Sonnet Tempo ATA 133 PCI (Promise chipset - PDC20269)

[(S)ATAman]

tbh i havent checked but i do have both neccessary ingredients

I checked, the Promise card is really nasty. The "naked" (no FCODE) card will show up on everything, except MDD.
One minor mistake - you have a card which does not show up.
But it does not affect the PC, on Intel machines I can make all Promise cards work, but so far wasn't able to flash them, only on PPC machines.

The Promise is postponed, the 3114/3112/680 is quite close now across all hardware and it has OS-9, too.

[chrisNova777]

any chance we can get the driver for these cards to use with MACOS9?

[nsputnik]

Has anyone tried to load the Sonnet firmware into a Promise branded card with the PDC20269 chipset?

[chrisNova777]

has anyone heard from SATAman?
i was really looking forward to being able to use my PC version Promise ATA PCI's for MACOS9

[Cashed]

*Update

Just contacted DosDude1, asking him if he would look into modifying the PC versions of ‘Sonnet Tempo ATA 133 PCI‘ called ‘Promise Ultra133 TX2’ making it compatible with Mac. This have been postponed now for too Long and no one else have taken up the challenge. 
darthnVader are looking for the card aswell.

If you have any other inquiries, requests can be done at https://doslabelectronics.com
"About Us:  DosLab Electronics, LLC was formed by two people who just wanted to fix things. We pride ourselves in creating unique solutions to complex problems. We create these solutions in an attempt to make life a little better for those who have broken things.
Since the start we have saved over six-thousand MacBooks from the landfill. Our goals are simple, find a problem, fix it, and offer the solution to the public in a cheap and accessible manner."

[blacksheep]

Has anyone tried to load the Sonnet firmware into a Promise branded card with the PDC20269 chipset?

Late to the party but I did try. Sonnet firmware utility does not see the card under 9.2.1, despite it's listed in OF device tree and visible in OS 9 ASP in PCI section. I tried Tempo 133 Firmware 4.0 app.

Some tips from (S)ATAman would be great, how to "flash properly with factory utility".
I have PDC20268 card as well (Ultra100 TX2) and will try it with Tempo 100 firmware utility, but I presume the result will be the same as 20269 one.

[chrisNova777]

sataman is the guy who already has everything he needs to make it happen
he wrote the original firmware for PROMISE! he knows how to do it

[blacksheep]

Yes, I know. That's why I mentioned him. But it seems he's not active from some time. I hope he's OK and will come back.

So I'd have a request in the meantime: please post original Sonnet Tempo ATA133 and maybe Tempo ATA100 System Profiler screenshot. I'm interested with hardware ID's: device ID, vendor/subvendor ID etc.

BTW, I forget to introduce myself in appropriate thread. This day will come Some of members here may know me from MR, netkas, aquamac and some other mac-oriented forums.

[FBz]

Here’s an OS 9.2.2 System Profiler shot of a Sonnet Tempo ATA 133
                      - (with the PDC20269M) installed in a B&W G3.

[Cashed]

Thanks Chris, blacksheep, FBz good knowledge to know of. And welcome blacksheep.

Dosdude1 hasn’t replied as of yet, but we’ve all seen his schematic works on YouTube, and he’s ever only once, posted in this community. That’s why I joined in, to help out.
Others have contacted me and are looking into it as well. (S)ATAman was Last Active: March 06, 2021. I’m sure if he could, he would keep his promise.

[blacksheep]

Thank you FBz, I'll do some tests during the weekend. I got some OS X screenshots as well from MR PPC forum along with interesting insights. I want to focus on what (S)ATAman said in this thread, i.e. figure out what is needed to flash the card properly with factory utility.

[chrisNova777]

sataman just pm'd me last night talking about COVID so i think his health may be impacted by the virus
its not enough that COVID pandemic has gimped the whold world,  even trying to stop the underground mac crew lol

i have quite a few aging machines that im planning on wiping + deconstructing + repurposing
having these promise cards work would let me use (with IDE>SATA adapter) alot of  mechanical hard drives (from 2014-2020 time periods) i have that still work great

[chrisNova777]

actually the pm i saw was old - he didnt message me - i was stoned and misread my pms lol

[DieHard]

actually the pm i saw was old - he didnt message me - i was stoned and misread my pms lol

Wish I could mail you some, I don't smoke because it puts me right to sleep. But here in SoCal it's pretty hilarious, my 84 year old dad has about 3/4 of an acre and is allowed to grow up to 12 plants, they all get up to about 8 ft when he harvests them and he nets about 6 lbs. of fully pruned product which he has for medical purposes only... of course.

Here is a pick of last years mid way crop with my 2 boys...

[chrisNova777]

well it is legal now   OH CANADA!

[blacksheep]

Thanks to joevt and DearthnVader we are making some promising (aptly named  ) progress. I'm looking for datasheet of PDC20268 or 20269 IC, but can't find it anywhere. If anyone of you does have it or can help finding one and post here, it would be great.
BTW, still no hear from (S)ATAman?

[chrisNova777]

i did hear from SATAMAN.. hes having health issues still + not being very productive.. still wish him + vader could use the force together lol

[blacksheep]

This is a good news (and bad one regarding his health problems). Now we're missing one thing to achieve full success: how to force the flasher to write full 64K ROM to the internal EEPROM of PDC20268/9. Currently it's possible to flash the card with ROM reduced to 16K and the rest needs to be loaded from disk.

[darthnVader]

Thanks to joevt and DearthnVader we are making some promising (aptly named  ) progress. I'm looking for datasheet of PDC20268 or 20269 IC, but can't find it anywhere. If anyone of you does have it or can help finding one and post here, it would be great.
BTW, still no hear from (S)ATAman?

It's Darth don't call me dearth nVader;-) fscking typo and Mac Rumors won't let me change it.

Anywho, hoping SataMan is ok and doing well.

I don't know how much he can help us or what maybe covered under an NDA he is bound too.

PROMISE didn't want people flashing cheaper non Raid cards to Raid functionality, that's why the lack of data sheets for these cards, that and IP they didn't want to expose to any competition they had.

FrmTk wrote the FCODE ROM for Sonnet and I'm sure they didn't want people flashing PC Cards to Mac and all that would be rapped up in 3 party NDA's. With at least one of those parties now defunct. The copywrite is FrmTk, but the IP is Promise.

It would be nice if there were real abandonware laws, if what the US Constitution says about copywrite for a limited time had not come to mean unlimited. If there were a true push for Open Hardware documentation.

Anyway, there is a check of the PDC Chip used in the PC BIOS, so flashing a PDC20269 with a PDC20270 BIOS won't turn it into a raid card. So there is no reason for Promise to play this game with the device ID and Flashrom. I've reached out to an old contact that knows how to reverse engineer x86 assembly used in this PC BIOS, but maybe we should also try and reverse engineer the PTIFLASH.EXE.

What we have now with the 16k FCODE ROM is really enough, we can leverage the NVRAMRC to automate the boot process loading the full FCODE ROM each boot, it really doesn't effect the way the card performs, it just makes it hard for any eBay sellers to steal our work for their profit.

[blacksheep]

It's Darth don't call me dearth nVader;-) fscking typo and Mac Rumors won't let me change it.

I won't, I PROMISE

What we have now with the 16k FCODE ROM is really enough, we can leverage the NVRAMRC to automate the boot process loading the full FCODE ROM each boot, it really doesn't effect the way the card performs, it just makes it hard for any eBay sellers to steal our work for their profit.

Makes sense, I didn't think about these eBay leeches, mostly because I don't see the market for such old HW in my neighbourhood. But in bigger picture you're right of course.