On Sunday, March 24, 2002, at 09:19 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Another option which works very well is an ACARD "SCSI Bridge" which is
> mounted underneath an UATA drive and converts it to SCSI. These bridges
> are
> available from MicroLand USA (San Jose, CA, Area Code 408), and are
> bootable.
> I do not believe ACARD has updated this product to support UATA/100 or
> /133
> from the drive to the "bridge", and I do not believe 48-bit LBA is
> supported.
> From the "bridge" to the Mac, these "Bridge" solutions are capable of 40
> MB/sec.
They are actually called SCSIDE bridges, but I'm picky ;). If you want
any tips I'm your man, I have one in my Quadra that will migrate to my
7300/200 if I ever get it, seller is busy at the mo, I haven't paid him
so I'm not worried, we work on a try before buy basis anyway so it is
more or less at his discretion when he gives me the machine. I digress...
Anyhow the SCSIDE bridge is a great gadget that comes in a range of
flavours. The on I have mounts directly behind the drive and provides an
ATA/66 to 50-pin SCSI bridge. They also do a similar one that outs to
68-pin Wide SCSI. The one Peter mentioned was the original internal
design and is mounted in a tray under the drive to reduce it's profile.
IIRC the tray based card is only available in 68-pin wide. They also do
external enclosures with the SCSIDE bridge in them for portable or
multi-machine use.
The only problem I had is that I had to find a PowerMac to flash the
BIOS (a G3/300 MT in my case) as I was using it in a Quadra. The BIOS
loaded on the bridge is not recognised by Apple's Drive Setup utility
and has to be flashed with the BIOS from the ACARD site to work
properly. Hacking Drive Setup did not work for me entirely
satisfactorily. Their tech support did e-mail me the 68k version of the
ROM utility when I complained but it wasn't really an issue by then.
Also ACARD tech support are really helpful and reasonably quick on most
things. My friend has just bought an ACARD UW SCSI card for his G3
Server (the one I flashed my Bridge on) and he is equally satisfied with
that (it works in OS X flawlessly, which is more than anyone can say for
Adaptec stuff!!).
> If a "bridge" is used, the overall height of the "bridge" and a 1/3
> height
> drive becomes 1.6" tall, which just happens to be the height of a 1/2
> height
> drive.
Funny, anyone'd think they designed it like that ;). I think this is
because they are very Pro-Mac so they made it to fit the drive bay on a
PowerMac (most are 1/2 height IIRC).
Small essay over ;)
--
Mark Benson
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