Serial ATA Controller Card?
Any chance of a company releasing a Serial ATA Controller card for those of us that aren't stepping up to a G5? All I'd need is a single channel, but dual would work too. A WD Raptor would make a great boot drive. 
Comments
Current drives are fast as Serial ATA, there is really no need to do this.
Originally posted by I.P.Freely
Why do you need one?
Current drives are fast as Serial ATA, there is really no need to do this.
The WD Raptor (@ 10K RPM) has been benched as the fastest *ATA hard drive, on par with SCSI. It is available only in Serial ATA. So I have three options:
1) Get a SCSI setup that is very expensive and won't be movable to the G5 (when I migrate)
2) Purchase a 40GB WD JB drive, which are great performing PATA drives and cheap
3) Grab a WD Raptor and get SCSI performance at an ATA price which will also (hopefully) be installable into a G5 later down the road.
The Raptor also has a 5 year warranty, which helps even more.
Originally posted by I.P.Freely
Why do you need one?
Current drives are fast as Serial ATA, there is really no need to do this.
Well, if you ever get a G5, you could just plug this drive in (provided you haven't used the single spot you have open).
Originally posted by GardenOfEarthlyDelights
Well, if you ever get a G5, you could just plug this drive in (provided you haven't used the single spot you have open).
Would someone post a URL for specific hardware transfer rates, e.g., all flavors of SCSI, EIDE, ATA S ATA, Firewire, etc.? TIA
You'll cross that bridge when you get there. And these serial ATA drives aren't cheap either.
I'm going to have to disagree with most of you on this.
Originally posted by wmf
The Raptor is hardly SCSI performance at ATA prices; it costs 4x as much as an ATA drive.
Ok, a SCSI drive would cost only a bit more (10K rpm). Then you have hundred dollar cables, and a $300 controller card. So yeah, I'd say it was within the realm of ATA prices.
The only area the drive deviates from SCSI performance is multi-user access. I'd be using this as a boot drive in a single-user system. Thus its only performance deviation wouldn't effect me.
Originally posted by I.P.Freely
Lets not go crazy with the Serial ATA people. I wouldn't get it just because Apple is using it on the G5,
I've been looking at this drive before the G5 was released. Look at a few benchmarks before you lump this drive with the low performance SATA drives out there now.
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I don't need to defend this drive. Lets _try_ and stay on topic about possible availability. Not bashing the technology.
Originally posted by dsoileau
Would someone post a URL for specific hardware transfer rates, e.g., all flavors of SCSI, EIDE, ATA S ATA, Firewire, etc.? TIA
It's not the transfer rates that impress me about the SATA drives. It's CPU consumption. There is practically none compared to the others. While your using 40+ % of your CPU to power your Drive using the other alternatives. SATA is using like 7%. That frees up a substantial amount of Power for other tasks. It's also supposed to have the fastest transfer rates, but in the real world test/comparison I saw it was hardly noticeable. Probably because of system bottlenecks.
[EDIT]
Ok, Here is a similar test that shows what I was talking about. I could not find the one I saw before, but the CPU results are almost the same.
TEST PAGE
The graph/test your looking for is towards the bottom of the page with the blue bar being very short.
Originally posted by IonYz
I've been looking at this drive before the G5 was released. Look at a few benchmarks before you lump this drive with the low performance SATA drives out there now.
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I don't need to defend this drive. Lets _try_ and stay on topic about possible availability. Not bashing the technology.
I'm not saying you shouldn't get them or the technology is bad, I'm just saying you are not getting most bang for your buck. Thats all, if you want to waste your money now and not wait until the price drop, then that is your prerogative.
But if you do get them, I don't see the point of putting them on a Converter which would make it kind of pointless to have a S ATA.
Anyway, I would wait this out. The prices drive aren't going anywhere except down, so I'd wait until G5 comes out. As far as Serial ATA controller cards, call the manufacturer to see if there is an interest in Mac market.
Originally posted by I.P.Freely
I'm not saying you shouldn't get them or the technology is bad, I'm just saying you are not getting most bang for your buck. Thats all, if you want to waste your money now and not wait until the price drop, then that is your prerogative.
But if you do get them, I don't see the point of putting them on a Converter which would make it kind of pointless to have a S ATA.
Anyway, I would wait this out. The prices drive aren't going anywhere except down, so I'd wait until G5 comes out. As far as Serial ATA controller cards, call the manufacturer to see if there is an interest in Mac market.
The raptor price may drop, but I doubt by much. This is not a normal ATA/SATA drive. Its aimed at the enterprise market and the price is quite good when compared to a similar speed SCSI setup.
I highly doubt the G5 has ANYTHING to do with SATA prices. Why would a machine being released to 3% of the global market have to do with SATA prices? Sure the technology will come down in price, then a new generation of SATA are out. So why wait that long?
A G5 is, most likely, years down the road for me. 40GB is about as large a boot drive as I will ever need. As far as a converter being pointless, I don't see it. I'm most interested in this drive for its performance. Western Digital could easily make this a PATA drive, and performance wouldn't suffer much if at all. All performance numbers are well within ATA-100 range.
I'll wait for companies to make the cards. Maybe we will see some SATA-150 cards by the time the PC world has the next gen units. Oh well.
FirmTek Announces First Serial ATA Host Adapter for Macs - (Clip from their email press release)
" FirmTek Launches World's First Serial ATA Host Adapter for Macintosh Users
UNION CITY, CA (July 14, 2003) FirmTek, LLC, pioneer of the world's first Macintosh Parallel ATA/EIDE host adapter solution, announced today the debut of their new SeriTek/1S2 Serial ATA PCI host adapter, the first of many such solutions from the company's new line of SeriTek host adapter products... SeriTek/1S2 boosts overall system performance offering data transfer rates of up to 150MBytes/sec or 1.5Gbits/sec, resulting in high SCSI-like performance and data protection, without the SCSI price.
...The adapter's dual-port internal host controller economically provides high performance support for up to two storage devices, while the 48-bit LBA capability assures unimpeded support for drives beyond the 137 GB limit of many host adapters.
The standards-based SeriTek line of Serial ATA host adapters feature fully self-contained Macintosh booting functionality, OS 8/OS 9, native OS X 10.2 and later support, and zero driver installation overhead for highly compatible plug-and-play functionality.
Pricing and Availability
FirmTek's SeriTek/1S2 host adapter for the Macintosh will be available via www.firmtek.com as well as through the company's worldwide distribution channel (dealer inquiries welcome). The SeriTek/1S2 will begin shipping mid-August 2003, with estimated retail pricing starting at USD$69.95. "