From: Jeff Walther <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 13:21:29 -0600
The Acard based ATA-133 is the SIIG, Acard and (I think) Sonnet cards. Not so
sure about the Sonnet. Firmtek's web site claims that there is an UltraTek 133
and I'd like to know who sells it, so that I can avoid it.
I should have checked XLR8yourmac.com first. The Sonnet ATA-133 is based on the Promise card, probably with Firmtek firmware. The Sonnet ATA-133 hardware RAID card is based on the Acard brand ATA-133 card.
Anyway, I'd still like to know if the Acard ATA-133 works okay in the lower slots and how's it's compatibility with CD and DVD ROM drives. Of course the latter, is a try-it-and-see for any specific drive, but I'm just wondering generally how well it works.
Jeff Walther
Jeff thought I'd again print my list of ATA drive info. It maybe helpful until someone else comes up with a better list. As far as I can tell the Acard family of cards are made by Acard and the cards are exactly the same. So "the based on Acard" serves no purpose except to confuse people into thinking there maybe differences.
Also the Acards as far as I can tell from talking with different people work in any slot. Testing my Acard ATA 66 in different PCI slots slightly faster bench marks scores in slot 1 & 2 but real life use see no differences.
I have reason to believe The Sonnet Tempo cards (except for the ATA 66 & ATA 133 Raid cards which are made by ACard) would be better called the Firmtek cards as the' re made by Firmtek using a Promise provided chip and Firmtek firmware. Sonnet with perhaps the exception of the CPU upgrades is more of a reseller then maker of much of what they sell.
Several people have confirmed the Pioneer family of DVD RW drives(the main supplier of Apple Super Drives.In fact the Pioneer 105/106 are seen as Apple Super Drives by Apple system profiler) work fine with both the Acard and Sonnet 133 adapters.
Happy Holidays to all ,Will S
Acard/Sonnet ATA /66 Acard/100 Acard/SIIG/Miglia(mostly sold in Europe)/ATA133
Acard/SIIG/Miglia/Sonnet 133 Raid cards
all the above cards are made by Acard and escape the 8gb limit in OSX.
The SIIG version usually has the best price and a 5 year warranty! OWC has for $73.00 USA
There were at least two people who swore the SIIG card did have the 8GB limit. Turns out they had used the OSX utility to format the drive. In most machines OSX won't boot in that case but on their hardware it did but had the 8gb limit. Formating the drive with OS 9.x drive setup fixed the issue.
Sonnet ATA 100/133 & 133 Trio card are all so called Promise chip cards with firmware by FirmTek. These cards all work well but have the 8GB limit on old world Macs. They early on had the advantage of working with nearly all IDE CDRW & DVD RW drives. They still work with a few drives the Acards don't but improved firmware has let the Acards other then the ATA 66 work with most IDE CDRW & DVD drives.The Acard 66 card does work with some CDRW & DVD drives but more likely to work as a reader with burning often not working.
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