I'm very sorry about the delay in responding to this question, I had major computer meltdown this weekend. Several machines failed at once, and I have a real impressive pile of questionable hardware next to my desk. Some day I'll add to the thread about bad Power Computing Power Supplies, but the question here was PCI IDE cards.
The response kinda gets long, but hopefully it will help. Let me know if this raises further questions. I have done a lot of research and experimentation on this stuff, and I am very pleased with the way it works. I'm currently using the TurboMax in 3 different machines (PTPro, 7500, B&WG3/350) with very good results. First of all, what we are talking about here is a PCI card that allows older PowerMacs the ability to use cheaper and more plentiful IDE storage devices. There are two veins of these products on the market. One made by Promise Technology and sold by VST under the UltraTek/66 name. The other is manufactured by a Taiwanese company called Acard and sold them, and by ProMAX under the TurboMAX name and by Sonnet Technologies under the Tempo name. http://www.acard.com/eng/product.html http://www.acard.com/eng/product/safm/ahard_66.html http://www.promax.com There are several flavors of these Acard cards, most common is the ATA/66 identified by the chip set AEC 6260M. My experience is with this particular card, though from what I've read, they all seem to function similarly. Sonnet does have an on line manual for the Tempo card, and it is accurate for the other AEC 6260M based cards. http://www.sonnettech.com/support/manuals.html#tempou66 The card has 2 IDE channels on it, and each channel can support 2 devices, a master and a slave. You must have a master to have a slave, but a master can exist without the slave. Now there are 4 possible jumper configurations on an IDE device: Master, Single, Slave and Cable select. On most drives, the Master and Single settings are the same. On drives where they are separate settings, use Single when it is the only drive, use Master when there is a Slave, and Slave when there is a Master. The Cable Select setting is used with controllers that can pick which drive is which, and the AEC 6260M is not one of them. Do not use the Cable Select jumper setting. There are also different kinds of IDE cables as well. Frist, this card officially only supports up to an 18" cable, but I've seen reports where 24" cables work fine. I have no experience with the longer cable. Even though the connector only has 40 pins, there are both 40 and 80 wire cables. To reach the full potential and speed of the ATA/66 card, (assuming you have an ATA/66 or 100 drive) you need to use you need to use the 80 pin cable. A 40 pin cable will only allow the channel to run at 1/2 (ATA/33) speed. The speed is significant. With this card and a ATA/66 Seagate 10gig drive, MacBench reports a 187% speed increase over the internal IDE controller on my B&W G3. The speed increase is very noticeable. The recommendation is that the Single or Master drive go on the end of the cable, and only put Slave drives on the middle connector. Seems to me it shouldn't matter, but I've never tried it any other way. The most recent version of the ROM software is 3.12, and it makes the card compatible with a vast array of hard drives and CDRoms. Again, Sonnet has the easiest updater to use on it's site and the updater will tell you what version of the software is currently on your card. http://www.sonnettech.com/downloads/adapter_sw.html#temporom So, a long way around to your specific situation. You can either make the Hard Drive the Master and the CDRW the Slave on the same channel, or you could have each drive as a Master on it's own channel. With the former you only need one cable, with the latter you have separate data paths to each device. If you have the cable, I would each one a Master. I can tell you for sure that the Sony CRX160 12-8-32 works great with both iTunes/Disk Burner and Toast in a PowerTower Pro. I picked up that drive a couple of weeks ago at CompUSA for $99 with a $30 rebate. I have also had no trouble with 2 or 3 other No-Name CDRom drives, so most things do seem to work well. The only thing that has failed for me is an IDE Orb drive, but both the Sonnet site and Castlewood (the Orb folks) say removable drives aren't supported. On 9/21/01 12:55 PM, "Craig Phillips" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Mr KC Hundere, > Sir, I have been searching for someone with your > experience, wanting to install an IDE CDRW with the IDE 42gig 4200 on > my PCI TurboMAX card in my 7500. Did you slave it? Not sure what that > infers as far as IRQs. Please share. As this is of interest, I have > posted this to the PCI and Power Computing lists. Thank you, Craig. > > "I was successful in getting a no-name $25 52X IDE drive to work in my > daughter's 7500, (It even boots the machine, but it sounds like a jet > engine) and I just installed a Sony CRX160 IDE 12x8x32 in my PowerTower > Pro that works flawlessly." > -- Power Computing is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... 123Inkjets.com <http://lowendmac.com/ad/123inkjets.html> Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> Power Computing list info: <http://lowendmac.com/power/list.html> 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]> List archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/powercomputing%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Macintosh? Get free email and more at Applelinks! <http://www.applelinks.com>
