Best IDE Optical Drive for 2006 Mac Pro

[gugucom]

Yeah, IIRC, you did get a good deal with those.

BTW, any issues related to errata shown up at all?

Not that I know of. I have the heat problem with EyeTV / iTunes but that is a bug that applies to the standard CPUs as well. With the stepping I have I did not expect any trouble in the first place. Its the current production stepping.

 

[nanofrog]

Not that I know of. I have the heat problem with EyeTV / iTunes but that is a bug that applies to the standard CPUs as well. With the stepping I have I did not expect any trouble in the first place. Its the current production stepping.

I didn't think you had, but asked anyway. D0 is D0.

The heat issues are a problem, but it seems there's enough evidence to support it as a software problem, not the hardware (it's still Intel's reference design with a few mods, namely the HDD's using the PCIe traces in slots 3 & 4).

Do you know if EyeTV uses the Quicktime code in OS X?

 

[gugucom]

Do you know if EyeTV uses the Quicktime code in OS X?

Anything media in a Mac does.

 

[TheStrudel]

Which is what makes Quicktime X far more important (as a framework, not the player!) than most people realize. Going to be a few growing pains as everything moves from the legacy Quicktime framework to QTX.

 

[nanofrog]

Anything media in a Mac does.

Which is what makes Quicktime X far more important (as a framework, not the player!) than most people realize. Going to be a few growing pains as everything moves from the legacy Quicktime framework to QTX.

This was my impression, but I wasn't sure, and wanted feedback to see if I was nutz or not.

Thanks for the clarification guys. So maybe I'm not as crazy as I thought.

 

[Nadav35]

Well, now you do.

You are right, I did not know the the 2008 MP would boot ODD from SATA. On top I stumbled across the W5590 engineering samples at a nice price.

Do you now believe me that when one installs a SATA optical drive and connects the power cable to the ODD-SATA port on a 2008 motherboard that is it 100 percent bootable on the mac side? Windows would require the AHCI drivers which I have already done and explained several threads back.

I am glad I did since I can now boot a windows dvd into bootcamp!

I still would like for you to take a pic of your dual sata optical cable and what the other end of it looks like, so that I can confirm that the 2009 mac pro optical/power cable will INDEED fit in a 2008 mac pro via the ODD_SATA port.

 

[Nadav35]

Hi Again!

What other sources told you that with a sata optical drive connected to the ODD-SATA port on a 2008 mac pro that it is indeed bootable(mac side only), windows requires AHCI drivers.

OWC told me today though.

Yep, other sources confirmed today that the 2008 model will boot ODD from SATA. A pleasant surprise. It would have swayed me to a 2008 model and saved me 2000€ had I known it earlier. But then I had never done this crazy W5590 project.

The 2008 uses two plain old SATA cables from the logic board ODD SATA ports. You thread them through the bulk head hole and your biggest problem is the space under the PCIe fan unit. I did make a cut out in the plastic housing of the fan unit with a metal saw for convenience there. Power will be a Molex -> SATA adapter.

If you want to fit two ODD SATA drives pick at least one Blu-Ray for flexibility. The LG units are fairly cheap, particularly in ROM spec. Burners of course are a bit more. The ROMs will also burn DVD-DL.

 

[pastrychef]

What other sources told you that with a sata optical drive connected to the ODD-SATA port on a 2008 mac pro that it is indeed bootable(mac side only), windows requires AHCI drivers.

OWC told me today though.

I believe I was the one who confirmed that SATA optical drives are bootable for Mac OS X install discs on 2008 Mac Pros to gugucom.

I don't know about about Windows and/or AHCI drivers. I have never tried that.

 

[gugucom]

Do you now believe me that when one installs a SATA optical drive and connects the power cable to the ODD-SATA port on a 2008 motherboard that is it 100 percent bootable on the mac side?

Yep 2008 MP has SATA and IDE booting of optical disk in the EFI64. That was a surprise to me. Nevertheless I would not connect a power cable to an ODD SATA port on the logic board. If you are talking about the six pin PCIe power sockets near the ODD SATA ports they are also not good for drives. They have 12V only.

I am glad I did since I can now boot a windows dvd into bootcamp!

I would be surprised if IDE booting would be a problem with Windows install DVDs.

I still would like for you to take a pic of your dual sata optical cable and what the other end of it looks like, so that I can confirm that the 2009 mac pro optical/power cable will INDEED fit in a 2008 mac pro via the ODD_SATA port.

No way mate! I have explained to you in the other thread why this will not work. It is an issue with the different design of the power supply connectors between the 2008 and 2009 MP. The optical disk power socket in the 2009 is a propriatory 4-pin with 5V and 12V. It is designed to power HDDs ODDs and SSDs. The PCIe socket on the 2008 is a 6-pin with 12V only. It is designed to supply high amp power to the PCIe graphics cards. That is why there are so many pins.

There is another obstacle to the plan to use that special harness. The SATA data connectors are both 90°. They do not fit in the space of the 2008 logic board. In the 2009 version they are in a completely different location and they are orientated 90° turned. So they are not behind each other - as in the 2008 - but side by side in the 2009.

 

[nanofrog]

If you are talking about the six pin PCIe power sockets near the ODD SATA ports they are also not good for drives. They have 16V only.

16V? Where'd you get that?

It's not AC, so there's no RMS value.

 

[gugucom]

16V? Where'd you get that?

That was a typo. Sorry for that. Is corrected by EDIT.

 

[nanofrog]

That was a typo. Sorry for that. Is corrected by EDIT.

NP.

 

[mysilmaril]

Need Help to Overcome Optical Drive Problem

Please disregard the following question. The solution is simple. Rather than installing a Pioneer DVR-218L, I need to install a Pioneer DVR-118L. Sorry for the confusion.


Hello, I happened upon this thread tonight, and thought I'd post a follow-up question describing my own problem which is similar. I really need some help.

My Mac Pro is model MacPro2,1 (3GHz 2x Quad-Core Xeon) x5365 code-named "Clovertown" which debuted in early April of 2007.

Hardware Overview:

Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro2,1
Processor Name: Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 3 GHz
Number Of Processors: 2
Total Number Of Cores: 8
L2 Cache (per processor): 8 MB
Memory: 5 GB
Bus Speed: 1.33 GHz

I purchased my Mac Pro with (2) Optiarc AD-7170A "super drives" (which, as it turns out, aren't so super). I have experienced dual layer burn problems on both drives since 2007. All other media burns fine. Dual layers frequently fail unless I burn at 2x. I've made a lot of DL coasters.

OPTIARC DVD RW AD-7170A:

Model: OPTIARC DVD RW AD-7170A
Revision: 1.N8
Serial Number:
Detachable Drive: No
Protocol: ATAPI
Unit Number: 0
Socket Type: Internal
Low Power Polling: No
Power Off: No

I'd like to replace one of my optical drives with a Pioneer DVR-218L, but my Clovertown Mac utilizes an ATAPI interface. The DVR-218L is SATA. While the DVR-116L is a good drive with lots of happy Mac customers (as described in this thread) I'm hesitant to purchase discontinued technology (not to mention these drives are now hard to find).

There are some posts in this thread that suggest one can make use of an IDE/ATAPI to SATA adapter. Is an adapter truly reliable? I have researched and found this adapter:

http://www.cooldrives.com/sahadradtoid.html

Its intended to be used to connect a HD to a configuration like I have. Can I use this adapter with the Pioneer DVR-218L optical drive?

As for the boot issue ... I can still boot up from my other Optiarc drive (I plan to keep one installed).

If anyone can suggest a better adapter, or a better solution, please let me know.

Thanks!

 

[nanofrog]

Please disregard the following question. The solution is simple. Rather than installing a Pioneer DVR-218L, I need to install a Pioneer DVR-118L. Sorry for the confusion.


Hello, I happened upon this thread tonight, and thought I'd post a follow-up question describing my own problem which is similar. I really need some help.

My Mac Pro is model MacPro2,1 (3GHz 2x Quad-Core Xeon) x5365 code-named "Clovertown" which debuted in early April of 2007.

Hardware Overview:

Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro2,1
Processor Name: Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 3 GHz
Number Of Processors: 2
Total Number Of Cores: 8
L2 Cache (per processor): 8 MB
Memory: 5 GB
Bus Speed: 1.33 GHz

I purchased my Mac Pro with (2) Optiarc AD-7170A "super drives" (which, as it turns out, aren't so super). I have experienced dual layer burn problems on both drives since 2007. All other media burns fine. Dual layers frequently fail unless I burn at 2x. I've made a lot of DL coasters.

OPTIARC DVD RW AD-7170A:

Model: OPTIARC DVD RW AD-7170A
Revision: 1.N8
Serial Number:
Detachable Drive: No
Protocol: ATAPI
Unit Number: 0
Socket Type: Internal
Low Power Polling: No
Power Off: No

I'd like to replace one of my optical drives with a Pioneer DVR-218L, but my Clovertown Mac utilizes an ATAPI interface. The DVR-218L is SATA. While the DVR-116L is a good drive with lots of happy Mac customers (as described in this thread) I'm hesitant to purchase discontinued technology (not to mention these drives are now hard to find).

There are some posts in this thread that suggest one can make use of an IDE/ATAPI to SATA adapter. Is an adapter truly reliable? I have researched and found this adapter:

http://www.cooldrives.com/sahadradtoid.html

Its intended to be used to connect a HD to a configuration like I have. Can I use this adapter with the Pioneer DVR-218L optical drive?

As for the boot issue ... I can still boot up from my other Optiarc drive (I plan to keep one installed).

If anyone can suggest a better adapter, or a better solution, please let me know.

Thanks!

If you're going to keep one of the IDE based optical drives, you can:
1. Install the existing SATA drive to an ODD_SATA port. It will boot OS X, but not Windows media. It saves on an adapter, and you already have another drive that can boot any DVD media.

2. Use a SATA to IDE adapter. They do work. This will allow either optical drive to boot either OS X or Windows media.

 

[webdevii]

I got this one:

Image

as a replacement and I love it to death! Absolutely awesome! Fast, Quiet, and very robust in the formats department.

PIONEER DVD-RW  DVR-116L:

  Firmware Revision:	1.06
  Interconnect:	ATAPI
  Burn Support:	Yes (Generic Drive Support)
  Profile Path:	None
  Cache:	2000 KB
  Reads DVD:	Yes
  CD-Write:	-R, -RW
  DVD-Write:	-R, -R DL, -RAM, -RW, +R, +R DL, +RW
  Write Strategies:	CD-TAO, CD-SAO, CD-Raw, DVD-DAO

I think it's region-less as I can put DVDs from many different regions in it and I never see a pop-up or anything and it always just plays. I can drag the contents of ANY DVD to the desktop and play it from VLC or use handbrake to turn it into an AVI so I guess there's no rip-lock" or whatever that is, in it.


Blue Ray to me is too silly to even consider at this point. It's slow, there's almost no commercial media available in that format, it's expensive, there's little or no OS X support for it, and the media price is completely ridiculous. All things considered you would be MUCH better off buying a hot-swap interface and just using 1TB or 1.5TB hard-drives as "media". Maybe in a few years when BlueRay players are under $100 and media is under $1.00 each but right now there's absolutely no sane rationale for purchasing one. Well, unless you have a client that demands work be submitted on BRDs or something - but I doubt there is such an employer or customer.

I love your analogy on the BD comments you made, I totally agree, although the prices have dropped considerably in the past year or 2 Why bother a good 1080p movie is fine by me, Also want to thank the OP for this info on drives.

Dev