AVA-2930 & OS X booting

[Kris Tilford]

I recently got some Adaptec AVA-2930 50-pin SCSI cards that are 20 Mbps 
transfer rate which is double the Apple MESH onboard SCSI and 4x the 
external speed. They have one standard 50-pin internal connector and 
one type2 smaller external connector. These cards were NOT the 
PowerDomain version that work with Mac. My understanding is that the 
PowerDomain were either OS 9 or OS X but not both? (I think you had to 
flash them). Either way, here is what I learned about these PC version 
cards:

They ARE recognized and will mount drives normally in OS X (tested in 
Jaguar & Panther  only). They won't directly boot in OS X since they 
need the OS X kernel extensions to function, but there is a solution 
thanks to Ryan Remple and xPostFacto. If you select a drive attached to 
the card as a boot drive in XPF (I used XPF 3.0a17), and use the 
"helper drive" function that uses a second helper drive attached to the 
internal SCSI bus to start the boot, the Adaptec card extensions 
actually load early and the boot process is handed off perfectly to the 
2930 card's drive. Voil�, we have double speed SCSI booting on a cheap 
PC card. It has worked perfectly for me for over a month now, and I 
imagine many other Adaptec PC SCSI cards should work just the same if 
you use a helper drive to boot from.

If anyone is using old unsupported Mac's would like to have one of my 
extra cards and double their 50-pin transfer speed, I'd send them one 
basically for free. I'd need $6 for packing & shipping within the USA. 
You would need to have a second 50-pin SCSI cable. I will try and see 
if my local recycler has any for cheap, but I don't have extra cables 
right now, only the cards. E-mail me directly at: 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] of you want one. I've tested them all to be 100% 
certain they boot in OS X. (The will not work booted in OS 9 and any 
drives attached will not be usable in OS 9, although they are fine for 
'classic' OS 9 from within OS X).

If anyone has other PC cards that might work in OS X as boot drives 
using the XPF helper function it would be nice to hear a report if they 
work. I was so pleasantly surprised to see a standard PC card working 
to boot from in an old Mac. Let me know if you might want one, Thanks! 
Kris Tilford

--
Unsupported OS X is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/>
     Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html>
Unsupported OS X list info <http://lowendmac.com/lists/unsupported.html>
 --> AOL users, remove "mailto:";
Send list messages to:     <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To unsubscribe, email:     <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
For digest mode, email:    <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subscription questions:    <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Archive <http://www.mail-archive.com/unsupportedosx%40mail.maclaunch.com/>
Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com