> Whether you use the LBA48 technique, or buy a PCI ATA/IDE card, the > extra space still hasn't been mapped out by the OS. I believe it all > has to be linked together at the initial partitioning time as well.
A PCI card necessarily models the HD as SCSI. There have been these versions of the same theme: U/33, U/66, U/100 and U/133. All U/133 cards came with LBA48 as standard. A few U/100 cards later came with updated firmware for LBA48. No new firmware which supported LBA48 was released for U/66 or U/33 cards as there were firmware licensing issues which effectively prevented it. Remember: LBA48 is not magic. With pre-LBA48, there is but one command packet sent to the controller. With LBA48 there are one or two packets: if one packet, it is presumed to be below the line and the card uses the value as the block address; with two packets it is assumed to be above the line and the card uses the logical sum of the two values as the above-the-line block address. The "SCSIDE" solution, in which the drive's physical connection to the host is indeed SCSI, also added LBA48, and quite a while before the PCI cards came out. The same principle was used: if the SCSI command specifies an above-the-line address, the "SCSIDE" firmware sends two packets to the drive. Implicit in all this is the initial call to the drive is one to read the device's characteristics. If the card supports LBA48, then it knows it must use two packets for above-the-line requests, but that one packet is sufficient for below-the-line requests. As commands exist to read multiple bocks, you can see that a request to read multiple blocks on a partition which spans the line could get into trouble. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
