Promise ATA/133 Card

Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
has anybody tried this card in a Mac? Sonnet's ATA/100 and ATA/133 card are based on the Promise card, but there's no ROM update on Sonnet's website so if the ROM in the Promise card doesn't work...



I might buy one anyway to test if nobody already knows...

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 9
    eugeneeugene Posts: 8,254member
    The answer is:



    No. It doesn't work.
  • Reply 2 of 9
    alcimedesalcimedes Posts: 5,486member
    sad part is i have an ata100 promise raid controller card sitting in a drawer. got on board raid this time aroudn on my PC, but i feel like an idiot for having a $100 card sitting around.
  • Reply 3 of 9
    eugeneeugene Posts: 8,254member
    My mistake, Sonnet's 133 card is an Acard. I bought a SIIG PC ATA/133 (Acard based) unit today. I updated the ROM to Acard's Mac ROM. It locked-up OS 9 before I even go the happy Mac. It worked fine in OS X...Go figure. It's bad because the ROM/firmware updaters have to be run in OS 9...



    I was able to return the card anyway...Thank goodness for Fry's.
  • Reply 4 of 9
    jethrojethro Posts: 34member
    [quote]Originally posted by Eugene:

    <strong>My mistake, Sonnet's 133 card is an Acard. I bought a SIIG PC ATA/133 (Acard based) unit today. I updated the ROM to Acard's Mac ROM. It locked-up OS 9 before I even go the happy Mac. It worked fine in OS X...Go figure. It's bad because the ROM/firmware updaters have to be run in OS 9...

    </strong><hr></blockquote>



    Someone on the xlr8yourmac.com forums posted that he'd flashed a Promise ATA/66 card with the OWC shareware program they have for those old VST cards. If Fry's has one of these, you may want to check it out.



    You can also try Provantage.com, which has the real Mac ATA/133 SIIG cards for around $80.
  • Reply 5 of 9
    eugeneeugene Posts: 8,254member
    I have a Sonnet Tempo ATA/66 card.



    I'm sorry, I'm not willing to pay $80 for the regular SIIG Ultra ATA/133 card or $140 for the RAID version when the physically identical PC RAID version is $40.
  • Reply 6 of 9
    jethrojethro Posts: 34member
    [quote]Originally posted by Eugene:

    <strong>My mistake, Sonnet's 133 card is an Acard. I bought a SIIG PC ATA/133 (Acard based) unit today. I updated the ROM to Acard's Mac ROM. It locked-up OS 9 before I even go the happy Mac. It worked fine in OS X...Go figure. It's bad because the ROM/firmware updaters have to be run in OS 9...

    </strong><hr></blockquote>



    How did you update the ROM, by booting off the Sonnet card?



    Did you try formatting a drive attached to the SIIG card after it had been flashed? I seem to remember something about IDE cards in OS 9 faking the system into thinking they were SCSI drivers and OS X not doing this - maybe it's a driver issue (the Mac can stall if it doesn't find a driver on the boot disk, or if the driver becomes corrupted - you can hold down option to select a new boot device [or cmd-option-shift-delete, I think, to bypass the primary boot device on old world systems] or 'c' to boot from a disc). If any of that works, then you could try re-formatting the drive with the OS X utility and including OS 9 drivers via the little check box. Dunno what a reformat with an OS 9 utility would work like, that would be something else to try if the first thing doesn't work.



    I don't know if you want to bother getting another card from Fry's and trying all that out, but there are a lot of Mac users who'd be happy to have a source of cheap ATA/133 cards .
  • Reply 7 of 9
    eugeneeugene Posts: 8,254member
    I was going to order the SIIG Ultra ATA/133 RAID card for PCs, but I'm not sure if I want to do that.



    I had no intention of keeping either the Promise or SIIG. I just wanted to know if they would work or could be flashed. Had they worked to my satisfaction, I would have returned them and ordered online from a cheaper source.



    I installed the cards in a QuickSilver 2002, and flashed the SIIG with the utility from <a href="http://www.acard.com/eng/support/mac.html"; target="_blank">http://www.acard.com/eng/support/mac.html</a>;



    Like I said, it worked in OS X, but not in OS 9. This may actually be a problem specific to QuickSilver 2002s as xlr8yourmac.com has indicated people having problems with IDE PCI cards and their brand new QuickSilvers.
  • Reply 8 of 9
    jethrojethro Posts: 34member
    [quote]Originally posted by Eugene:

    <strong>Like I said, it worked in OS X, but not in OS 9. This may actually be a problem specific to QuickSilver 2002s as xlr8yourmac.com has indicated people having problems with IDE PCI cards and their brand new QuickSilvers.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    The problem was with Sonnet's card firmware I think, not the SIIG/Acard one. They have since issued new firmware or drivers or something.



    If it works in OS X and not OS 9 then it sounds like a driver issue. Remember the Mac loads it's driver off the disk, and OS X by default doesn't install an OS 9 driver. From past experience with a disk driver gone bad, that's exactly what happened to me (grey screen, no activity) but by booting off a CD I was able to install a new driver on it with Drive Setup.



    Lemme see if I can find an article...



    Hmm, well, here's a link to the Mac PDF manual where they mention to repartition/reformat the drive, but um, I dunno .



    <a href="http://161.58.88.33/manual/english/aec-6280m_ver11.pdf"; target="_blank">http://161.58.88.33/manual/english/aec-6280m_ver11.pdf</a>;



    You might want to try googling around yourself and see if something pops up.



    I'd love to see you succeed, this charging 2-4x what the card costs on the PC crap has got to end.



    edit: here's a link to some guys talking about the same thing:



    <a href="http://www.imacguru.com/viewtopic.php?topic=740&forum=10"; target="_blank">http://www.imacguru.com/viewtopic.php?topic=740&forum=10</a>;



    [ 04-14-2002: Message edited by: jethro ]</p>
  • Reply 9 of 9
    eugeneeugene Posts: 8,254member
    The manual tells me nothing about a driver...the drivers should be "built-in." As for formatting drives...impossible in OS 9 since it won't even boot at all...and my HDD is not connected to the card...it is connected to the IDE connector on the motherboard. It simply vomits when it detects the card.



    I'm surprised it works in X and not in 9.
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