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| Sonnet SATA card in G4 |
Posted by: l008com on 2025-11-20 22:12:25
Today I installed a sonnet SATA PCI card in a G4 powermac. Then I installed a samsung SATA card. The sonnet card is known to be bootable so I though this had a real good chance of working.
The card was acting wonky. Turns out its a known issue where G4s need the card's firmware reverted. I did that and it got a little better but not perfect.
In the end, I was able to get the card to work great with a 2.5" SATA HDD I had. But I could not get it to work with the samsung SSD.
I'm wondering if this is a known issue. It reminded me of issue I had using SATA3 drives on SATA1 Macs. They're supposed to be backwards compatible but they're just not sometimes. Anyone else ever done anything like this? I feel like these might be previously known quirks/incompatibilities that were just forgotten to time. |
Posted by: ArmorAlley on 2025-11-20 22:45:42
I can't answer your exact question.
A lot of these SATA cards came out after Mac OS 9 had officially ended. It would not surprise me that Mac OS 9 support was nice to have but not essential.
I do have an old point to raise with regard to cards in general.
A lot of these cards are getting on in years and will need caps replaced or other care.
If you have a card that doesn't work, take a good look at the hardware first. It may well need new caps. |
Posted by: l008com on 2025-11-20 23:14:22
This Mac is running Panther, not OS 9. And the card kind of worked. After the down-flash, the card worked with a hard drive. But the SSD wouldn't work. In the end, the customer has happy with the hard drive as long as it worked. But I wonder what would happen if we bought a bunch more, different brands of SSD, would we get one that worked perfectly. Maybeeeeeee, maybe not. |
Posted by: Byrd on 2025-11-20 23:32:42
Yes, another SSD brand might do the trick, search forums for brands and models that might be compatible. |
Posted by: Coloruser on 2025-11-21 02:04:19
In my G4s, some of the newer SATA III SSDs have shown compatibility issues with SATA I mode on SIL based SATA I cards — even though, SATA should be backwards compatible, it depends on the actual drive. I need to check the exact type of drives that run in my G4s and G3s |
Posted by: l008com on 2025-11-21 03:08:24
I had this same problem with my Xserve. SATA3 drives just won't work. Or SATA 2 either. SATA 3 desktop drives usually let you jumper down to SATA 2 but not 1. SATA 2 lets you jumper down to SATA 1, so i had to buy some old stock WD drives to run in htere. My next server sadly won't be a Mac but it also don't have these crazy problems to deal with. |
Posted by: AlpineRaven on 2025-11-22 02:03:19
AFAIK and confirmed - that Sonnet SATA card is Mac OS 7.5.5 bootable off SATA SSD - blazing fast!
Cheers
AP |
Posted by: l008com on 2025-11-22 02:22:22
HAH thats so funny. I wish the customer wanted to keep trying to get it to work, because I really wanted to see this old G4 boot in 9 seconds.
As for me, in my own retro Mac, I have a 7300 with a PCI IDE sonnet card, and a 2.5" SATA hard drive connected to a single drive SATA to IDE adapter.
Maybe next time I find myself with a space SSD laying around, I'll think about installing it in that old relic.
The funny thing is though, the current HDD setup is so much faster than the original 5 MB/s SCSI internal drive, that it still feels PRACTICALLY like its an SSD. |
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