Powermac G4 PCI Sata Card

[mark10197]

Hi
I came across a PowerMac G4 (AGP Graphics). It has a Dual 533mhz processor and with tiger loaded on it, It runs awesome. Well I plan on using it as a media server for my playstation 3, so I am going to shove a 1 TB SATA HD in it. I need to find a good PCI SATA card for my PowerMac so I can read the drive. As far I understand, This machine has LBA issues preventing the machine from seeing a drive larger then 128 GB. After googling a little I found that it doesn't matter if your using PCI, as long as your card is LBA enabled. Does anyone know of a good PCI card that will work good with my setup?

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

(PS, I am using the 1tb drive as a secondary drive, The machine will boot off the onboard IDE Hd,)

 

[Blue Velvet]

When I last had a G4 PowerMac to use as a server, I put a Sonnet Tempo PCI SATA card in mine. It had connections for two drives at 1.5mb/s, but they do faster, bigger ones like the Tempo SATA E4i. No restrictions at all on drive sizes.

 

[mark10197]

Eeek. A bit pricey considering I got the computer for free lol.
But I guess it will work so I'll order one.
Thanks

 

[mark10197]

Ohh yeah,
what did you do about power for the drive?

 

[mr1970]

I just installed the 2-port Sonnet a week or so ago. It works great; I have 2 x 1TB WD Black drives set up in mirrored RAID and the whole thing runs as a media server for an Apple TV.

For power, the Sonnet came with one SATA data cable and a standard power cable which picks up from the spare IDE connector in the G4 and converts it into a SATA power terminator. For my setup, I had to buy another data cable and a Y-splitter which has a standard molex connector on one end and 2 x SATA power terms on the other.

You might want to hunt around a little for the Sonnet card; I got mine from an Apple reseller and saved a few pounds over buying online (surprisingly).

Finally, if you're doing anything other than running the box as a media server, you might find you're RAM-limited, so it's worth maxing the RAM on the G4. I went to 2GB and it ticks along without breaking sweat.

 

[mr1970]

Oh, one final point - I don't know how big your media library actually is but if it's less than 120GB you may wish to just pick up another 120GB IDE drive off eBay and use that instead of going to the trouble and expense of adding a SATA card and drive. By my reckoning, the SATA card and drive would cost about 130GBP here in the UK whereas you could pick up a 120GB IDE on eBay for about 20. I started with this approach then added a SATA card and 2 mirrored drives once the media library outgrew it. The data and power cables in the G4 are already there for this approach.

Incidentally, for some bizarre reason I found that a 160GB IDE drive was cheaper than a 120GB version so I bunged that in instead. Tiger just ignores the additional space and calls it 120GB.

 

[Consultant]

Eeek. A bit pricey considering I got the computer for free lol.
But I guess it will work so I'll order one.
Thanks

$60 or so is NOT expensive for a card since you can add multiple drives.

I have 6 harddrives in my powermac, 2 IDE and 4 SATA.

You need power adapters to turn the power plugs compatible with SATA power plug too.
You might also need SATA cable.

Incidentally, for some bizarre reason I found that a 160GB IDE drive was cheaper than a 120GB version so I bunged that in instead. Tiger just ignores the additional space and calls it 120GB.

That's not a "tiger" problem. It's a problem with older MOBO.

On computers with older mobo (no "big drive support). You can use this driver to make drive > 120gb work with full capacity.

Intech SpeedTools ATA Hi-Capacity Driver
http://www.google.com/url?q=http://...t&cd=1&usg=AFQjCNE__9FQc0BO03FbUy6RJwJJ2XmZyg

By the way, IDE drives are relatively expensive compared to SATA drives.

 

[paul.opensource]

Sonnet tempo sata card

For those of you with the Sonnet Tempo PCI SATA card in a G4 (I have a dual 533 DA running Tiger) with SATA drives as your only drive(s), have you encountered any issues? I am wondering about sleep specifically. I remember reading someone had issues with this configuration but everything I have read here indicates the card with SATA drives works exactly the same as the native, on-board IDE controller, although much faster obviously.

I am considering buying one of these cards so I can use my sata drives but want to be sure everything will work as it does now. Thanks in advance.

 

[Eric S.]

That's not a "tiger" problem. It's a problem with older MOBO.

Yes, but drive size limitation was actually inherent in the original ATA spec, which used a 28-bit logical block address size. That limitation wasn't removed until ATA-6, which went to a 48-bit LBA in 2001. SATA has always supported 48-bit LBA.

 

[mr1970]

"as your only drive(s), "

Hmm. I might be wrong here, and anyone please correct me if I am, but I have a feeling that your boot disk has to be IDE as that's the controller on the motherboard on the G4?

Certainly in my case there are 2 x IDE drives on the motherboard then the 2 x SATA drives are on the Sonnet card. Not sure you can boot straight from drives on the PCI card.

 

[Eric S.]

"as your only drive(s), "

Hmm. I might be wrong here, and anyone please correct me if I am, but I have a feeling that your boot disk has to be IDE as that's the controller on the motherboard on the G4?

Certainly in my case there are 2 x IDE drives on the motherboard then the 2 x SATA drives are on the Sonnet card. Not sure you can boot straight from drives on the PCI card.

Nope, my boot drive on my PM G4 is a SATA drive off of a PCI controller. I also have a PATA drive off the motherboard in the second drive slot that holds my iTunes database, but I could replace that with a second SATA drive if I wished.

However I cannot boot OS 9 natively from the SATA drive. I would guess that the OS 9 boot program does not have a driver for the SATA controller. But that's something I can live without.

 

[SmurfBoxMasta]

YES you can boot from most SATA pci cards. I have a SIIG 4port card in my QS now for almost 2 yrs, booting & running 2x Raptors + 2 other hd's nottaproblemo

I previously had a Firmtek 2port card in there also nottaproblemo.....

The only reason I changed was that I needed 4 hdd's instead of 2 and didn't want to take up another pci slot w/a 2nd card , plus I sold the Firmtek to offset the cost of the SIIG card ..........

and BTW, I do NOT have any hd's connected to the onboard controller

 

[paul.opensource]

SATA card

Just FYI for those considering a Sonnet Tempo SATA card. It rocks. I had two old IDE drives in my G4 - the original 30 gb IBM and a 7200 rpm WD 20 gb. I got a Sonnet Temp SATA card from Provantage for $56 (retail, not OEM) and installed it, cloned the main 30gb boot drive onto my 80 gig SATA, yanked the IDE boot drive and although I got no startup chime first boot, she booted fine. I then added my 500 gb WD SATA drive to the second channel and the system saw it just fine.

Not sure why I didn't get a chime that first boot, but it chimes every time now. The only other thing that was strange was that I had one huge partition on the 500 gb and copying to it didn't go, it just hung. I partitioned the 500 gb into 2 230's (rough) and now copying is fast and works fine.

I can't believe the speed difference and these drives are quiet compared to the old IDE drives. The only bad thing is now my Mac looks like a PC inside with all of the wiring I will need to see if I can neaten it up later. Now I am running all SATA and the system sleeps, wakes, etc just fine.

I was a bit sceptical if this whole thing would work, but I am very happy I took the plunge. Now I have space and speed.

 

[paul.opensource]

"as your only drive(s), "

Hmm. I might be wrong here, and anyone please correct me if I am, but I have a feeling that your boot disk has to be IDE as that's the controller on the motherboard on the G4?

Certainly in my case there are 2 x IDE drives on the motherboard then the 2 x SATA drives are on the Sonnet card. Not sure you can boot straight from drives on the PCI card.

Yepper - doing it right now... Well, not booting, but you know what I mean.

 

[paul.opensource]

Too good to be true

I knew it was too good to be true Sleeping is broken with this SATA card and my machine. The box will sleep, but then it either takes a long time to wake, or it will not wake at all and you need to power the box off and back on. I guess I just turn it off now, unless someone has a fix...

 

[paul.opensource]

G4 Sonnet SATA Sleep

OK, couple of questions while I beat this horse some more...

Is the mere presence of the SATA PCI card causing my G4 sleep problems or is it the fact the system boot drive is on the PCI card and not on the motherboard controller? The only change I made to the system was the addition of the PCI SATA card and the removal of all IDE devices except for the CDROM.

I ask this because I am considering cloning the new SATA boot drive onto my old IDE drive and using that as the boot drive, and using the SATA controller for extra storage drives only. If my sleep problems go away, problem solved.

Does anyone else using this card (Sonnet Tempo) in a G4 have sleep issues and if so, how did you solve them?

Thanks in advance.

 

[paul.opensource]

Rip Van Winkle

OK, so it's not the presense of the SATA PCI card, but sleeping the drive(s) attached to the card that locks up everything. Changed my boot disk back to a 20 gb IDE and made my big 500gb the only drive on the SATA card. Slept the 'puter for about 2 hours and the 500gb drive never wakes, which locks Finder necessitating a restart. This is only because I don't know how to restart the "desktop" without restarting the whole computer. Probably a way to do it, I just have no idea...

So, I am not able to sleep the computer without leaving the drives "awake" - not sure if that's even possible. So, no sleep for me...crud. And I thought sleeping the Mac was the coolest thing ever.

 

[paul.opensource]

Yet another post

Of course I had to post again, I'm testing and wanted anyone who is interested to benefit...

I "de-flashed" my Sonnet card back from 5.31 to 5.13 based on some advice I read and it appears to be working well so far. I have not slept the machine for more than about 5 minutes but will test long term sleep (8+ hours) when I get up in the morning. So far with short term sleep, the machine sleeps and wakes just fine.

I hope this fixes my issue because the speed with a SATA boot drive is much better.

 

[Eric S.]

My SATA controller is one of these from SIIG. My PM G4 has inconsistent problems with sleep. For a long time it wouldn't sleep automatically at all but sleeping manually worked fine. Now automatic sleep is working again. I've never had any problem waking it from sleeping. Of course I don't know if the sleep issue has anything to do with the SATA card.

 

[product26]

Where did you get the firmware? my card is running 5.3.1B1 and I am having the same problems with waking from sleep. I had this exact card a few years ago and it worked PERFECTLY with out causing any sleep problems.

Of course I had to post again, I'm testing and wanted anyone who is interested to benefit...

I "de-flashed" my Sonnet card back from 5.31 to 5.13 based on some advice I read and it appears to be working well so far. I have not slept the machine for more than about 5 minutes but will test long term sleep (8+ hours) when I get up in the morning. So far with short term sleep, the machine sleeps and wakes just fine.

I hope this fixes my issue because the speed with a SATA boot drive is much better.

 

[paul.opensource]

Firmware downgrade

Here you go: http://www.firmtek.com/download/ I used the FirmTek SeriTek/1S2 5.1.3 Firmware and Driver package and followed the instructions.

Here is the resulting info from my "about this Mac" dialog:

SeriTek/1S2 v. 5.1.3,11/22/05, 23:47:18:

Name: Seri-Tek1S2
Type: ata
Bus: PCI
Slot: SLOT-4
Vendor ID: 0x1095
Device ID: 0x3112
Subsystem Vendor ID: 0x1095
Subsystem ID: 0x3112
ROM Revision: 5.1.3.1S2
Revision ID: 0x0002

 

[TrapOx]

SeriTek is what I use in my G4. Its worked great for years without a problem.