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Trouble with SIIG UltraATA 133/100 Pro and B&W G4

Submitted by Metrophage on March 18, 2006 - 10:17pm. Hardware Hacks

My B&W has been feeling a bit cramped with the 80GB drive. so I decided to buy a cheap 200 GB drive which was being offered. At first I had forgotten about the various ATA speeds, and I didn't know about the 128 GB limit. So instead of installing the HD I bought the titular PCI card from OWC, it wasn't too pricey and arrived in good time.

This thing has the damndest problem. I plug the card in, and System Profiler sees it there as an ATA controller with the proper firmware. So it is "installed", yes? But if a *bootable* volume is connected - either my system drive or my DVDR with a boot disc - then the card disappears from the profile! The drive jumpers are fine, the cables are fine. The drivers are built into the card firmware and MacOS. It is one of those annoying times when everything is just supposed to work by itself, but it doesn't, and there isn't anything obvious which I can think of to do about it. I did send a post to SIIG on thursday night, but I have yet to hear back from them. This card is supposed to be seamlessly bootable for anything since OS 10.1, but for me it is just being weird. Sure hope I can get it working!

CJ

B&W G4 600 MHZ, 898 MB RAM, OS 10.4.5

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One week later, the only resp

Submitted by Metrophage on March 24, 2006 - 1:48pm.

One week later, the only response I got from SIIG was an email from "tech support" asking me if my machine was single or dual processor. They don't know how much they want to get it working for me yet, but hindsight is golden.

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Another week later and I got

Submitted by Metrophage on April 7, 2006 - 3:50pm.

Another week later and I got another email from the "tech support" guy, telling me that the card "doesn't work in my configuration" (duh...), and that I should return it wherever I bought it from. TWO WEEKS for the guy to tell me what I already knew. But according to all of their literature it should just work in any system 10.2 or later. Also, I commented on some contradictory and incomplete specs and info on their web site, but got no answer to those questions. Seems to me that they are a company which just slaps their label on cards that they buy, don't know how they work, and don't offer any real support. I'd recommend staying clear of SIIG, YMMV.

What a waste of time that was!

CJ

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