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/223559146283Also interesting:
https://www.ebay.de/itm/Promise-Technoligy-FastTrak100-TX2-FastTrak100-TX2-IDE-ATA-RAID-Controller-PCI/372621949387It 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).