be made to FLASH a PC card, for the fundamental reason that the MAC FLASHer was expected and required to see a Winbond FLASH chip, whereas the PC card was manufactured with another maker's FLASH memory chip. -- PCI-PowerMacs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- Sonnet & PowerLogix Upgrades - start at $169 | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> PCI-PowerMacs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/pci-powermacs.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive:<http://www.mail-archive.com/pci-powermacs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
