I sent the following message to Sonnet and received the reply down below. That was very nice of them and very informative. It appears that the slot problem with the S900 is in the Bandit chip (hence all my PPB and ROM switching didn't help) and they did in fact look into making a Firewire card with onboard firmware which would be bootable.
>on 4/5/02 12:43 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >> I read with interest that you had solved the problems with using a >> Firewire/USB card in the 6500/TAM series of machines. I was >> wondering if you might consider doing the same for the Umax S900/J700 >> machines? >> >> Specifically, the S900/J700 lower slots are behind a PCI-PCI Bridge. >> If one then installs a PCI card which has an onboard PCI-PCI Bridge >> (such as a FW/USB card) in the lower slots the machine will freeze >> during PCI card initialization, unless that card is the only card in >> all of the the lower (PPB) slots. Perhaps the S900/J700 has a >> similar problem to the 6500 which you could solve? >> >> There is a very active email list for Umax owners at lowendmac.com >> and the subscribers would be very interested in such a product. >> >> I have a bunch more detail to the lower slot problem and how it >> relates to PCI-PCI Bridges and I'd be happy to share it with you if >> you have any interest. I've tried several different PPB chips and >> ROM versions in the S900 all with the same results. >> >> Another product which would be nice is a Firewire card with firmware >> on the card so that Firewire drives would be bootable in older >> machines. I think this might sell very well to the PowerSurge owners >> (7/8/9500, 7/8/9600). It would also distinguish that card from all >> the generic FW cards that are available and work with any drivers. >> >> Thank you for your time and attention. >Date: Fri, 05 Apr 2002 13:08:55 -0800 >Subject: Re: Tango card in Umax S900/J700 >From: support <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >To: Jeff Walther <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >Jeff, > >That's an entirely different problem. We got the fix for the 6500 directly >from Apple Inc. as a matter of fact. Had to do a few cosmetic things to >"Sonnetize" it. > >The problem with the Umax clones and other multi-slot machines is the Bandit >chip that Apple used on the motherboard. So far this is a problem we can't >solve since it involves an Apple component. > >As for bootability, that'll never happen. We looked into it and to license >the ROM code from Apple (which is what is needed for this to work) would >have been prohibitively expensive and would have made our card completely >un-sellable. We'd have priced ourselves right out of the race. > > >-- >Neal >Sonnet Customer Service >[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- SuperMacs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | Service & Replacement Parts [EMAIL PROTECTED] | & CDRWs on Sale! | SPECIAL SM LIST PRICES - 24x Bootable SCSI CDROM $39.99, Umax Processors $19.99 PowerSupplies from C500/C600 $49.99 J700/S900 $79.99 <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> SuperMacs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/supermacs/list.shtml> 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/supermacs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
