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ATA/66 in beige G3?
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Senior User
Join Date: May 2000
Location: Lafayette, IN, USA
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I just bought a 30GB ATA/66 hard drive for my rev. A beige G3. Unfortunately, the rev. A can only handle two IDE devices at a time (i.e. the hard drive and the CD-ROM), so I've got to upgrade something if I want to continue using my stock 6-giger. So I've got two options:
1) stick an ATA/66 card ($49) in one of my two remaining PCI slots
2) upgrade my ROM to a rev. B ($35).
Does the beige G3's System Bus (66 MHz) mean that performance will be the same without the ATA card? If so, will upgrading the ROM let me have two internal hard drives?
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“The trouble with quotes on the Internet is that you can never tell if they’re attributed to the right person.”
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Jun 2000
Location: Pasadena
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What does the ROM have anything to do with having more ATA devices? The IDE controller is controlled by an entirely seperate controller...
To my understanding, IDE generally comes with Primary and Secondary, each supporting a master and a slave drive, thus you can get 4 drives on one IDE controller...Haven't played with the G3s, but remember something 'bout the ones with Rage Pro instead of RageII is capable of supporting a 2nd IDE drive...if you have a RageII beige G3, i think you are stuck with getting an ATA/66 card.
Also, specifying what RPM and what manufacture and preferably the specific model of the HD can be helpful at times. Not all harddrives are created equal, some are much faster than others.
Oh, and system bus has nothing to do with ATA speed, the former is measured in Mhz, the latter in MB/sec. Since you are sure that you have a revA with RageII, I think the only way to get another ATA drive in there is the ATA/66 card.
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G4/450, T-bird 1.05GHz, iBook 500, iBook 233...4 different machines, 4 different OSes...(9, 2k, X.1, YDL2.2 respectively) PiA to maintain...
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Senior User
Join Date: May 2000
Location: Lafayette, IN, USA
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The problem is that the rev. A ROM doesn't support master/slave configurations. (I suppose I just answered my own question.) 
As for my new HD, good point. I probably should have said that in the first place. I got a 7200rpm Quantum ATA/66 drive. So back to the second question. Will an ATA card give me more speed, or will my mobo do me just fine?
Thanx again!
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“The trouble with quotes on the Internet is that you can never tell if they’re attributed to the right person.”
—Abraham Lincoln
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Mac Enthusiast
Join Date: Apr 2000
Location: Wellington, New Zealand
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Where can you get ATA/66 cards for $49 anyways??
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Pete C. (PB12" 1.5Ghz 160GB hdd, 1.25GB RAM, OS X 10.4.11)
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Senior User
Join Date: May 2000
Location: Lafayette, IN, USA
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Staples has them. (You'd be amazed what you can get for a Mac, there!)
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“The trouble with quotes on the Internet is that you can never tell if they’re attributed to the right person.”
—Abraham Lincoln
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medic
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Just to clarify for some: the ROM in the Rev. A Beige G3 does not allow for master/slave configuration on the IDE Bus. Swapping it out with a Rev. B or Rev. C ROM will give you that ability, but it will not increase the speed of your IDE devices.
So, for your second question, yes, the ATA/66 card will increase speeds for your IDE devices (just as a faster SCSI card will for your SCSI devices). If you have the PCI slots to spare, go with the ATA/66 card over the ROM.
---
Will Webb
MacMedics Philadelphia http://www.macmedics.com
[This message has been edited by medic (edited 08-31-2000).]
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The Dark Half
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My blue/white G3 does not support ATA 66. i had to get HDToolkit to knock the drive down to 33.. not sure if this applies to beige G3's, it's just a fair warning.
kinda off the subject, but do u need any specific drivers for the ATA pci card or does it just work?
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medic
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Just to clarify for some: the ROM in the Rev. A Beige G3 does not allow for master/slave configuration on the IDE Bus. Swapping it out with a Rev. B or Rev. C ROM will give you that ability, but it will not increase the speed of your IDE devices.
So, for your second question, yes, the ATA/66 card will increase speeds for your IDE devices (just as a faster SCSI card will for your SCSI devices). If you have the PCI slots to spare, go with the ATA/66 card over the ROM.
---
Will Webb
MacMedics Philadelphia www.macmedics.com
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Jun 2000
Location: Pasadena
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If I understand correctly, IDE is controlled by the CPU, so an ATA card won't get rid of that overhead...I'm not positive on that though, since I didn't do the ATA HD interface for that EE project of mine...
Since you got the Fireball LM Plus HD, the ATA/33 that's in your G3 should suffice. taking away 20% inefficiency of ATA, that leaves you with 27MB/sec transfer rate, 'bout what the Fireball can came up with. If you had a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus or an IBM Deskstar 75GXP on the other hand, its worth it to invest in an ATA/66 controller, especially if its only US$50...
Also, a puzzling question...the beige G3 doesn't use the northbridge/southbridge system to support IDE? but its in the ROM instead? or does northbridge/southbridge goes through the ROM which is HIGHLY unlikely since that thing is 90+ns, which is why it NWROM wasn't a bad idea at all. (6-8ns for PC100 RAM)
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G4/450, T-bird 1.05GHz, iBook 500, iBook 233...4 different machines, 4 different OSes...(9, 2k, X.1, YDL2.2 respectively) PiA to maintain...
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Senior User
Join Date: May 2000
Location: Lafayette, IN, USA
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Evangellydonut
(Great name, btw.) 
Anyway, what's this about the Fireball Plus LM only being able to come up with ?27MB/sec? It's a ATA/66 drive (or at least, it was advertised as such), so doesn't that mean its theoretical max is 66MB/sec? Even taking the 20% inefficiency into consideration, it's a big jump from 27MB/sec to 53!
Thanx again!
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“The trouble with quotes on the Internet is that you can never tell if they’re attributed to the right person.”
—Abraham Lincoln
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Grizzled Veteran
Join Date: Sep 1999
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B&W G3 handles ATA/100 or ATA/66 drives fine using Drive Setup 1.9.2. No need to use FWB (3.02 doesn't support OS 9 and 4.0 sounds buggy). Apple ships some current G4 configurations with the IBM Deskstar 75GXP and works just fine on b&w rev 2 ~28MB/sec (stock Maxtor got 10MB/sec). Early 75GXP models did have some problems with some Macs (Beige, rev 1 b&w).
Alot of information over on http://www.xlr8yourmac.com about need to upgrade firmware, user reports, etc. regarding Acard, Tempo, etc.
Why Apple built the rev 1 b&w w/o slave support, -- "never buy rev 1 anything" seems to hold true.
Gregory
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Jun 2000
Location: Pasadena
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ATA/66 drives doesn't mean it'll transfer files at such speed, only means that it supports such interface. Currently, the fastest IDE HD avilable is the IBM Deskstar75GXP, and that drive is only capable of sustaining approximately 35MB/sec read/write (one is slightly faster than the other, don't recall exact number).
On the Quantum or WD ATA/66 7200 RPM drives, they run at about 22-28 MB/sec read/write, so ATA/33 is good enough to handle the HDs. (I have the WD stock 20 gig, and Quantum Fireball LM Plus 30 gig and done a little bit of testing on it)
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G4/450, T-bird 1.05GHz, iBook 500, iBook 233...4 different machines, 4 different OSes...(9, 2k, X.1, YDL2.2 respectively) PiA to maintain...
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Senior User
Join Date: May 2000
Location: Lafayette, IN, USA
Status:
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Okay. I think I've got this straight. After all this, the bottom line seems to be that the ROM upgrade would be the way to go, since the mobo can handle more than the drive is capable of putting out, right?
btw How fast (MB/sec) would my stock 6GB drive be? (The tech specs don't say, but I can only assume it's ATA/33.)
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“The trouble with quotes on the Internet is that you can never tell if they’re attributed to the right person.”
—Abraham Lincoln
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