G4 Doesnt Recognize SATA Hard Drive

[Retrosonic]

Guys, I really hope someone can help me here, because I'm running out of things to try:

I installed a Sonnet Tempo SATA card in my G4. Two wierd things I noticed:

1) the Sonnet card only takes up like HALF the PCI slot. It is seated firmly, but a whole like 3 inches of the PCI slot remains empty. My research says this is normal for the Sonnet Tempo card, however.

2) The "About this MAC Hardware" reports this card as a "Siritek" card and not a Sonnet. Why would this be?

Heres the problem: I connected a 500 gig SATA HD to the SATA card.
When I boot up the MAC, it doesnt show the drive. I was able to get it to show once, and thats when I formated the drive, repaired it, and restored the small IDE drive to the new 500 gig drive. Of course, the next time I boot, the MAC doesnt see the drive in Disk Utility.

My thought is that the SATA card is just not right and is causing the issue with the 500 gig drive.

What I have NOT done is to change the PCI slot, because in the unlikely event that the Sonnet Card is damaging the current slot (because of how much smaller it is) , I dont want to damage another slot.

Please let me know what you think about this. Should I go buy a different Sonnet Card? Or, perhaps, is there a way to flash the firmware on the card I have?

All comments welcomed, and ANY help is appreciated here, I'm at a standstill...HELP!!

 

[Consultant]

Contact product's support.

You also need to list the exact product model number. They have lots of different versions.

 

[madog]

As far as I remember, the smaller space it takes up is normal. Once thing I would suggest is the placement of the card. For my old G4, I had to install an IDE PCI card for large drive support, and for whatever reason it did not work in any other slot except for the one at the top (below the video card). For convienience, if I placed it in any other slot it wouldn't be recognized at all or just wouldn't function properly. I still don't understand why, but that's how it worked, and I eventually added more cards like USB 2.0, in which I found out all the slots did work, just only in that specific order.

I had the same problem with my........ I think SiiG Ultra PCI card I used. The system recognized all the drives I had plugged into as SCSI, and it said it was a SCSI card in the System Profiler, but it worked as it should have. Maybe for your card, the developer of the specific chip the card is using is what the Sys Profiler is reading and causing it to display a different name. I don't think Sonnet actually makes the chips for the card, but rather just makes the firmware/drivers to have it work on a Mac.

Is the card you are using specifically for Mac (I know Sonnet does, but don't remember if they are Mac only)?

Most drives are not shipped in a Mac OS format, and have to be formatted correctly through Disk Utility. Did you change the partition table to Apple Partition and format it to Mac OS Extended? If you select the drive brand in DU (where it says 476.76 GB SEAGATE 2496jh, not Machintosh HD, or whatever your names are), DU will display this info on the bottom of its window in the drive details. It will say Apple Partition Map, GUID, or Master Boot Record. Since you have a PPC, it should be Apple Partition.

 

[SmurfBoxMasta]

half the slot is normal, thats all my siig card takes up .....

"Siritek (Seritek)" is a line of cards made & sold by Firmtek. Perhaps they made the chips for your card or liscensed the whole card to sonnet for them to rebrand as their own & sell that way

The 1st 2 sonnet SATA cards I had in my B&W's showed up as scsi in sys prof....it's normal

 

[barkmonster]

I hope you resolve this issue. I was seriously thinking about getting a sonnet card as an upgrade later in the year so I can add a raptor drive to boot from (or an SSD, depending on the way they pan out price/reliability wise)

 

[SmurfBoxMasta]

I HIGHLY recommend the SIIG cards....between the Sonnet & Firmtek cards I have had, it has been the best one yet....just plug & play from day 1, no fuss, no muss

I hope you resolve this issue. I was seriously thinking about getting a sonnet card as an upgrade later in the year so I can add a raptor drive to boot from (or an SSD, depending on the way they pan out price/reliability wise)