Which macs support IDE (ATA)

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doug-doug the mighty's picture
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Which macs support IDE (ATA)

I cannot remember which Macs (beside the iMacs) support IDE internal drives. I am picking up a 9600 soon and planned to drop some of my spare IDEs into it, but when I checked the specs, I saw I could not do that.

What I want to know is which Macs would take IDE (ATA) drives, or are there any cards (PCI maybe) that would provide an IDE bus where none exists. I know I could do SCSI-IDE bridges but at up to $80 a pop, that is not practical for me.

TIA
--DDTM

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IDE stuff

Hey,

Quad 630 was the first Mac desktop to use an IDE/ATA hard drive. 6200 series used them as well. Can't remember each and every instance before they became commonplace in Macs. I have an UltraTek 66 PCI card in my Beige G4 that allows me to add IDE drives. It will work in any PCI Mac as far as I know. Had it in my Star Wars 8500 for awhile. Should be able to find one pretty cheap on eBay.

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Yup. The 63x series, 5xxx and

Yup. The 63x series, 5xxx and 6xxx Performas are it until the G3-powered Macs (well...the PowerExpress, too , and I'm not counting Powerbooks).

It's frustrating, isn't it? I just got a nice 8600/300 from work, and there's another 8600/200 and a stack of 7300s by in my 'lab' but all my drives larger than 2 GB are IDE.

ATA cards for Macs are repulsively expensive when you consider they're costing more than the whole computer's worth.

Beige G3s are dropping in price impressively on ebay, and that's the direction I've been pondering.

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Sonnet Tempo and how fast 50 SCSI?

The PCI Sonnet Tempos by Acard (ATA66) sell for under $30 on eBay. I also picked up a Sonnet ATA100 card there for $25 a couple of months ago. I've put 7200rpm ATA100 drives in my 6400's and 6500's and they run fine, but those machines often have heat problems and the IDE bus is only 16mhz or something like that, and I've burned an ATA harddrive or two with demanding tasks in those machines. The B&W onboard ATA bus is 33mhz. There's a guy on eBay who sells large capacity narrow 50 pin SCSI harddrives and makes a bunch of claims about their speed topping other interface drives. Here's one of his auctions:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=80043&item=5777851823&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW
Is it true that a narrow drive can be this fast? Can they be faster than IDE? I'm betting they're probably old 7200 rpm or 10k rpm SCA server drives that have been fitted with 50 pin adapters. But even with the faster spin and probably larger buffer, can any SCSI drive going through the old narrow bus outperform an IDE?

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re: Sonnet Tempo and how fast 50 SCSI?

There's a guy on eBay who sells large capacity narrow 50 pin SCSI harddrives and makes a bunch of claims about their speed topping other interface drives. Here's one of his auctions:

Is it true that a narrow drive can be this fast? Can they be faster than IDE? I'm betting they're probably old 7200 rpm or 10k rpm SCA server drives that have been fitted with 50 pin adapters. But even with the faster spin and probably larger buffer, can any SCSI drive going through the old narrow bus outperform an IDE?

Terms of Auction:
Auction is for one 18gb SCSI SCA 50 pin fitted Mac Hard Disk Drive

So yeah, they're adapted SCA drives. Thing is, on older Macs (such as DDTM's 9600) there are other limits to any performance gains to be had from faster HDs. The overall system bus speed plus a host of other constraints tend to limit how much any upgrade can speed things up. So while I'd bet there may be some benchmark which would support this seller's claims, overall any speed boost would be pretty modest from anything faster than an ATA-16 equivalent HD on any bus, built-in or PCI.

And exactly why does raw speed matter anyhow? A local home server surely doesn't need raw speed, and other more demanding tasks are probably ill suited for any PCI-Mac-era box anyhow.

dan k

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Yes, why speed?

Yep, even just to listen to music off my PM8500 with the Sonnet ATA100 I have to slow down the ATA card's processor via Sonnet's AV control panel tool in order to match the slow 8500 system bus speed. With B&W's selling for as little as $50 these days, it's hard to justify upgrading any of the older machines anymore. The old "why bother?" question arises again and again.

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IDE Macs

All of the infra-red Macs use IDE w/SCSI CD-ROM's, as well as some of the clones that have the same architecture. The beigie G3 and later all use IDE exclusively.

If you plan on running OS 9 or earlier look for an ATA33 card made by ProMax called the TurboMax33. They can be found cheap and work well.

But as mentioned about the B&W's, I can't see buying anything but a B&W G3 unless the Mac is dirt cheap. I've had several B&W's and I'm sold on the performance for the dollar.

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speed

In my case, speed is not a factor. I just have a 120G and several 6G drives that need a good home. I will explore some of the options suggested here (like the TurboMax). I will drop a few SCSI drives in for the things where speed may be a concern.

The intended purpose of this machine is to run AppleShare IP. I will cache large files and backups that I am not ready to burn to disk and other misc debris on the IDE drives. The OS and any high use apps will be SCSI. -- unless I come across a better machine to host the IDE drives.

I would be willing to trade them for good SCSI drives with good space.

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Limits?

Hey,

You might want to check and see if *any* PCI card will allow all 120 gigs to be recognized. I have no direct personal knowledge either way. It's just something you don't want to discover somewhere downstream.

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re: Limits?

All PCI - ATA cards will fully recognize a 120GB HD, it's the larger-than-137GB drives that fail to be seen in their entirety when attached to older ATA adapters. All Mac internal ATA busses will recognize all 120 gigs as well.

Not what DDTM asked, but . . . But for big(ger) fulltime server storage you can't beat the oldtime fullsize SCSI drives. Dunno about current availability, but I've had a solid 24/7/365 use of my 6 Seagate Elite drives, the 3 x 23 giggers have about 4 years service so far, the 3 x 47 giggers about 3 years. All reside in external cases for best cooling, errr, plus the fact they don't fit inside most Macs, including my trusty PM9500 server. Those 47GB Elites were cheap when I got 'em (mebbe $20 each?) and are sure to be even cheaper nowadays. eBay for seagate elite, and check the Search title and description box. Right now I see one vendor has 47 giggers for ~US$24 shipped.

For any serious server usage, even for a homenet, external HDs are the best way to go. Any internal-to-a-computer HD cooling is a bodge at best, nothing compares to having a massive slow-running fan pulling fresh air across a HD and immediately expelling it from the case. Even the crappiest, cheapest POS HD will last its longest when kept nice and cool.

And another thing - for server use, your best investments will be in a faster enet NIC, along with a fast enet switch (NOT a hub.)

dan k - answering all the questions DDTM didn't ask!

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It's going to be hard to find

It's going to be hard to find a decent swap with IDE for SCSI. You'll loose some storage since SCSI is more expensive. But if you need SCSI, I would suggest an external SCSI case also.

I have a Kingston DataSilo that holds four 68pin SCSI hot-swap drives and it works well for me. You would need a 68pin SCSI card though which is back where you started with the IDE/ATA card. Or you could try to find a 50pin to 68pin converter/cable

SCSI drive cases can easily be built with old ATX type cases or you can find them on Ebay too but shipping kills it. My four drive DataSilo weighs about 50lbs.

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Re: IDE Macs

The beigie G3 and later all use IDE exclusively.

Not quite. The beige has both dual channel IDE (4 devices) at 16.7 MB/s and single channel SCSI (7 devices internal and/or external) at 5 MB/s

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Thanks!

dankephoto - Thanks for the 47G tip. I will keep an eye out for those for my Quadra 950. I am finishing up a drive braket that will take 8 one inch drives and fits nicely behind the CD bracket (story and pics on this are forthcoming). I will be adding cooling fans as well to cover the heat. And thanks for the extra info.

DrBunsen, MacTrash_1 - Sounds like the Beige G3 is the machine I would want to pop the 120G into. I my hang onto the 9600 for spite/sentiment, but will need to figure out a good purpose for it - I will start listing each machine and its purpose in my blog.

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Re: IDE Macs

The beigie G3 and later all use IDE exclusively.

Not quite. The beige has both dual channel IDE (4 devices) at 16.7 MB/s and single channel SCSI (7 devices internal and/or external) at 5 MB/s

Yea but that was only used for an internal SCSI Zip drive and can cause problems if you attach hard drives from my experience. Of course my experience with beigie G3 are that it is one of the most funky problematic Macs ever made.

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My G3/266DT has an ATA Zip dr

My G3/266DT has an ATA Zip drive stock. It's on the secondary bus w/ the CD-ROM. I stuck an 18GB SCSI drive on the SCSI bus as the only device.

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