(System Profiler shows the graphics card as "ATY"[Rage128Pro] for
some reason, though.)
As an aside on an aside, I should clarify that this comment of mine
was wonderment that my own system (by way of the app System Profiler)
is misspelling what should be ATI. Unless there really such a thing
as an ATY Rage128Pro card, perhaps a cheap and ancient Soviet knock-
off of the ATI graphics card, miraculously predating the probable
existence of ATI cards to begin with. I shouldn't joke. Maybe ATY
exists and is well known, what do I know.
So... does "not natively supported" (128 GB+ hard drives) mean
"won't work at all without mystery voodoo or maybe even with it"?
Correct - as is, on that bus, the system will only see the first
128 GB of the drive. You'd have to install the hacks to make it
support the larger drives to see the whole thing.
But not seeing the whole thing doesn't mean that my Power Mac G4 will
refuse to have anything to do with it, right?
Here's something from the Seagate 7200.10 Barracuda description
notes:
"This hard drive operates at SATA 1.5Gb/s by default, you must
change the jumper settings for the hard drive to operate at SATA
3.0Gb/s. Before doing so please make sure your motherboard can
support SATA 3.0Gb/s."
This must be a case of the notes containing information for both
versions, because...
Double check that you're getting the ATA version, NOT the SATA
version.
Look *carefully* at the model number.
ST3160215A is the ATA version.
ST3160215AS is the SATA version.
... ST3160215A is the model number of the hard drive I ordered.
The Mac's ATA/66 bus maxes out at 66.7 MB/sec, actual throughput is
around 80% of that. That's faster than Firewire's 400 Mbps.
But... most drives only do half that anyway. Add to that the fact
that your Mac is only 450 MHz, in practice booting on a firewire
drive shouldn't feel slow at all, IMO.
So it's a choice between an external HD with no complications and an
internal one with some complications. The possible advantage the
former offers is obvious. The possible advantage of the latter - it
seems to me - would be that I end up with (through the PCI card and
SATA) with a better Power Mac G4 which becomes itself an external
FireWire HD once I have a brand-new Mac, besides being useful for the
older operating systems it could run. Practically, I like simple and
relatively cheap better. But this older Mac isn't a throwaway to me,
and beginning to learn something about tinkering with it, besides
straightforward changing of the hard drives, wouldn't hurt. The only
time pressure on deciding is how long the hard drives in it now are
going to last. The first hard drive failure, of the originally
installed one just inside of 2 years, came with no warning
whatsoever. So the noise I'm hearing now probably doesn't tell me
anything more than "soon." I suppose that's warning enough. Most of
the vital stuff is already backed up. Time to finish the job.
Thanks, Dan.
Sean
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