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Red board IDE-mSATA adapter!

eyoungren

eyoungren

macrumors Nehalem
Original poster
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Same adapter with a DeLock branding available on Amazon UK at an equally eye-watering price.

If Germany is more handy, https://www.bechtle.com/de-en/shop/delock-msata-ide-44-pin-adapter-tray--955244--p. Might even work out cheaper for the UK depending on shipping.

Arpa in the NL seems to be drop shipping from the same supply as Bechtle.

Page not found

www.arp.nl www.arp.nl

In any case, googling for a DeLock 62495 might bring up a cheaper supplier closer to home wherever you are. There seems to be a small supply knocking around Europe at the moment.
 
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Amethyst1 said:
Delock is super-duper quality stuff, you know!
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I liked it so much better when it was called Lycom. It sold for shoddy quality prices. 🙂


On a more serious note, although its sole distributor and seller in the UK EOLed this a while back, it still seems to be in the manufacturer Lycom's catalogue and can still be ordered via Taiwantrade, so you may yet still find it under one of these monikers: Lycom, Addonics, Aleratec, DeLock, Kuroutoshikou and LINDY, although only Ableconn and DeLock seem to have any stock at the moment. There is a Kuroutoshikou adapter on eBay.com at the moment if you don't mind waiting for shipping from Japan.

 
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Is there something better about this adapter, compared to a typical green pcb? I have a cheap one in my Pismo that seems to work fine.
 
mectojic said:
Is there something better about this adapter, compared to a typical green pcb? I have a cheap one in my Pismo that seems to work fine.
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The ones with the green boards tend to be 50/50. Meaning, you have a 50/50 chance of getting one that works and if it's bad enough it may work 50 percent of the time.

The red board adapters are better quality and worth the more expensive price. That goes for the IDE<>mSATA adapter cases as above as well as those IDE<>SATA adapters that plug directly into SATA drives.

The problem is that there's been more than one manufacturer of these and there for a while there was none. My own adapter case was made by Addonics, which no longer sells it. So, to see another one popup it's an opportunity to grab a better quality adapter.

This isn't to say the lesser priced adapters with the green board are bad, just that the ones with the red board tend to be higher quality and more reliable.
 
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weckart said:
I liked it so much better when it was called Lycom. It sold for shoddy quality prices. 🙂


On a more serious note, although its sole distributor and seller in the UK EOLed this a while back, it still seems to be in the manufacturer Lycom's catalogue and can still be ordered via Taiwantrade, so you may yet still find it under one of these monikers: Lycom, Addonics, Aleratec, DeLock, Kuroutoshikou and LINDY, although only Ableconn and DeLock seem to have any stock at the moment. There is a Kuroutoshikou adapter on eBay.com at the moment if you don't mind waiting for shipping from Japan.

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I might remove Addonics from the list. Last time I looked they EOLed them. Of course, they could offer them again but I doubt it.
 
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eyoungren said:
The ones with the green boards tend to be 50/50. Meaning, you have a 50/50 chance of getting one that works and if it's bad enough it may work 50 percent of the time.

The red board adapters are better quality and worth the more expensive price. That goes for the IDE<>mSATA adapter cases as above as well as those IDE<>SATA adapters that plug directly into SATA drives.

The problem is that there's been more than one manufacturer of these and there for a while there was none. My own adapter case was made by Addonics, which no longer sells it. So, to see another one popup it's an opportunity to grab a better quality adapter.

This isn't to say the lesser priced adapters with the green board are bad, just that the ones with the red board tend to be higher quality and more reliable.
Click to expand...

100%. I've had a green adapter working in my G4 Mini for several years without any problems but for everything else I've used the red boards because as we've all experienced at some stage, cost cutting can often end up being a false economy in the long run - and besides, I managed to find a UK supplier who had stacks of them at a cheaper price than the green PCB adapters. 😀
 
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eyoungren said:
The problem is that there's been more than one manufacturer of these and there for a while there was none.
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There is only one manufacturer and that is Lycom in Taiwan, which I linked to above. Addonics et al just have their brand slapped onto the boards when they order from Lycom.

The two main reasons for preferring the Lycom adapter over the green boards is that the Lycom uses a Marvel serial bridge chip, which is a tad more reliable than the JMicron chip in the green boards. Earlier JMicron chips weren't compatible with a number of Macs for some reason although the current JM20330 seems to work absolutely fine. The second is that the buck converter chip in the Lycom seems to do a better job of stepping down the voltage from 5v to 3.3v without releasing too much heat in the area.

I've used both types in my laptops and have not had a problem with either.
 
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weckart said:
There is only one manufacturer and that is Lycom in Taiwan, which I linked to above. Addonics et al just have their brand slapped onto the boards when they order from Lycom.

The two main reasons for preferring the Lycom adapter over the green boards is that the Lycom uses a Marvel serial bridge chip, which is a tad more reliable than the JMicron chip in the green boards. Earlier JMicron chips weren't compatible with a number of Macs for some reason although the current JM20330 seems to work absolutely fine. The second is that the buck converter chip in the Lycom seems to do a better job of stepping down the voltage from 5v to 3.3v without releasing too much heat in the area.

I've used both types in my laptops and have not had a problem with either.
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Thank you for the clarification. I didn't realize it was actually a licensing/branding thing to explain the different sellers.
 
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I tested two of the buck converter type adapters and they actually used more power than the plain regulator versions. This probably doesn't matter in a desktop, but I wanted lower power/heat in my powerbook so I connected the 3.3v source to the adapter.

Some of the "green" boards I've seen don't have any regulator and expect 3.3v, so beware of connecting this version to the typical 5v in PowerMacs. Also, some of the "green" boards do not have the master/slave jumper (without soldering).

I have not tried any of the marvel chip type adapters. Do these have any advantage in terms of speed?
 
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ervus said:
I have not tried any of the marvel chip type adapters. Do these have any advantage in terms of speed?
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I think the bottleneck would be the ATA bus in any case. Speed will also depend on the mSATA card you throw in. There are a lot of variables.

Mostly it was a question of reliability, particularly when the alternative was the then buggy J20320 chip or equally shonky and expensive PATA SSD drives, many of which were just CF drives in PATA housing.
 
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weckart said:
I think the bottleneck would be the ATA bus in any case. Speed will also depend on the mSATA card you throw in. There are a lot of variables.

Mostly it was a question of reliability, particularly when the alternative was the then buggy J20320 chip or equally shonky and expensive PATA SSD drives, many of which were just CF drives in PATA housing.
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@weckart I've found your post in several google searches when I was looking for information about the JMicron adapters.

I also found this other post about JMicron chips:


Unfortunately, I think there's a typo in the model number you wrote, and I think it could confuse people. Could you please edit your posts to correct it?

To clarify, the older JMicron model is JM20330, you can check it here (it was launched in 2003):


The new JMicron model is JMH330, it can be seen in the current webpage:

SATA - PATA-SATA Bridge Controller-Products-JMicron-Leading the Storage Revolution!

www.jmicron.com www.jmicron.com

Also, I believe that JM20320 does not exist.

Don't want to sound rude or pedantic, but could you edit your posts to help future google searches??

Kind regards.
 
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