Parallel ATA / 133 / 100 great news!

[(S)ATAman]

Hello all,

Some terrific news. I was on the phone with Bob H. from Sonnet.
I asked him about the 133 / 100 / etc. Promise FirmTek Sonnet parallel ATA cards.
Only Sonnet sold them directly.

My question was, is it OK if I "open" the off-eBay cards for flashing which were sold under different names like Maxtor, etc.

He had a laugh and told me "go ahead".

That means: no hacking anymore. But of course I need to find everything what was made about 20 years ago.
I am 100% sure I did flash the cards back and forth during the development.

Ultimately I don't mind if THAT particular flash utility goes public.
One more thing: the 100 and 133 cards are the same, the difference is only the name.
As I remember, the flash utility can make 100 card out of 133 and v.v.

So you buy whatever Maxtor or who-knows-what 100% Windows-only Promise card on fee-Bay and flash it under MacOS 9 and it turns into genuine UltraTek/100 or UltraTek/133, your choice.
As far as my support it's on "as is" basis. I would say, same with Sonnet Trio. Just keep in mind, the performance of Trio is not that great because of the PCI bridge.

But: if your beloved MDD or G5 with PCIe slots after flashing magically turns into a Windows 95 "beauty" or IBM XT with MS-DOS 2.10 it's not my fault.
You flash on your own risk.


Good example:

https://www.ebay.de/itm/Maxtor-Promise-ATA133-Hard-Drive-Controller-Card/223559146283

Also interesting:

https://www.ebay.de/itm/Promise-Technoligy-FastTrak100-TX2-FastTrak100-TX2-IDE-ATA-RAID-Controller-PCI/372621949387

It has to have PDC20268 or PDC20269 chip, the difference between the chips is the amount of paint on the "8" versus on the "9" (and marketing).

Other Promise cards either not worth the effort (UltraTek/66) or I never touched them (whatever came after PDC20269).

[mrhappy]

Wow, that's great!! Thanks (S)ATAman... I'm sure many here could make good use out of that!

[(S)ATAman]

OK, I found everything - so I think.
The only problem is that I can't verify the binaries at this moment for minor reasons (waiting for some hardware to arrive for MDD G4, I did not touch it since about 12 years at least).
That beauty works, just need this and that.

If anyone is in hurry I can send every (factory) flasher for these PDC20269/PDC20268 cards and someone on this forum has to sort them out.
I can do that even today.

if people can wait, than I can verify them later when I have all the hardware.

Regarding the 1SE2 (and everything with Silicon Image 3112 + 3114): I definitely do not want to "open" it for two reasons:

- 3112 is probably still sold by FT
- Only FT card is compatible with Quicksilver and Digital Audio.

If you have genuine 1SE2 you should cross-reference it with the copy (any copy).
Besides the obvious expensive flash from Macronix (I "tied" the code to that flash) you will also see the comically big chip (MIC29150) at the position "U4".
Any third-party will have two small chips (like the one above it, AMC 1117).

The only exception is the reference design of Silicon Image. It looks the same.

This is a 20 year old secret and it looks like it worked better than the original copy protection.
Even more: the 3114 (the code for it wasn't released ever but it does exist, both "X" and "9") has the same problem.

If there is really-really-really big demand I would rather make the "MacOS 9" "SIM" for 3124 and release it for free.
It was never made before, so no one should complain.

But I would rather spend time on SAS. PCI-X SAS cards with LSI chipset are more common and cost less, than 3124.
Some of the older SAS cards do support 64-bit addressing and many of the SAS cards already have Open Firmware inside (they were made for Sun).

The past (2005-s) was glorious, let's look into future than into past.

As far as the Promise cards - they should cover EVERY demand for Parallel ATA.
With proper adaptor you can use them even with internal SATA drives, the good converter costs under $5 (look for JMicron chip).

The bottom line: please provide me where I can upload what I have for PDC20269/PDC20268 and than let's see how the rest will develop.

[macStuff]

make a new post in any thread and click "Attachments and other options"
then "Choose file" select the file and type your msg and press "post"

like i said in the other thread i have 2 cards to test, a 133 and a 100
sitting here on my desk ready to go (They are pc cards presently)

[mrhappy]

(They are pc cards presently)

Not for long!!! Haha!