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Apple External Optical Drive and PCI Chassis

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Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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In wake of early criticisms regarding one optical drive bay as well as limited (3 PCI) expansion on the new PowerMac G5's, MacNyt.dk (Danish) publishes two interesting reports based on Apple reseller documents:

The first report claims that Apple is currently in cooperation with a "PCI Chassis Developer" on a product to provide the new PowerMac's additional expansion beyond the three internal PCI slots on the PowerMac G5.

A second report on the same document reports on Apple's plan to introduce an Apple-designed external optical devices which can be shared amongst multiple Macs.

We've received reports of other hardware products coming from Apple. One referenced by ThinkSecret -- only known as Q6. Recent reports have also indicated that Q54 and Q41 are in the works -- and that "lots of hardware" is in the pipeline. Few details are otherwise available.
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2003/06/25/apple-external-optical-drive-and-pci-chassis/
sounds exciting. could this be that mystery pal thingy.

iJon
 
I would assume that an 'External Optical Drive' would have to be firewire, which would be plenty fast enough.

Would hate to see deviation from the standards.
 
maybe external superdrive usable with idvd? with firewire 800 on powermacs and powerbooks ...gotta be used for something
 
cool, but...

iThink that the Pal thingy harddrive that makes transfering everything to the next computer sounds way cool, and using the firewire 800 would be awesome of course. But what I can't understand is why people feel the need for another optical drive. It seems like something that less than 1% of all users would even want (much less would justify the expense). IMHO, if you're in that percentile, then heck yeah you have to put up with and external drive!
 
Someone elighten me. How does one fill up 3 PCI slots? I can think of Protools Cards. But so much high end stuff seems to be going external or Native processing.
 
Well, when you look at the market the power mac is targeted at (audio, video and other media professionals) it does make sense to provide the space for a second optical drive. Most of us have more power than we need in our computer, but everyone wants more power, right? I know as a college student not planning in majoring in graphic design , an iBook is recomended, however, I wanted a powerbook, and thats what i got.
 
Originally posted by nuckinfutz
Someone elighten me. How does one fill up 3 PCI slots? I can think of Protools Cards. But so much high end stuff seems to be going external or Native processing.
Click to expand...

It's not too hard really. At least not for video/film people. Internal storage isn't really an option any more so 1 PCI slot is going to be taken up by a card connected to external drives. 1 PCI slot is going to be taken up by the video capture card. Which leaves only 1 PCI slot open for expansion.


Lethal
 
Ok, a FireWire 800 Optical Drive is cool, presumably faster than all others on the market. But come on! This is Apple!!!

What I am thinking, is more along the lines of an Airport Extreme Superdrive, with support for iDVD 3. So, now a 800 MHz Combo iMac, and a 12" Combo PowerBook, and a 1 Ghz Power mac G4, can all burn DVDs! Wirelessly.

Don't know if it is possible, but how is THAT for innovative?
 
Re: Airport Extreme Optical Drive

I don't know how much of the available bandwidth optical drives use from the Firewire or USB 2.0 channels but I think that the faster drives were hitting the top end of USB 1.1 bandwidth. Consider the following:

Firewire 800 = 800 Megabits per sec
USB 2.0 = 440 Megabits per sec
Firewire = 400 Megabits per sec
USB 1.1 = ?? (I think like 10-20 Megabits per sec)
Airport Extreme = about 18-20 SUSTAINABLE Megabits per sec)

I think these numbers are about right. An expert can correct me if they are not.

If these numbers are true (coupled with the fact that wires probably more reliably transfer to an optical WRITER), I don't think a FAST Airport Extreme Optical Drive would work too well for writing DVD's. Very nice thought though!
 
oooooo exernal drive? perhaps Apple will finally release a subnotebook - like a 12" 'Book only without the optical drive, making it much much thinner! =D
 
I don't want a bloody external optical drive; I don't even want a Superdrive inside my Mac. I just want the fastest possible CD burner I can get. But that's not provided as an option dang it. And the Superdrive has GOT to be driving up the cost of the system a little bit... no??
 
Originally posted by XForge
I don't want a bloody external optical drive; I don't even want a Superdrive inside my Mac. I just want the fastest possible CD burner I can get. But that's not provided as an option dang it. And the Superdrive has GOT to be driving up the cost of the system a little bit... no??
Click to expand...

you can always opt for an optical drive instead and knock a couple of bills off your grand total.

I have a 52x external, but i never burn over 24x. Anything over that has a higher fail rate...
 
Originally posted by Freg3000
What I am thinking, is more along the lines of an Airport Extreme Superdrive, with support for iDVD 3. So, now a 800 MHz Combo iMac, and a 12" Combo PowerBook, and a 1 Ghz Power mac G4, can all burn DVDs! Wirelessly.
Click to expand...

If you were using a wireless connection to push data to a burner, even with 802.11g, the only thing you'd be making would be coasters.

Firewire pushes data at ~800 or 400 Megabits per second (depending on standard), and Serial ATA at ~150 Mega bytes/second. AirPort Extreme transfers data at ~20 Megabits per second, max (there is a lot of overhead in that "54Mbps" figure).

BTW, for all those still hoping for "iPal," my bet is that it is a close cousing of "iWalk" and "Xtrem Mac" -- hoax-ware.

Edit: Fixed Serial ATA speed.
 
Originally posted by XForge
I don't want a bloody external optical drive; I don't even want a Superdrive inside my Mac. I just want the fastest possible CD burner I can get. But that's not provided as an option dang it. And the Superdrive has GOT to be driving up the cost of the system a little bit... no??
Click to expand...

So remove the SuperDrive and save $200.
 
Originally posted by mustang_dvs
If you were using a wireless connection to push data to a burner, even with 802.11g, the only thing you'd be making would be coasters.

Firewire pushes data at ~800 or 400 Megabits per second (depending on standard), and Serial ATA at ~150 Mbit/second. AirPort Extreme transfers data at ~20 Megabits per second, max (there is a lot of overhead in that "54Mbps" figure).

BTW, for all those still hoping for "iPal," my bet is that it is a close cousing of "iWalk" and "Xtrem Mac" -- hoax-ware.
Click to expand...

Well, maybe not a SuperDrive, but how about a normal CD Burner? I know that there are USB burners (even though they might be slow) so an AE burner would be at least twice as fast theoretically. Just a thought.
 
i'm glad apple is still taking up the expandability issue, but my desk is already cluttered and i don't really want external objects for expandability. i'm surprised they're goin this route
 
I'd love to see optical drives as entirely optional. In a lab situation this makes loads of sense.

I have a lab full of eMacs and the optical drives never ever get used.

On the odd occurance that one is required an external firewire drive is all that is required.

I'd also like to see an option for no hard drive either. Netbooting OS X from a server works really well. The end result would be an eMac (or iMac) with no moving parts. Both build costs and warranty costs would be reduced substantially, not to mention maintenance on our end.
 
hhmmm... this should satisfy some people with regards to the expandability issue, but personally i'd like to see an internal solution, rather than more external hardware. but that's just me, and i'm not in the market for a PowerMac anyway.
 
Originally posted by mustang_dvs
If you were using a wireless connection to push data to a burner, even with 802.11g, the only thing you'd be making would be coasters.
Click to expand...

Sorry, why is that? Have checksums left the building?


Firewire pushes data at ~800 or 400 Megabits per second (depending on standard), and Serial ATA at ~150 Mbit/second. AirPort Extreme transfers data at ~20 Megabits per second, max (there is a lot of overhead in that "54Mbps" figure).
Click to expand...

Er, and how fast would the superdrive be pushing data onto the disk? 20 Mb/s would hit 600MB in four minutes. That is faster than it would get written, iirc.

Not that I think it would be a good idea, mind you, but for other reasons.
 
Hmmm, a bit skeptical

I'd have to agree with the clutter aspect. They've kinda based many of their design principles on reducing clutter (ADC, Airport, formerly two optical drives.) So I'm kinda doubting they'd create anything that would take up desk or floor space for users. Now for pro-applications, they might release something that would already fit in the existing setup of certain work environments, IE recording studios.

Other than that, external is a poor solution.


-Hertz
 
for the pro tools people, even 4 slots haven't been enough, and they have been using expansion chassis for a long time now. Now that we have faster PCI-X I think the performance of PCI expansion chassis can be more feasable. PCI bandwidth has been too slow for TDM cards for a long time now, requiring each protools PCI card to be connected through its own bus. I wonder if a next generation protools card could work entirely on the PCI X slots?
 
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