IDE controller for power mac 8600

[r34per]

I picked up a power macintosh 8600/250 today for a great price, and when i tested it it seems that the scsi drive in it is dead. No big deal though since usually the first thing i do with these old pc's is throw in some sort of flash storage, and i know that there's the scsi2sd for these but they're a bit more than i want to spend. Would I be able to throw in a pci ide controller into the pm and boot mac os off of a drive connected to that? Will only certain ones work or should they all in theory work? Currently I'm looking at a promise ultra66 controller and a maxtor ultra100

 

[barbu]

I should think any decent PCI PATA adapter should work. Then you can use IDE drives, or adapt to something else like CompactFlash or up to SATA for SSDs.

 

[r34per]

I should think any decent PCI PATA adapter should work. Then you can use IDE drives, or adapt to something else like CompactFlash or up to SATA for SSDs.

ok cool, think ill get the promise one then. that's the plan though! I've got tons of ide to sata adapters and sata doms lying around so i'll use one for it. I should be able to hook a cd drive up to the ide card as well right?

 

[barbu]

i haven't tried that myself but i don't see why not.

 

[weckart]

I have a flashed SATA pci adapter in my 9600 and have booted MacOS 7.6 from that. I cannot see any problems with an ATA adapter if. If you want to boot from IDE you will need either an Acard 6xxx Mac card or one of the Sonnet Tempo ATA cards. Not sure whether a PC ATA adapter will work in a Mac for storage without a driver though as I have not tried that.

Alternatively, you could pick up a SCSI 80pin to 50 pin adapter for a few dollars and stick with SCSI. Plenty of old server drives around for little coin and many are as quiet as IDE drives.

 

[r34per]

I have a flashed SATA pci adapter in my 9600 and have booted MacOS 7.6 from that. I cannot see any problems with an ATA adapter if. If you want to boot from IDE you will need either an Acard 6xxx Mac card or one of the Sonnet Tempo ATA cards. Not sure whether a PC ATA adapter will work in a Mac for storage without a driver though as I have not tried that.

Alternatively, you could pick up a SCSI 80pin to 50 pin adapter for a few dollars and stick with SCSI. Plenty of old server drives around for little coin and many are as quiet as IDE drives.

Ah dang, yea i do need it to boot from it. can you tell me a bit more about flashing a sata card? Getting an adapter and an old scsi drive seems like a nice backup plan though

 

[weckart]

Ah dang, yea i do need it to boot from it. can you tell me a bit more about flashing a sata card? Getting an adapter and an old scsi drive seems like a nice backup plan though

Not straighforward if you want to boot OS9 or earlier as you will need to get the soldering iron out but there are a few guides on the web.

Guide to flashing PC SIL3112 SATA cards for Mac

To begin with, hello - I'm new to this board, although I've been a member of the 68kMLA forums for a while. I'm also a long time user of PowerPC Macs. I recently flashed a PC SATA card to use in my PMG4, which I am currently in the process of fully upgrading. I put this guide together for...

forums.macrumors.com

PCI SATA Cards - What is the state of compatibility?

So I have a rather nice MDD G4. Its running 10.4 server, and does a pretty great job of housing my files. Currently it has 4x 80gb HDD's in raid, and a 40gb boot disk, I want to "kick it up a notch" and seriously upgrade the storage capacity, from about 320gb to somewhere around 4tb. I don't...

forums.macrumors.com

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,306.0.html

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macos9lives.com

Those are three threads to skim read and one forum with a load of topics on PPC storage. Basically, if you want to boot OS9 from SATA you will need to get a specific 2 port SATA card with a Sil3112 controller chip. You will need to replace the BIOS chip with one of three specific BIOS chips - no others will do. After that you will need to flash the BIOS. Some cards in the US come with socketed BIOS chips making the required change fairly trivial otherwise you will need to practise your de/soldering skills. There is an additional step if you have a QS or a DA PowerMac but that doesn't apply to your case.

For OSX only, it is easier but not the best fit for a 8600, which is a bit slow.


[edit] I have just noticed that you will now need to register an account to access the macos9lives forums, so my direct link might not work but if it doesn't, just head off to the Storages sub-forum once you are there.