Thread

PCI IDE Card for Mac OS 7?

68kMLA PowerPC 13 posts Jan 30, 2011 to Feb 6, 2011

#1 Sun, 30 Jan 2011 - 16:07 68kMLA

I am curious if there are any compatible IDE cards for Mac OS 7. I dont have the deep pockets to fund larger SCSI drives and I want to load up my 9500 with tons of storage.

Also on a side note, what should I fill all those slots with? I already have a 400mhz G3 CPU, ATi Rage TV, and Gigabit ethernet card installed. I would like an Orange Micro PC card but the only one on ebay is 90 dollars and does not include the dongle cable!

#2 Sun, 30 Jan 2011 - 17:04 68kMLA

I'm not sure you'll find one to work w/7.X, but if anyone ever made one, it was probably Sonnet:

Sonnet Legacy Card Drivers, Manuals etc.

#3 Sun, 30 Jan 2011 - 17:16 68kMLA

Apparently the Sonnet Tempo 66 works with 7.5.3 with no drivers!

#4 Sun, 30 Jan 2011 - 21:05 68kMLA

The "driver" doing the driving appears to be related to Apple's own bundled disk formatting tools, as an IDE drive used with the Sonnet cards has to be formatted with the Apple utility. That IDE drive subsequently shows up in the System Profiler as a SCSI drive. The drive then can't be used except with the card (unless reformatted again). Actually, I think the card even shows up in the System Profiler as a SCSI card. Go figure.

BUT, it works reliably and well. I have been running a couple of them for years.

#5 Mon, 31 Jan 2011 - 09:12 68kMLA

http://main.system7today.com/

#6 Mon, 31 Jan 2011 - 22:47 68kMLA

I'm not sure you'll find one to work w/7.X, but if anyone ever made one, it was probably Sonnet:

Phhhhsssst. I stick my tongue out in the general direction of Sonnet's IDE cards.

And suggest the Acard 6280M or 6880M. I'm using the 6280M in my main machine and I often boot it into 7.6.1 where it works just fine. Also 9.1 and points in between.

The 6880M is just a 6280M with a couple extra whistles to support RAID. The beautiful thing about the 6880M is that if you build a RAID with it, you'll have access to your RAID both in OSX and in OS9-minus.

Whereas with OSX's built in RAID functions, you can only access the RAID in OSX.

The 6280M and 6880M both have large drive support. And I've used a DVDRW connected to one without issues. However, I'm not sure if I've ever used a DVDRW on the 6280M with 7.6.1. Maybe just 9.1. But my DVD-ROM drive works fine under 7.6.1.

Toast 5 is the last version with Classic support. After that it's all OSX only.

#7 Tue, 1 Feb 2011 - 15:47 68kMLA

I have one of those acards someplace!!! I think you may have saved me a nice chunk of money!

#8 Tue, 1 Feb 2011 - 18:06 68kMLA

I've got an Acard IDE Card in my G4/DA, but I would never have thought to test it under 0S 7.x!

Maybe I'll give it a whirl! :beige:

Now I want a RAID Card! }

#9 Sun, 6 Feb 2011 - 05:19 68kMLA

Sorry for maybe being the grinch now. But why do you need System 7 with IDE. System 7 means you will be limited to HFS and that means a maximum of 65535 files. A 9500 works very well with 9, or if you like a rock solid stable 8.6. So why would you need a 7 ?

#10 Sun, 6 Feb 2011 - 05:30 68kMLA

IDE lets us easily use CompactFlash cards too remember.

#11 Sun, 6 Feb 2011 - 05:32 68kMLA

OK, that's true.

#12 Sun, 6 Feb 2011 - 07:19 68kMLA

Also, you can have multiple partitions you know. If you wanted 7 and 8 or 7 and 9 or whatever.. or 7 and linux. Stuff like that.

When these cars came out you could actually get IDE drives that still had a capacity in the double-digit GBs, too.

7.6.1 is insanely[/i] fast on a speedy PPC604 as well!

Good for 603 too.

Not everybody's PPC has enough or can take enough RAM to run 9 decently, and 8 might be pushing it in some people's configs.

#13 Sun, 6 Feb 2011 - 23:09 68kMLA

7.6.1 is insanely[/i] fast on a speedy PPC604 as well! Good for 603 too.

Not everybody's PPC has enough or can take enough RAM to run 9 decently, and 8 might be pushing it in some people's configs.

7.6.1 is even faster on a PowerPC G3 at 450mhz. It feels like the 9500 is brand new