Couple of Power Mac Questions

[Daark]

Just taken the plunge and decided to go for a Mac Pro over my current desktop, sick of Vista and random crashes etc. And the option of parallels or Fusion really makes the Mac a viable alternative for me now (for gaming i have a XPS M1730 that will suffice)

Couple of questions if i may.

My Pioneer BD drive 'died' on my pc a couple of days and I replaced it with one of the excellent LG BD/HD-DVD combo drives. Now i've seen a few people mention on here that you can remove the front bezel to get it into the Mac to replace the super drive. One thing im unsure of is if the current range of superdrives are PATA or SATA? I've located a SATA/PATA converter I can get but just wanted some clarification on this.

If you're interested I went for the Dual 3.0Xeon, 2Gb RAM (not paying Apple's prices to upgrade, will take this to 8Gb) and a 320Gb HDD (I'll replace this with a couple of Raptors!)

 

[nanofrog]

The superdrive that came with the Mac Pro uses a PATA interface. There are two additional SATA ports on the logic board, listed as ODD ports.

So you actually have the option of SATA or the converter.
You have to dig a bit, but the ODD SATA would be cheaper, as I assume you already have the cable.

 

[Daark]

The superdrive that came with the Mac Pro uses a PATA interface. There are two additional SATA ports on the logic board, listed as ODD ports.

So you actually have the option of SATA or the converter.
You have to dig a bit, but the ODD SATA would be cheaper, as I assume you already have the cable.

Thanks for the reply, just looking at the sheer size and layout of the chassis. Would a standard length SATA cable be sufficient?

 

[nanofrog]

Thanks for the reply, just looking at the sheer size and layout of the chassis. Would a standard length SATA cable be sufficient?

There are multiple cable lengths available. The ports are on the upper left side of the logic board IIRC, so it isn't too bad. 18" should surely do, possibly less. Not sure about the 9" or 12" though, as I've seen those as the included cables many times.

Corporations love cheap. Whether it works or not.