OWC PCI SATA & Seagate 320 SATA not happy

[silvarios]

What confidence do I have that the SATA drive will work with the card in a newer computer? Unfortunately, Drive Setup not recognizing the drive may not be a system issue. By the way I spent less than $130 for the drive and the card. A little more for cables and such. I could still buy an external enclosure for the SATA drive which will work on my G3 iMac. Assuming the SATA drive is actually functioning.

If I can find a Power Mac G4 (Sawtooth maybe?) for $20 I would take the plunge. Another G3 doesn't do much for me. I've had two B&Ws and I have not been terribly happy with them. Sold them both for a small profit. I will keep my eyes open for deals.

I really hope the problem is some sort of Power Mac 7600 issue, but why would a drive function if previously formatted, but not a fresh drive when connected to the OWC card. Unfortunately, there are too many possibilities for issues arising because of the platform I have chosen to run these tests. A supported configuration could help narrow down the possible problems.




Nathan

[Filliam H. Muffman]

silvarios, you gave me a great idea. I just spent $800 on a G4 upgrade for my 840AV PPC PDS accelerator, and a NuBus to PCI to PCIe SATA adapter so I can maybe run OS X on a 13 year old Mac using a SATA drive. Just think how much I saved not having to buy 30 SCSI drives instead of one 750 GB drive.

[silvarios]

[quote Filliam H. Muffman]silvarios, you gave me a great idea. I just spent $800 on a G4 upgrade for my 840AV PPC PDS accelerator, and a NuBus to PCI to PCIe SATA adapter so I can maybe run OS X on a 13 year old Mac using a SATA drive. Just think how much I saved not having to buy 30 SCSI drives instead of one 750 GB drive.
You're an idiot.

I'm only using the bridged drive because the SATA drive is not working with the OWC 2+2 SATA card (which as an open box didn't come with any cables, even though the webpage did not say anything was missing and the box and components were otherwise intact, but hey you take your chances with an open box). I have a 7600, I needed another backup storage drive. I figured I could buy the SATA card for about the same price as a nice external case. I could also use the Power Mac 7600 as a headless audio server. What external drive case gives me that option?

As long as the OWC card is compatible with perpendicular SATA 3Gb/sec drives then I can always migrate it to another random tower. If it not compatible, then it doesn't matter what non SATA tower I have because the setup won't work. If anyone has tested the OWC 2+2 SATA PCI card with the model of Seagate drive listed, please let me know if you had any luck. Thank you.


Nathan

[anonymouse1]

Nathan-

IMHO, you're whining.

[Silencio]

With all due respect, you should have read the specs on that card before buying it:

Compatible with most PCI Power Macintosh Systems (Blue & White G3 or later)

You don't have much of a leg to stand on in calling someone else an idiot.

[M A V I C]

I'll just say, when you start messing with voltage incompatibilities you can really mess things up. The fact it's not working with that drive could just be one of the many side effects. Data integrity could be compromised. For a backup system, that's a really bad thing. I know first hand how power irregularities can damage data.

If you put this card in a B&W and it still doesn't work with that drive, then you might have complaint people here wouldn't attack you for. (Assuming that the card hasn't been damaged by being in the unsupported system.)

OWC has an extensive testing facility for these products. Larry often has the data to backup the assertions he makes.

[RAMd®d]

I don't think he was whining at all. He was asking what apparently is a not so simple question.

He only called "Idiot" after the pointedly insulting response.

Maybe "idiot" was ill advised, but perhaps he doesn't like using terms like asshat.

Still, he hasn't been able to get an answer to the question asked. If the answer was as obvious as has been implied, then maybe silvarios is an idiot.

Maybe he didn't read the specs, maybe his reasoning is flawed. But he was civil.

[silvarios]

[quote M A V I C]If you put this card in a B&W and it still doesn't work with that drive, then you might have complaint people here wouldn't attack you for. (Assuming that the card hasn't been damaged by being in the unsupported system.)
Hmmm. Why should people attack me or any poster for that matter? I did link to the blog entry I wrote so people would have more information about the simple testing I had already done up to this point. All I wanted to know if there was a specific problem with the OWC 2+2 SATA card and the newer SATA drives (perpendicular, 3Gbp/sec).

I've also explained that the subject for this thread was misleading as I made a typo. Again, I'm not unhappy. I wanted to say that the devices were not happy together. I'm not here to complain, but ask questions. OWC Larry did an adequate job explaining things and I thank him. However, as a greater scheme of things question I was curious to know if there were any compatibility problems with the newer SATA drives and this card.

If my cobbled together system doesn't work the way I want it to, that's my problem. I get it. I never said it wasn't. The issue is probably because of the old system I'm using, but I wanted to doublecheck with any other people who are using this particular controller card and/or this particular drive. Perhaps, a moderator could edit the title of this thread to end with:
"not happy together"
or possibly
"not compatible?"

I assure you, this time some of the forum members got it wrong. I'm not here to bash OWC, but I wanted to make the extent of this card's compatibility clear. I thought the readers of Low End Mac would be interested (my next article was going to be posted there). Sometimes the specs listed as supported are not all encompassing. I've used more than a few Linux boxes and very few of the PCI cards have actually listed Linux compatibility on the package. Sometimes we get lucky and if the card works it gets added to hardware compatibility lists. That's sort of the goal here, but the list is the "Obsolete Mac compatibility list". After all, Sonnet's products are similar and list PCI v2.2 compatibility on their SATA PCI controller, yet essentially every PCI equipped Mac is noted as compatible. I wasn't sure if the OWC team decided to not bother testing the older computers because the benefits were minimal or if there was a technical issue.

M A V I C, does PCI v2.2 guarantee that the card only works with 3.3v? If so, how does the Sonnet team manage their huge Mac compatibility list for their SATA PCI product? They have seemingly every Mac or Mac clone with PCI slots listed. http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempo_serial_ata.html Different chipset? Different connector? I'm not trying to be snooty, I'm honestly curious.

[silvarios]

[quote RAMd®d]I don't think he was whining at all. He was asking what apparently is a not so simple question.

He only called "Idiot" after the pointedly insulting response.

Maybe "idiot" was ill advised, but perhaps he doesn't like using terms like asshat.

Still, he hasn't been able to get an answer to the question asked. If the answer was as obvious as has been implied, then maybe silvarios is an idiot.

Maybe he didn't read the specs, maybe his reasoning is flawed. But he was civil.
Thank you. I do apologize for using the term idiot. I'm really here trying to do the most research I can as some people really might want to know how this turns out. I should just ignore the people poking fun at me. I'm sure they don't mean to be harsh and I was asking an oddball question.

For those interested, I found this tech tidbit about PCI:
[quote codepedia.com]The PCI bus specification 2.1 calls for expandability to 64 bits and 66 MHz speed; if implemented this would quadruple bandwidth over the current design. In practice the 64-bit PCI bus has yet to be implemented on the PC (it does exist in non-PC platforms such as Digital Equipment's Alpha and is also found now on servers) and the speed is currently limited to 33 MHz in most PC designs, most likely for compatibility reasons.
http://www.codepedia.com/1/PCI+BUS

It seems to me that both PCI v2.1 and 2.2 can both be expanded to 64 bits and 66MHz. The Blue and White G3 has three 64 bit 33 MHz slots and one 32 bit 66 MHz slot. At least according to Apple-History.com ( http://apple-history.com/?page=gallery&model=g3blue&performa=off&sort=date&order=ASC ) If so, what is the PCI voltage of the Old World ROM PCI Macs? The old PCI standard was 32 bits, 33MHz, and 5v, but maybe Apple always had 3.3v slots, especially since the 2.1 standard could be extended out to the high speed specs as used in the later PCI v2.2 Macs. This is where I get confused. I do know the requirements OWC lists, but I thought just maybe the card was more flexible, just not fully tested with such Macs. Thanks again to all those who have helped.


Nathan

[hal]

silv...

you should test the seagate compatibility on a system that supports the PCI card to get a better idea if the incompatibility has anything to do with the seagate drive (seems very unlikely) or is due to the fact that you are using the PCI card on an unsupported system (seems VERY likely).

seems obvious to me...