jmicron IDE-SATA adapter not booting on G4 QS with SSD connected via SATA

[supernova777]

ive got the jmicron connected to the native ata-66 on the 933 QS
holding option shows the drive + partition name
but attempting to boot to it
i get the ? flashing question mark on the floppy disk icon

WILL NOT BOOT THE SSD!

ive attached a pic of the adapter for reference

now to make sure.. ive connected the adapter to the Acard 6885M and it does boot from there
so its not the disk... the disk is bootable

is this happening because of the size of the SSD? (120gb) ?
the motherboard says "820-1342-B" as far as i can recall. it is the -A motherboard that has problems with large drives.. not the -B....
so it must just be that this stupid ide-sata adapter is somehow incompatible with the ATA-66 controller of the QS 933

[supernova777]

the jmicron i had only one of..
but i bought like 8 of these adapters..  (see pic attached in this post)
and they DO NOT WORK
just tested it on the Sawtooth... same result as on the quicksilver..
NADA!! flashing question marks on disk icons.. and mac logos on folder icons..

so STAY AWAY FROM THESE TYPES OF ADAPTERS! for macs.. they only work on PC's (so it would seem)

the jmicron adapter at least shows the disk if i boot holding option, but then results in ? on disk icon and doesnt boot

the cheaper chinese ones have 2 sata ports.. and ive tried both ports.. neither will show the disks even in the option-boot-disk select screen

[supernova777]

heres what u get trying to boot
works fine on PCs.. using sata port 2.. (not 1? strange)

i was thinking it might be possible to boot with some openfirmware commands
to properly address the partition..

the option boot screen shows the disks.. (Both partitions on the same disk)
but trying to boot.. yields this diskette with "?" flashing

if imic or jakl or anyone coudl tel me how to get the device tree in openfirmware to not scroll right off the page.. i tried "setenv scroll-lock=true" but that didnt work

[supernova777]

ok now im REALLY confused... because the same adapter.. is now working for booting on my MDD 2003!!!!!!!
maybe it wasnt getting enuff power before ?

it failed to boot on both the Sawtooth + Quicksilver's ATA-66 native ide bus..
but is now booted up on the MDD 2003 native ide ATA-66 bus..

the only difference is.. im using a different sata drive? formatted with drive setup
+ dragged system folder onto it..

im totally confused..
 

could it be they only dont work for booting when used with SSD?
or is it the IDE controller in QS + Sawtooth is incompatible? but MDD OK?
im gonna have to take this exact disk + adapter + plug it in again on the QS to test.. right now! im losing my mind:D haha

[supernova777]

ok... WOW.. its working now!! WTF??
i think its because its connected to a real SATA drive (mechanical) and not an sdd..
its working 100% fine......

just booted the same 80gb Seagate 7200.10 drive... on the QS 933...
jmicron IDE-SATA working!!!!!!!!!!

just re-tried it with the SSD..
same result.. flashing ? on the diskette icon
so its confirmed -- these adapters will boot mechanical drives.. but not SSD! (or perhaps not SOME brand of SSD?)
i also saw the system freeze when trying to benchmark an SSD connected via the adapter.. so for whatever reason they are
not compatible with SSD.. ive tried 3 different kinds of SSD.. 3 different brands..
hopefully someone can benefit from me figuring this out anyway.

[Protools5LEGuy]

the jmicron i had only one of..
but i bought like 8 of these adapters..  (see pic attached in this post)
and they DO NOT WORK
just tested it on the Sawtooth... same result as on the quicksilver..
NADA!! flashing question marks on disk icons.. and mac logos on folder icons..

so STAY AWAY FROM THESE TYPES OF ADAPTERS! for macs.. they only work on PC's (so it would seem)

the jmicron adapter at least shows the disk if i boot holding option, but then results in ? on disk icon and doesnt boot

the cheaper chinese ones have 2 sata ports.. and ive tried both ports.. neither will show the disks even in the option-boot-disk select screen

Chris, the photo of that jmicron adapter is from a SATA to IDE and IDE to SATA converter...

It is easy to use the mistaken port. One SATA port is for SATA to IDE and the other for IDE to SATA.

The only M.A.R.L. approved adapter was the greens ones with pins to change Master/Slave/Cable select.

With your adapter you only use 1 device to the IDE channel, wasting one more possible device

[supernova777]

the jmicron one has only one sata port... which seems to work in both directions
the other chinese no-name ones have 2..
and yes only one port works...! so u may have a working theory there
that one port is for IDE into SATA and the other for SATA into IDE

i can try to test that theory now on the chinese ones with 2ports (of which i have 8, that i bought for like $2 each)!

YES U MUST BE RIGHT!!!!
i just looked on the adapter a bit closer
one side says "SATA=>IDE HDD"
and the other says "IDE=>SATA HDD"

so if you use this adapter to change an IDE drive into a sata.. the adapter itself sticks into the back of the IDE drive (sticking out about 1-2 inches!! which is a nuisance if trying to mount a drive in a g3/g4 case this would be next to impossible unless u left the case open forever) this works fine and doesnt "waste a device" but of course sticking it into a ide host interface on a motherboard of a g3/g4 - this works, but not on the ata-100 of mdd (u wouldnt be able to close the case) i have one now in the ata-66 and it fits to close the case as long as there is no drives in the bay under the cd

so this adapter is best used in a pc to allow connecting a IDE drive to a SATA host port..
in an ATX case it has lots of room to allow the space needed for this thing to stick out

i think it would also work well to connect an IDE drive to a mac compatible SATA host adapter aswell (such as a tempo Sata or Seritek 1s2, etc etc) this may seem silly, but u would get a gain of up to 40mb/s over + above the ATA-66 in any mac g4 below an MDD, (jump from 50-60mb/s up to 100mb/s)
whatever the case.. do not try to buy these cheap ass chinese adapters for use with an SSD.. better to connect the SSD directly to a sata adapter ..

maybe some other people can post pics of their SATA-IDE adapters that are working well for them for reference so other people know which ones work with SSD.

[Protools5LEGuy]

so if you use this adapter to change an IDE drive into a sata.. the adapter itself sticks into the back of the IDE drive (sticking out about 1-2 inches!! which is a nuisance if trying to mount a drive in a g3/g4 case this would be next to impossible unless u left the case open forever)

so this adapter is best used in a pc to allow connecting a IDE drive to a SATA host port..
in an ATX case it has lots of room to allow the space needed for this thing to stick out

There are Male'female IDE cables... http://www.amazon.com/40-Pin-Male-Female-Extension-Cable/dp/B005IQWH98



But that cable seems IDE-33 instead of 66 or 100

[supernova777]

interesting..

search for ata-100 cables on ebay

[DieHard]

Awesome work...

Chris, I will test my JMicron (the one you saw) in an MDD, my board is same rev 1.6 but Green PCB
by the way, what is SW1 for ?

[supernova777]

i still dont know what the switch is for.. maybe it toggles the direction
between

A) ide hdd > sata host port
or
B) sata hdd > ide host port

they work for booting.. but only with a real hard drive..not with an SSD..
try to make it work with an SSD and see if u get the same ? icon on the diskette
what does that icon mean??

[Protools5LEGuy]

i still dont know what the switch is for.. maybe it toggles the direction

Some allow to choose Master/Slave. The green one from MacTron.

[supernova777]

i was talking to diehard about his Jmicron adapter.. he has the same one as the red one i posted above in the original post..
but with a green PCB... this adapter has a toggle button on it.. but we dont know what its for yet.

this jmicron adapter works for booting mac g3/g4 with a sata mechanical drive connected.. but not with SSD for some reason.


does anyone know what this error specifically truely means?



as theres one flashing ? with a folder icon.. and that one means that it cant find the system folder?
and this one is flasing ? with a diskette icon.. im guessing this means it cant find the disk?
but it can find the disk because even with an ssd it shows the partition name when u do option boot with a g4..
but then it fails to boot with this icon


i was wondering if there might be a way to use openfirmware to hack this thing into booting an SSD.....
but - that seems like a lot of effort - i will just use my SSD with SIl3112 cards.. screw it;) higher bandwidth that way too
100MB/s read/write

[MacTron]

I have used one of this "dual" adapters in a MDD, Sawtooth and in a Firewire enclosure. It worked well with HDDs and SSDs. But i think that it is less reliable than those "single" ones.

[supernova777]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Hot-PATA-IDE-To-SATA-Hard-Drive-Converter-Adapter-For-3-5-2-5-HDD-DVD-In-Stock-/321615690370?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4ae1c9fa82

this one looks to be good.. in terms of its size.. it uses the same jmicron 02330 chip i think (frm looking at the words on pcb)

but it looks like the size of this one would be smaller in that it doesnt block access to another when used in a dual drive bay in mdd

another plus is the 4 pin molex connection rather then this stupid floppy connector for power or need for sata power adapter cable

[supernova777]

ok i have another finding to report


i have been testing these chinese dual way adapters (http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=2554.msg14980#msg14980)
and they seem to not be able to surpass a certain level of read speed around 60MB/s
the write speed also seems to be capped a bit.. but in testing many 7200 RPM drives
connected to a sata150 card (in this case the 6890M pci)
the read speed is consistantly appearing as 58MB/s which makes me beleive that this
is somehow a limitation of the adapter itself + not the drive
im not certain but i suspect that this is the case
because its quite abnormal to see the write speed higher then the read speed i think

[supernova777]

http://www.jmicron.com/PDF/brief/jmd330.pdf

for the jmicron adapter.. i think the simple answer is that this is only a one directional bridge
for the purpose of connecting an IDE device to a SATA host...

i dont think its capable of doing SATA device to IDE host...
and that is the root of the problem!!!!!!!

check the pdf above


http://www.jmicron.com/PDF/brief/jmh330s.pdf

perhaps thats the reason for one being green? and the other red??
perhaps the green one goes the opposite way? from Sata Device to IDE Host??

[supernova777]

ok... thanks to protoolsleguy for pointing out how these adapters work
i just successfully booted off my Kingston SSD connected to chinese bidirectional sata-ide bridge (connected to the right port this time) with it inserted into the 6885M controller..
i probably wont use it this way.. because of the size of the ide-sata dongle and fear of it being bent when closing the case.. but its good to know that they actually work..

but i think ive decided not to use my sata ssd's on my g4's because the speed isnt much different then that of a mechanical drive.. all of my IDE mechanical drives are ALOT faster connected to the 6885M adapter.. difference between ATA133 + ATA66 would account for that..
while the same IDE drives connected to the Tempo Sata PCI host controller via a sata-ide adapter resulted in lower speeds comparable to ATA66 (not worth connecting them that way)

i encountered an incompatibility tho.. between these sata-ide bridge adapters + my Corsair F60 SSD's
they cause a system lock up if u benchmark the drive... so theres definately some type of incompatibility on that specific SSD.. but the kingston SSDnow SSD is working fine..   

the Jmicron i never got to work with any SSD for boot.. because i believe its only meant to be used with an IDE Drive.. to Sata host..

maybe its bidirectional and u toggle between with that SW1 switch? but the pdfs dont say anything about that.. and i couldnt get it to work that way.. so i dont think its bidirectional at all. they have 2 different models one for ide to sata and another for sata to ide