Mac OS 9 Lives

Classic Mac OS Hardware => Storage => Topic started by: supernova777 on November 20, 2013, 05:02:58 PM

Title: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: supernova777 on November 20, 2013, 05:02:58 PM
(http://www.addonics.com/products/diagrams/throughput_comparison.jpg)
This thread is about buffing your disk speed by
running your os off a more modern hard drive, connected via more modern technology then what was available
when the mac was built!

we can do this by using a pci card that provides a few (usually 2) sata ports
a number of companies produce these cards but just a few create cards that have firmware
designed to boot on an os9 system.

Sonnet Tempo Serial ATA
(http://www.sonnettech.com/product/images/prodhdr_temposata.jpg)

OWC SATAPCI2P (discontinued)
(https://eshop.macsales.com/tech_center/manuals/imgs/p_pcixcontrollercards_bg.jpg)(http://eshop.macsales.com/NewsRoom/Static/PR/images/Box.jpg)
Serial ATA 2-channel PCI controller card for Apple/mac
http://eshop.macsales.com/tech_center/manuals/sata/owcsatapci2p300.pdf

Ratoc REX-PS30X
(http://www.ratocsystems.com/products/subpage/sata/image/ps30x.jpg)(http://www.ratocsystems.com/products/subpage/sata/image/ps30x_pac.jpg)
http://www.ratocsystems.com/products/subpage/ps30x.html
http://altern8.envy.nu/alt8/mac/nitro/rexps30x.jpeg
more ratoc os9.2 gear: http://www.ratocsystems.com/products/ostaiou/macos922.html

(http://www.ratocsystems.com/products/subpage/sata/image/ps30x_bench.gif)

Ratoc REX-PCI15S
http://img1.kakaku.k-img.com/images/productimage/fullscale/05676010424.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/n6tcv78
http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%83%A9%E3%83%88%E3%83%83%E3%82%AF%E3%82%B7%E3%82%B9%E3%83%86%E3%83%A0-SATA-PCI%E3%83%9C%E3%83%BC%E3%83%89-REX-
PCI15S/dp/B000GIWUK4
sells for 3,528 yen (around 39 dollars)

Mathey MSATA-P02MAC
(http://www.macos9lives.com/downloads/_img/MSATA-P02MAC.jpg)
(http://www.pasocomclub.co.jp/img/4538124003394.jpg)
http://www.mathey.jp/news31027-2.html
more mathey products: http://www.mathey.jp/SerialATA.html
http://asashina.ikeriri.ne.jp/blog/ja1uvg.php?itemid=2301
(http://asashina.ikeriri.ne.jp/blog/media/1/2010011123393201-20100111123.jpg)
(shows a mac compatible 2 port card with SST bios chip)

Siig SC-SA4011 (not sure if bootable, but i saw a 2006 article comparing this with the owc card above )
(http://mt-naka.com/hotswap/image/SC-SA4011.jpg)

seritek 1s2
(http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-1s2/SeriTek.jpg)
http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-1s2/
http://eshop.macsales.com/search/FirmTek

acard 6290m (2 sata / no raid but still mac os 9 bootable)
(http://www.macos9lives.com/downloads/_img/acard_6290m.jpg)
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816123109

acard 6890m (pci raid controller raid0,1 mac os 9 bootable)
(http://www.macos9lives.com/downloads/_img/acard_6890m_raidAdapter.jpg)
(http://ato-net.jp/column/SATA_bench_2/aec6890m.jpg)
Raid0 / Raid1 mode switchable via dipswitches | supports mac os 9 / mac os x
manual: http://dl.acard.com/manual/english/aec-6890m.pdf

WiebeTech TCS1-1 / WiebeTech TSC2-0 (reffered to as the "teracard" i think?)
(http://acdn-0-9.shopletcdn.com/productimages/500x500/1010831303.JPG)
http://www.shoplet.com/Wiebetech-llc-WiebeTech-2-Port-Serial-ATA-Controller-TCS1-1/2U94412/spdv
http://www.amazon.com/WiebeTech-TC-PCI-4S-4-Port-Serial-Controller/dp/B000MYGW6K
http://web.archive.org/web/20060411204215/http://www.wiebetech.com/home.php



siig products circa 2006
http://web.archive.org/web/20060813200727/http://www.siig.com/productList.asp?catid=4

avlabs: http://www.avlab.com.tw/sata/sata.htm

these cards will provide much faster disk performance then using the native IDE ATA bus.

to take this a step further some cards were designed to combine two disks into one in os 9. Acard was one of such companies though their cards were not produced in that great a number and they are discontinued now and hard to find.
for reference purposes here is a link to a page describing this acard model that provides both SATA + RAID for OS9.
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816123111R



below you can see some data benchmarks i found just now doing a search.. ive linked these via google translate as they are originally posted in japanese!

page 1:
http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?act=url&depth=1&hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.ca&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http://ato-net.jp/column/SATA_bench/SATA_bench.html&usg=ALkJrhhRd5G3NMvNtk7h8kbiaPGnT0X5FA

page 2:
http://translate.google.ca/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fato-net.jp%2Fcolumn%2FSATA_bench_2%2FSATA_bench_2.html&act=url
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Mat on December 28, 2013, 03:16:43 AM
What I was asking myselve for a long time now, is if there is any SATA Card that can utilize the entire PCI-X bus of the later G4s with its 64 Bit and 66MHz, what would mean 500 MB/s, ... ?

Does anybody remember what of the bus is slowed down if I put a 33MHz 32 Bit card inside a PCI-X slot? Was it the widht or the speed? And is it correct that it nevertheless should stay at 266MB/s even with a 33MHz/32 Bit card inserted in one slot?
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: devils_advisor on December 29, 2013, 08:09:54 AM
im wondering if the sonnet tempo with the 2 internals can make 2 2tb drives available under os9
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: supernova777 on December 29, 2013, 11:30:24 AM
im wondering if the sonnet tempo with the 2 internals can make 2 2tb drives available under os9
i have the box in front of me let me check the back:

-easy installation
-compatible with most pci power macintosh computers
-48-bit LBA support for drives larger than 137gb
-Supports Mac os X raid features
-supports booting frm any attached drive
-transfers data at 1.5gbps per port

thats all it says
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: supernova777 on December 29, 2013, 11:44:25 AM
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2544
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: supernova777 on December 29, 2013, 11:47:44 AM
it might work with 2TB drives but u would have to format them + set them up with osx disk utility in panther or tiger (10.2 or later)
and you would have to make a number of 190gb partitions for the data to be seen from inside os9.
that would mean 10 partitions per 2TB drive.. adding up to 20 Partitions.. its almost not worth the effort  + risk
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: devils_advisor on December 29, 2013, 11:48:35 AM
that means i better follow my first idea and get a scsi raid which can have more than 1tb (but in a external case)
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: supernova777 on December 29, 2013, 11:50:47 AM
why not just use a different computer for a file server that runs osx or something and use ftp
or DAVE to connect. i connect to my windows 7 raid using DAVE and it works fantastic
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: devils_advisor on December 29, 2013, 11:52:11 AM
as i mentioned before my mdd has 2 500gb drives and a 400gb drive in it the original 80gb is my os 9.2.2 and 1 500gb is for osx 10.5.8 as long as i have os9 drivers checked by creation i can see them and use them. 1 problem i have is stability issues but i cant tell if it is from the large partition or something else. i have crashes here and there sometimes just by right clicking and need to turn off the machine to reboot. as far as i know i have not read alot about anybody else having these symptoms.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: devils_advisor on December 29, 2013, 11:53:54 AM
why not just use a different computer for a file server that runs osx or something and use ftp
or DAVE to connect. i connect to my windows 7 raid using DAVE and it works fantastic

my issue here is most of the software i use is not for networking made like my media 100 system. or even protools they recommend starting with a basic config and only add what you need in extensions. xsan would be interesting but doesnt seem to work under os9 when it comes to the managing part. i just started using timbuktu to remote control my xserve but my stability issues gave me a headache so far.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Mat on December 29, 2013, 02:01:07 PM
1 problem i have is stability issues but i cant tell if it is from the large partition or something else. i have crashes here and there sometimes just by right clicking and need to turn off the machine to reboot. as far as i know i have not read alot about anybody else having these symptoms.
That is exactly what I often had with "dual boot" Macs. My experiance is that X makes 9 unstable. And it was why I kicked every X and stay with pure 9 Macs, with a lot less problems.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: devils_advisor on December 29, 2013, 02:55:17 PM
Since i cant use partitions with more than 190gb what about a scsi raid? Im need space to store my video clips of a dv cam.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: devils_advisor on December 29, 2013, 03:51:23 PM
http://support.apple.com/kb/TA21924

check that out

from what i understand os 9.2.2 has to be on a smaller drive or partition but when you are in os9 only your controller is the limitation. but i been reading so many different answers i guess trial and error is the only way.
my mdd is the last one who can boot into os9 without using classic.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: DieHard on December 29, 2013, 10:56:12 PM
There are several things to keep in mind about the overall purpose of the system...

If it is a going to be used as a file server... then sticking a bunch of bus mastering PCI SATA cards (RAID or otherwise) in a G4 is just peachy, but if the unit is going to be for Audio or Video and will have a PCI Audio interface, UAD-1 Card, Powercore Card or PCI video capture card, then building a fast HD system that produces Audio Pops or Video drop-outs because of the RAID or SATA card then all this extra speed becomes useless.  In other words, there is a limit to the amount of data that can be juggled around the PCI bus, and even though there are 4 PCI card slots, this does not mean that all combinations of filling these slots will play nicely together, so you have to prioritize what is the most important cards that are going to be used for the overall functionality on the system.  Some combinations that I have tried with no issues are... DA or MDD with (1) M-Audio 2496 or Motu 324/424 Card with (1 or 2) UAD-1 or PowerCore PCI cards, I have also used FW interfaces with SATA PCI cards and had no issues, I have been up many a late night when trying to combine HD SATA PCI cards with Audio or Video Capture cards and have had some real headaches.

In a DAW environment, the SSD Drives that I use from OWC connect directly to the ATA-100 bus (via an included SATA to PATA adapter)...

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/SSDMXLE120/

These drives boot Mac OS 9 in about 9 to 11 seconds and I use them for my OS, Apps, and Sample Libraries... and use 500 GB 7200 PATA IDE drives for Audio Projects.

Chris, one other note is non-SSD drives (both PATA & SATA) drives differ greatly in Speed and Cache... the smaller size drives like the 80GB may have as little as 8MB or 16MB cache so they will be a lot slower than another drive in its class that is larger (like a 500GB with 32MB cache)
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Mat on December 30, 2013, 04:21:55 AM
DieHard, as you use the OWC SSD, could you post a picture of the IDE to SATA adapter? I was always interrested what kind of adapter they are using, and where it might fit or not, but there is no information anywhere, so a photo would be of high interrest.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: MacTron on December 30, 2013, 08:20:59 AM
The MDD PCI bus is 64 bits or 32 bits and 33 Mhz. this allow a Max bandwidth of 133 MB/s (32 bit) or 266 MB/s (64 bits). All the SATA PCI cards for Mac os 9 are 32 bits. This allow a Max bandwidth of 133 MB/s. This fact and sharing the PCI bus with other cards (like in/out audio and DSP cards) let this SATA cards low room for improvements.
The ATA/100 in the MDD is direct connected to the UniNorth. Not sharing PCI bus bandwith allows the IDE/SATA adaptors be a no so bad option, and the cheap and easy choice.

I been using for several months −whith good results− one like this:

(http://img.dxcdn.com/productimages/sku_165213_1.jpg)
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Brand-New-PATA-IDE-TO-Serial-ATA-SATA-Interface-Hard-Drive-Adapter-Converter-/300945676416?pt=US_Drive_Cables_dapters&hash=item4611c29880
http://dx.com/p/rxd-629a-parallel-pata-to-serial-sata-hard-disk-converter-green-black-white-165213

alongside a Samsumg 128 Gb SSD.
(http://images.highspeedbackbone.net/skuimages/large/S203-1041_chiclet01_aa_2318704.jpg)

It would be interesting to see some test results with those SATA cards against this adaptors.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Knez on December 30, 2013, 08:50:00 AM
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Kingspec-16Gb-40Pin-Ide-Mlc-Dom-Disk-On-Module-Ssd-/380803218617?pt=UK_Computing_Other_Computing_Networking&hash=item58a9a3fcb9

I use one of these with great success in my MDD. I have the 32gb version and it works great with all the apps installed. It allso has a 500gb 7.2k rpm drive for recording. You have to remeber how big the hard drives where around 10-12 years ago, 32gb for system+installed apps is more than enough. I think I use up around 7gb in total with Classilla, Reason 2.5, Pro Tools TDM 5.1.3, Logic 6 and alot of plugins installed.

I have the 16gb 2.5" version in my Atari Falcon, and it works just great there too. Awesome piece of hardware :)
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: supernova777 on December 31, 2013, 02:00:06 AM
thats not what i read in the technote that i pasted it said that its an os limitation that it wont recognize partitions bigger then 190gb

i would like to know the definitive answer on this..
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Knez on December 31, 2013, 04:35:38 AM
thats not what i read in the technote that i pasted it said that its an os limitation that it wont recognize partitions bigger then 190gb

i would like to know the definitive answer on this..

190gb is definitely not a OS limitation. I use my 500gb drive with OS9 and it works like a charm. Initialized and formatted in OS9 as well, and it found the whole drive without any issues.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: devils_advisor on December 31, 2013, 04:56:43 AM
all i found was the start disk has to be at the begin of a hard drive just like windows in the old days. once you started you can have a certain amount of partitions and they can be big. look at the avid raids. i think its a combination of os and controller.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: DieHard on December 31, 2013, 02:10:31 PM
Of course volumes can be bigger than 190GB. But if you have any data issues or need to de-fragment the drive, then most likely you are SOL; All utilities I have tried (Disk First Aid, Norton, Disk Warrior) seem to have a real issues with any volume bigger than this; In the Audio World, smaller volumes make sense and there is definitely a speed increase on PATA volumes (obviously, you never defrag an SSD) when they are de-fragmented...

Also I like to make every volume bootable to OS 9, in case of a system crash, so just another reason to sick to the 190GB rule.

If Knez or anyone else has had a volume of 500GB with over 250GB of stuff and used the HDTS defrag, please let me know if it worked... always wanted to try that, but never had the time.  In fact, I would love a list of data recovery and maintenance tools that work on partitions that size that are at least 50% full... I never found any
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Knez on January 01, 2014, 03:44:38 AM
DieHard: I use a bootable DVD of iDefrag and defragment my drives that way. Never tried Norton or any other OS9-only defragmentation application on my drives.

I could give it a try so we know what happens :)
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: DieHard on January 01, 2014, 01:46:30 PM
A utility for OS 9 that will defragment large volumes would be great, but booting to an OS X DVD and running I iDefrag sounds interesting, if I get time I will try this sometime 8)  Thanks for the heads up.

I am very comfortable with 190GB volume sizes; I like to organize things by volume and this is plenty for me; all my volumes are OS 9 Bootable with different themes (So I know which I booted to); and I simple run maintenance on all the other volumes.  This works for me.... not sure if I ever want to boot to OS X (even to run iDefrag) on my dedicated OS 9 G4s; I did a lot of experimenting in the day and now that I have kept my 3 MDDs and 2 QS without X for the last 6 years, I have not had one hickup... so I am a creature of habit.  Maybe I will do a test machine and do the iDefrag thing for the record... a very cool option if large (non-bootable) volumes are needed.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Knez on January 02, 2014, 11:55:22 AM
DieHard, it only works on Mac capable of booting 10.5.x though, since the iDefrag DVD uses a custom version of 10.5 to boot into. If you have iDefrag, just use the link in the picture to create a bootable DVD. You can choose from a Intel only or a Universal DVD (10.5 based).

Try it out, it works great and is a great workaround. Might post the DVD image here for all the people not using OSX.
Then they can at least burn the DVD and boot into iDefrag :)

Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: DieHard on January 02, 2014, 12:02:16 PM
Awesome...thanks
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: supernova777 on January 14, 2014, 04:03:15 AM
http://www.jcsenterprises.com/Japamacs_Page/Blog/F93FC8E5-EB42-4287-BEC2-B50A6BEC8DF1.html
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: supernova777 on January 19, 2014, 12:49:31 AM
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/IDE-to-Serial-ATA-SATA-Bilateral-HDD-Adapter-Converter-/190543541433?pt=US_Drive_Cables_dapters&hash=item2c5d47b4b9
(http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/NTAwWDUwMA==/z/lUMAAOxyrjZRsZys/$T2eC16J,!)!E9s2fBWywBRsZyrl+hw~~60_3.JPG)
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Ozfer on February 07, 2014, 09:56:57 AM
The main issue that comes along is the PCI bus limitation. As stated the max for this system on pci is 133MB/s.

If you have one of these mac systems and you use PCI graphics, some sort of pci sound card, gigabit Ethernet, and a pci sata card with SSDs they are all fighting for the same 133MB(theoretical max) of space on the bus and will start degrading each others performance. I know there is some sort of a speed limit on the internal IDE but if you use all those other cards it may actually be faster then a pci card.

PCI-X on the other hand is able to work at about 500MB/s or 1GBP/s and should not take away from normal pci bandwidth.

It would be interested to find a PCI-X add on sata card for a mac that not only supports storage but booting. The only systems I personally have PCI-X on are high end servers from around 2000 lol and they run windows and pcix could have been used for storage . Here is a link to a example card that supports mac os 10.4 but not 9 and probably not booting. Unfortunately my powermac g3 with g4 upgrade doesn't have pci-x. If such a card could be found (it would probably have 4 sata ports) you could get a pretty crazy sata quad raid 0 1GB/s setup going on that could pretty much leave everything else in the dust.

http://www.amazon.com/Syba-SATA-PCI-X-Ports-Controller/dp/B002C0Y5X4

Also there are PCI-X to PCI-E adapters that should offer the same speeds and maybe this could be used to allow PCI-E mac or flashed graphics cards in systems that otherwise couldn't use pci-e such as the G4 maybe allowing for faster video performance?

Expensive example:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/STARTECH-PCIX1PEX4-PCI-X-TO-PCIE-ADAPTER-CARD-FOR-DESKTOP-MOTHERBOARD-MBD-/301018098415?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item461613aaef

I don't know how much of this would make a serious performance difference or if people would be willing to spend that much but it would be interesting to test.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: supernova777 on February 07, 2014, 05:52:36 PM
there are no g4s that have pci-x slots..
only the g5's featured pci-x bus...
my powermac g5 1.8ghz has pci-x slots.
they also output less power then pci (rated at 3.3v instead of 5v)

if you are talking about upgrading a g3 with a g4 cpu
the pci sata card with any kind of sata drive
ssd or not, will be way way way faster then
the ata/ide drive.. the ide hard drive connection in g3s is way
slower even then a normal g4.

Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Ozfer on February 07, 2014, 07:41:21 PM
Wow this is puzzling.

I have looked up pictures and can SEE the pci-64 port. You can see in the pic its longer then standard pci and its on a g4.
(http://galleryplus.ebayimg.com/ws/web/370868884839_1_0_1/1000x1000.jpg)

I looked it up and they are 64 bit pci ports running at 33Mhz according to Wikipedia.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Mac_G4)
 I guess they are not pci-x but still its pci 64 at 33Mhz and that allows for 266 MB/sec vs the standard PCI 133MB/sec. It should still offer a speed gain if you could utilize them instead of just pci cards as you get double the speed. Actually I didn't even realize there were so many versions till I visited this site. PCI-X and PCI-64 a pretty easy to confuse since the card slot looks the same.

Quote
Standard   Bit   Clock   Transfer rates
(bi-directional)
PCI 2.3   32 Bit   33 MHz   133 MB/sec
PCI 2.3   32 Bit   66 MHz   266 MB/sec
PCI 64   64 Bit   33 MHz   266 MB/sec
PCI 64   64 Bit   66 MHz   533 MB/sec
PCI-X 1.0   64 Bit   66 MHz   533 MB/sec
PCI-X 1.0   64 Bit   100 MHz   800 MB/sec
PCI-X 1.0   64 Bit   133 MHz   1066 MB/sec
PCI-X 2.0 (DDR)   64 Bit   133 MHz   2132 MB/sec
PCI-X 2.0 (QDR)   64 Bit   133 MHz   4264 MB/sec
PCI-Express   1 Lines 8 Bit   2.5 GHz   512 MB/sec
PCI-Express   2 Lines 8 Bit   2.5 GHz   1 GB/sec
PCI-Express   4 Lines 8 Bit   2.5 GHz   2 GB/sec
PCI-Express   8 Lines 8 Bit   2.5 GHz   4 GB/sec
PCI-Express   16 Lines 8 Bit   2.5 GHz   8 GB/sec
source: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/xeon-cpus-intel-p4-extreme-platform,808-4.html

Here is a SCSI card that supports PCI 64 who knows if its mac compatible though
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0009LX8EU/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&seller=

G4 Models that support PCI-64 over just normal pci are according to wikipedia:
Power Mac G4 (AGP Graphics)
Power Mac G4 (Gigabit Ethernet)
Power Mac G4 (Digital Audio)
Power Mac G4 (QuickSilver)
Power Mac G4 (QuickSilver 2002)
Power Mac G4 (QuickSilver 2002ED)
Power Mac G4 (Mirrored Drive Doors)
Power Mac G4 (FW 800)
Power Mac G4 (Mirrored Drive Doors 2003)

And the only model that only supports 32bit pci is
Power Mac G4 (PCI Graphics)

Also for the best video performance you would want one with AGP 4X that allows faster throughput such as
Power Mac G4 (Digital Audio)
Power Mac G4 (QuickSilver)
Power Mac G4 (QuickSilver 2002)
Power Mac G4 (QuickSilver 2002ED)
Power Mac G4 (Mirrored Drive Doors)
Power Mac G4 (FW 800)
Power Mac G4 (Mirrored Drive Doors 2003)

Also I was talking about G4s or G3s either way if you use a high end PCI card for graphics, audio, and gigabit Ethernet there is a real chance that it could impact the performance of a HDD through PCI. I have no idea how much it would be compared to the original board but it could be tested. It would make more of a impact on raid 0 systems or ssd systems. Mactron even said this earlier "  This allow a Max bandwidth of 133 MB/s. This fact and sharing the PCI bus with other cards (like in/out audio and DSP cards) let this SATA cards low room for improvements."

OMJ I didn't even see what mactron posted lol he seems to always beat me to these things... new challenge, find a 64 bit pci sata card compatible with os 9 :)

Here is one that will work in a G4 and is pci 64 bit but only works in os 10.3 and up made by sonnet
http://www.ebay.com/itm/SONNET-TECH-Tempo-SATA-X4P-Host-Adapter-TSATAII-X4P-Windows-Mac-PCI-X-/171230196577?pt=US_Computer_Disk_Controllers_RAID_Cards&hash=item27de1d7361

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempo_sata_x4p.html
http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempo_sata_x4i.html

WOOT I DID IT :):):):)

This card has 4 sata ports supports native mac booting and mac os and supports os 9 and SHOULD work with 5v or 3v pci 64 bit.
http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-1v4/

Imagine mac os 9 with 4 SSD in raid 0 with 266MB/sec instead of 133 that's double the HDD speed right there.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: supernova777 on February 07, 2014, 09:40:03 PM
mac os 9 doesnt support raid on its own
it would have to be software-powered raid.. which would suck;)
or a hardware card that does the raid (oblivious to the os)

the card i have (noted above) is the acard AEC-6890m and it is the only pci sata hardware raid card that i could find,
i got the last one in stock from acard themselves, this card is deleted, rare, + sold out now
the os will see the two drives on this card if its configured to raid modes as one drive

from the box u can see there is also a bigger version that supports 4 drives... the AEC-6896m
but i cant even find a picture of it on the net.. its 10 year old technology that wasnt ever really mass produced i think
and could be very hard to find

re: the other stuff u brought up, check out the next page:
http://superuser.com/questions/526118/bandwidth-of-pcisata-card-vs-built-in-sata
(http://i.stack.imgur.com/3l92b.png)

so, from the info re: slot pattern config above, u can see that it is indeed a 5v 64bit PCI slot pictured on what looks like a quicksilver motherboard

regardless of any limitations, im pretty sure the Sata Pci card will smoke any of the built in ATA's..
that would be interesting to see.. a side by side boot up + benchmark test
from the same SSD drive..

first, connected via one of the PCI-Sata cards i detailed above..
2nd, connected via the card you linked (the 64bit Seritek 1v4)
3rd, connected via PATA adapter on an ATA-100 bus
3th, connected via PATA adapter on an ATA-66 bus

i understand you think that the seritek 1v4 would be tops..
and it may be.. seeing as they are promising 1.5gbps for each port..
the other cards i detailed do the same, but only feature 2 channels.

Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: supernova777 on February 08, 2014, 07:22:04 AM
seritek also has the:
http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-1ve2plus2/
http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-1ve2plus2/spec/
32/64 bit, 33/66MHz PCI

http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-1ve4/
http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-1ve4/spec/
32/64 bit, 33/66MHz PCI

also if u check:
http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-1s2/spec/
32 bit, 33/66MHz PCI

Quote
"Developers eventually used the combined 64-bit and 66-MHz extension as a foundation, and, anticipating future needs, established 66-MHz and 133-MHz variants with a maximum bandwidth of 532 MB/s and 1064 MB/s respectively" ---http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI-X (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI-X)

quote from everymac.com re: g4 450mhz
"In the default configuration, this model has three open 33 MHz 64-bit PCI slots, and a 133 MHz 2X AGP slot occupied by the graphics card. It also has an open AirPort (802.11b) expansion slot."
so that is why these are not pci-x slots.. because pci-x is 66mhz 64-bit i think?

see also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_PCI

so the real question for these sata cards for use with g4 mac's..

33mhz 32bit pci max throughput
VS
33mhz 64bit pci max throughput

is there a drastic speed difference to use a pci sata 32bit vs pci sata 64bit card?

(http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-1v4/SeriTek-1V4.jpg)64bit
VS
(http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-1s2/SeriTek.jpg)32bit
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: MacTron on February 08, 2014, 08:43:10 AM
so the real question for these sata cards for use with g4 mac's..
33mhz 32bit pci max throughput
VS
33mhz 64bit pci max throughput
is there a drastic speed difference to use a pci sata 32bit vs pci sata 64bit card?

That's the question.
132MB/s versus 266MB/s
We need a test that show us that this 64 bits cards have a throughput between 132 and 266MB/s in a G4. That will prove that really works at 64 bits...
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Ozfer on February 08, 2014, 02:40:17 PM
According to tech specs it is 64 bit. I would be interested In Seeing the speed difference. Lol and you guys called me crazy making up ports and speed that don't exist ::) anyways software 4 way raid can beat 2 way hardware raid. Yes 66mhz 64 bit is pci-x and it's impossible to tell what's one it is by just looking at a picture so you can see why I thought it was PCI-x

What wod be interesting to benchmark is having your PCI sad setup by itself and haring low power or integrated gpu and a test with the same setup but a fancy PCI graphics card sound card/audio devices and some gigabit internet ports while downloading. You would see a speed hit.

Sorry for spelling mistakes I'm typing this up fast on my iphone
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Syntho on February 14, 2014, 03:31:46 AM
Hey guys, I just bought that OWC SSD drive for my G4, so thanks to DieHard for linking it.

I saw in the OWC installation video that there's a 133/ATA and a 66/ATA area. It said 133 in the video but I'm guessing it's actually 100.

Is it worth it to have separate SSDs for different jobs? I could put at least one more SSD in there. That way I could have an OS drive so my DAW programs are fast, and a separate one for tacking/recording so it doesn't interfere with the performance of my OS HD.

I'll be using Pro tools 5.1.3 and Logic 6.3.1 and I don't know how much of a 'DFD' (direct from disk) thing it uses when using sample players. It seems optimal to have 3x SSD drives - one for OS, one for tracking, one for samples, but I've only got room for two ATA/100 drives.

How many SSDs would you use and how would you divide the tasks up?
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Ozfer on February 14, 2014, 10:31:04 AM
If you have a SSD unless your doing some pretty intense file transfers 1 is fine.

Also guys here is a sonnet tempo on ebay 4 port sata mac pci-x and I believe pci 64 (they say it works with g4) compatible 4 raid card. Looks like it already had quite the bidding war but that would give you the best for space and performance in a G4.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sonnet-Tempo-SATA-X4i-4-Port-Serial-ATA-SATA-PCI-X-Card-/281263474347?pt=US_Internal_Port_Expansion_Cards&hash=item417c9c06ab
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Syntho on February 14, 2014, 10:50:55 AM
So there won't be much of a difference if I use just one single SSD for everything? I always heard to leave your applications on one drive and record to another. Hmm..
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: supernova777 on February 14, 2014, 10:56:38 AM
So there won't be much of a difference if I use just one single SSD for everything? I always heard to leave your applications on one drive and record to another. Hmm..

tuff to say if
SSD -> SSD copy  = faster
then moving files on the same drive.. but. it is FLASH rom or ram or whatever..
so its possible?
back in the day of course seperate disks was way faster due to the limitation of moving parts
the only reason u would need two SSD's tho is if u wanted more then 190GB of space..
as this 190gb limit for booting in os9 still applies to the ssds.. so with this in mind
it may be better to get two seperate 120gb SSD
then it would be to get a single 250gb
makes senses?
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: supernova777 on February 14, 2014, 10:57:30 AM
If you have a SSD unless your doing some pretty intense file transfers 1 is fine.

Also guys here is a sonnet tempo on ebay 4 port sata mac pci-x and I believe pci 64 (they say it works with g4) compatible 4 raid card. Looks like it already had quite the bidding war but that would give you the best for space and performance in a G4.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sonnet-Tempo-SATA-X4i-4-Port-Serial-ATA-SATA-PCI-X-Card-/281263474347?pt=US_Internal_Port_Expansion_Cards&hash=item417c9c06ab

i was gonna post this one earlier but couldnt find anything @ http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempo_sata_x4i.html saying it supported booting mac os 9!
u will notice that they claim 3 Gb/s per port SATA II controller.. does that mean per port? or per card?

the sonnet cards that i have however use the firmtek rom's to get their mac os 9 compatibility
i believe the roms were originally made by firmtek's people
i also have some other cards that were made by a guy from oregon usa where he flashed the rom into a
generic silicon image sata card and they work then.. so its all about the actual software on the rom bios chip on the actual card
that makes it compatible otherwise they could all be compatible + recognized... amazing eh?
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: supernova777 on February 22, 2014, 11:51:51 AM
on the topic of pci-x controllers... one thing that wasnt discussed is raid controllers
i have read that hte 640L highpoint rocketraid works out of the box and are bootable
for hackintosh's with pci-express slots...

i wonder if this card would be both powermac g4/g5 compatible
as well as hackintosh compatible

http://www.highpoint-tech.cn/USA/rr2224.htm

i almost ordered one a few months back
would be a real kick to find out if it actually DOES support mac os 9.. becuase things like this.. they frequently
just OMIT because they think noone wuld be even interested in it. (again, thanks to the elaborate funeral for mac os 9.. thanks steve;) but of course this was a requirement in his plan to convert everyone to osx swiftly the man greatly understoon the larger social mind + psyche hehe)

it would be awesome to find a PCI-X raid controller for raid 0/1/10/5 that is bootable + mac os 9 compatible aswell as compatible with g4s AND g5s AND hackintosh boxes running 10.5.x or 10.6.x (or even 10.7.x+)
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Enabler on February 23, 2014, 04:14:26 AM
Your dream come true...........
http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-1v4/
http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-1ve2plus2/
http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-1ve4/
http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-1se2/

I own 2 similar models, they are bootable and require no software. I guess there is special firmware on the card. No drivers needed. Works in OS9 & OSX
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: MacTron on February 23, 2014, 10:21:30 AM
I own 2 similar models, they are bootable and require no software. I guess there is special firmware on the card. No drivers needed. Works in OS9 & OSX
Can you show us the performance of this card in Mac Os 9 Please?
You can use the attached QuickBench app, in the extended tab.
Thank You.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: supernova777 on February 23, 2014, 12:55:19 PM
Your dream come true...........
http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-1v4/
http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-1ve2plus2/
http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-1ve4/
http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-1se2/

I own 2 similar models, they are bootable and require no software. I guess there is special firmware on the card. No drivers needed. Works in OS9 & OSX

similar models? so u own a different brand then firmtek? but still 64bit pci? + works in os9? :o the first 3 are 64bit.. the 1se2 is 32bit

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_odkw=sata+64+bit&_osacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=p2045573.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC0.H0.Xsata+%28pci-x%2C+64bit%29&_nkw=sata+%28pci-x%2C+64bit%29&_sacat=0

i think it would be possible that some other no name cards work.. well .. not "no name" but a card like "highpoint" for example has a history of being compatible with macs..

acard aswell:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Acard-AEC-6896S-4-Channel-SATA-RAID-Controller-PCI-X-/121261957617?pt=US_Computer_Disk_Controllers_RAID_Cards&hash=item1c3bc6a1f1
but alas no mention of mac in the manual http://dl.acard.com/manual/english/aec-6896.pdf
****ok the rule for acard products is -- it must end in the letter "m" for it to be mac compatible firmware
ie; 6890m etc

if i could have whichever card i wanted
i would want this one: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Firmtek/SATA1EVE22/
because it gives u 2 internal + 2 external..
+ is 64bit.. i really would like to know if these cards perform faster then the 32bit ones

(http://www.sonnettech.com/product/images/Tsatax4p_0710.jpg)

regarding the sonnet card "X4P" i would love to hear from someone who has this card..
as the previous model "tempo-X" has documentation that claims mac os 9 compatibility..
http://www.sonnettech.com/support/downloads/manuals/tempo-x_sata_4+4_qsg.pdf
(^^ verify for yourself in this document)

but the x4p's documents make no mention.. i would think there is a chance it is compatible and they simply do not mention this.. sonnets documentation is usually very thorough and i would think they woiuld mention it if it WASNT
compatlble for clarity's sake.. http://cvp.com/pdf/tempo_sata_x4p_qsg.pdf
 (^^^ no mac os 9 mention in thsi document)

theres also the x4i model http://www.sonnettech.com/Product/tempo_sata_x4i.html
that i didnt check

to recap... the x4p, x4i models do not make any claim of mac os 9 compatibility.. but the tempo-x discontinued 8 port model's manual did claim compatibility with mac os 9.

actually the tempo-x claims compatibility with x 10.2+ not os9.. but the manual makes a brief mention of 9..
Quote
"if you need to access a drive or partition from Mac OS 9, be sure to click the Install Mac OS 9 Drivers checkbox."
so it would seem that even tho the smaller 32bit tempo sata cards are totally firmtek 1s2 cards witht he right firmware
these cards would appear to not have the firmtek firmware , its a shame because theres a number of these for sale for under 75$ on ebay
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p2047675.m570.l1313.TR11.TRC1.A0.H0.Xtempo-x+sonn&_nkw=tempo-x+sonnet&_sacat=0&_from=R40
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Enabler on February 23, 2014, 02:55:48 PM
Yup, that's the ones I have 2 internal & 2 external.....for some reason I couldn't find it on their site because I couldn't remember the model number. I guess a brain fart or senior moment must have occurred. Bootable OS9 is hard to find. i will run a speed test but it wont be until next weekend.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: supernova777 on February 24, 2014, 01:13:02 AM
if it does indeed turn out that the speed is greatly improved on 64bit pci-x i will have a newfound respect for pci-x!!

i was just looking at this pc mobo its rare to find one like this that has pci-x slots
http://www.ebay.com/itm/100-NEW-ASUS-P5WDG2-WS-PRO-pci-x-motherboard-USA-by-DHL-3-10-day-775-DDR2-/261099673617?ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: supernova777 on March 20, 2014, 10:48:59 AM
http://lowendmac.com/thompson/06/1106.html
http://lowendmac.com/thompson/06/1117.html

these articles make reference to an older owc 2 internal + 2 external mac os 9 bootable card
seen here:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/SATAPCI2P/
seems to have a yellow/orange color pcb
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: supernova777 on March 20, 2014, 09:59:55 PM
If you have a SSD unless your doing some pretty intense file transfers 1 is fine.

Also guys here is a sonnet tempo on ebay 4 port sata mac pci-x and I believe pci 64 (they say it works with g4) compatible 4 raid card. Looks like it already had quite the bidding war but that would give you the best for space and performance in a G4.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sonnet-Tempo-SATA-X4i-4-Port-Serial-ATA-SATA-PCI-X-Card-/281263474347?pt=US_Internal_Port_Expansion_Cards&hash=item417c9c06ab

hey ozfer..
this card i beleive is X only.. i would be thrilled to hear otherwise but i would expect this card would not allow u to boot unless you were using osx as an operating system.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: supernova777 on March 22, 2014, 11:27:53 AM
(http://www.cooldrives.com/ep.yimg.com/ca/I/cooldrives_2069_52280597.jpg)
http://www.cooldrives.com/4saiipc64cas.html

id love to get a os9 bootable card with this setup. 3-internal 1-external
havent seen any tho;(
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: supernova777 on September 17, 2014, 12:11:37 AM
imagine mac os 9 with 4 SSD in raid 0 with 266MB/sec instead of 133 that's double the HDD speed right there.

unfortunately this also adds "double" the chance of a failure in a raid0 configuration so external backup becomes twice as important!
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: supernova777 on September 17, 2014, 12:14:17 AM
(http://www.cooldrives.com/ep.yimg.com/ca/I/cooldrives_2069_52280597.jpg)
http://www.cooldrives.com/4saiipc64cas.html

id love to get a os9 bootable card with this setup. 3-internal 1-external
havent seen any tho;(

reason i said the above:
1 normal drive, 2x drives for raid0 or raid1 config and 1 external port
which gives u "one of each" type of drive configuration
the closest choice to this would be the http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-1ve2plus2/
which provides 2 internal + 2 external..
u know.. when i think about it.. it might be even best to have all 4 drives be in external enclosures.. allows for easy access.. less possible heat inside the case (if using non-ssd)
this card would provide that: http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-1ve4/
or the lesser http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-1se2/

the 1v4 looks like a great option http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-1v4/
but with 4 internal ports. wow thats alot of drives to put inside.. if using non-ssd ur looking at a cooling problem
leading to drive failure inevitably

Quote
Port Multiplication: The remarkable new port multiplier technology included in the SeriTek/2SE4 allows each physical eSATA port to access multiple devices at full speed via port multiplier enclosures like FirmTek's new SeriTek/5PM (http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-5pm/).

for backup.. the ultimate scenario would be to find a card which supports Port multiplier over a single esata but im pretty sure that i looked into this and it was not supported on g4s only g5s + only osx can support port multiplier someone please correct me if im wrong and i wish to be wrong:)
the only card specifyng support for multiplication of ports is http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-2se4/
oh wow! there is mention of the g4 on the specs page! so may be there is hope for port multiplication..
but i would guess this is only in osx on a g4
Quote
Hardware Requirements    

    PCI-X based Macintosh with available PCI-X expansion slot. Works well with PowerMac G5 PCI-X models (8 memory slots). Is not compatible with PowerMac G5 PCI models (4 memory slots). Some customers have reported compatibility issues when using the SeriTek/2SE4 with PowerMac G4 800MHz and 1.25GHz models.

what do they mean by 800mhz model? could be
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g4/specs/powermac_g4_800_dp_qs.html
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g4/specs/powermac_g4_800_qs.html
for sure  and possibly even:
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g4/specs/powermac_g4_867_dp_mdd.html

for 1.25GHz
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g4/specs/powermac_g4_1.25_dp_mdd.html
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g4/specs/powermac_g4_1.25_mdd.html

thats alot of models..
unfortunately both of which i own :( (shown in bold)

but of course it says right below this:
Operating Systems Supported    
Quote
    Mac OS X version 10.4.0 or later (works best with 10.4.6 or later)

so here we have it confirmed.. no chance for port multiplication with os9;(
or maybe its just an undocumented thing?? if anyone has this card.. please post!!
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: supernova777 on September 17, 2014, 12:33:28 AM
its funny on the page for the card it says:

Quote
SeriTek/2SE4 optimizes performance for up to 5 hard drives per data port by utilizing the advanced bandwidth characteristics of the PCI-X architecture. When 20 high performance hard drives are configured in a RAID array, throughput can reach beyond 700Mb/sec,

can u imagine if it did work, 1 little g4 with 4 x http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-5pm/ ?? lol
the g4 would burst into flames:  8) ;D

Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: DaCat on March 30, 2015, 12:30:33 PM
Seems many us have the same fantasy, the ultimate hot-rodded OS 9 bootable G4, it might make a fun project machine just to claim the world record.

I'd guess that 4 SATA SSDs using software RAID might do the trick along with one of the later video cards, full matched memory and a dual 1.8 or 2.0 processor upgrade, now it is a matter of looking over all the threads here on this subject & combining the best of the results.

I've been using the SeriTek/1SE2 dual external ESATA card with great results on my Quicksilver DP, but after reading the above I see it is 32 bit and upgrading to the 4 port SeriTek/1VE4 might well give a speed boost as it matches the Quicksilver's 64 bit PCI slots. I went with the two port because it was much cheaper at the time, maybe one of those cards will work in my G4 Yikes! and give it a speed boost, but I found copying huge file sets from ESATA to ESATA was averaging about 1 GB/minute which isn't bad.

For the next boost I want to try a SSD in an external ESATA case, I've used 1 & 3 TB Seagate Barracuda's, can't remember if I hit any size limitations but most have lots of partitions, I generally do file copying in Leopard and use the partitioned 1 GB for everyday work in both systems.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: widter on September 08, 2015, 02:25:20 AM
Great post, many thanks.  8)

Has anyone recently found a cheap but good quality card from China on Ebay or the likes? It seems kind of hard to know if any of these work with OS9 - let alone if they are bootable. So any hints would be much appreciated!  ;)

Examples (untested):
http://www.ebay.com/itm/3-Port-SATA-and-IDE-PCI-Controller-With-RAID-Card-Adapter-/381344027413?hash=item58c9e01315
http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-SATA-1-eSATA-1-IDE-RAID-to-PCI-Card-Adapter-Converter-/171559182930?hash=item27f1b96252
http://www.ebay.com/itm/4-Port-SATA-IDE-HARD-DISC-DVD-PCI-Controller-Expansion-Card-VIA-VT6420-chipset-/131595496677?hash=item1ea3b3ece5
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Hot-VIA-VT6421A-3-SATA-1-Port-IDE-PCI-RAID-Controller-Card-/360529032543?hash=item53f134755f
http://www.ebay.com/itm/4-Port-Internal-SATA-I-to-PCI-Sil3114-Serial-ATA-Controller-Software-Raid-Card/271265350494
http://www.ebay.com/itm/PCI-32bit-7-Port-COMBO-CARD-2xSATA-Serial-ATA-4x-USB-2-0-IDE-Adapter-/151595897256?hash=item234bd1d1a8

I have tested 2 USB 2.0 cards with VIA chips, they worked with OSX but not OS9.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: MacTron on September 08, 2015, 07:38:13 AM
Great post, many thanks.  8)

Has anyone recently found a cheap but good quality card from China on Ebay or the likes? It seems kind of hard to know if any of these work with OS9 - let alone if they are bootable. So any hints would be much appreciated!  ;)

Examples (untested):
http://www.ebay.com/itm/3-Port-SATA-and-IDE-PCI-Controller-With-RAID-Card-Adapter-/381344027413?hash=item58c9e01315
http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-SATA-1-eSATA-1-IDE-RAID-to-PCI-Card-Adapter-Converter-/171559182930?hash=item27f1b96252
http://www.ebay.com/itm/4-Port-SATA-IDE-HARD-DISC-DVD-PCI-Controller-Expansion-Card-VIA-VT6420-chipset-/131595496677?hash=item1ea3b3ece5
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Hot-VIA-VT6421A-3-SATA-1-Port-IDE-PCI-RAID-Controller-Card-/360529032543?hash=item53f134755f
http://www.ebay.com/itm/4-Port-Internal-SATA-I-to-PCI-Sil3114-Serial-ATA-Controller-Software-Raid-Card/271265350494
http://www.ebay.com/itm/PCI-32bit-7-Port-COMBO-CARD-2xSATA-Serial-ATA-4x-USB-2-0-IDE-Adapter-/151595897256?hash=item234bd1d1a8

I have tested 2 USB 2.0 cards with VIA chips, they worked with OSX but not OS9.

There are really few ones that work with Mac Os 9. Is not about chipset only, but the EEPROM code, It have to be Mac Os 9 compatible.
Non of this will work at all.  :'(
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: supernova777 on September 08, 2015, 10:40:09 AM
i wouldnt buy any of the ones with via chipset personally

but we did have a report of a chinese card that had firmware that had a via chipset but those cards will not have this firmware u can be sure of that

Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: widter on October 19, 2015, 02:29:26 AM
I have found that this one proved to be flash-able to use in a Mac G4. Quality of the card is so-so.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/331677428152

I used this guide:
http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/guide-to-flashing-pc-sil3112-sata-cards-for-mac.1690231/

Hope this helps ;-)
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Protools5LEGuy on October 19, 2015, 06:29:03 AM
I have found that this one proved to be flash-able to use in a Mac G4.
Silicon Image 3112 is flashable for OSX, at least with the weinetech firmware.

Max111 user here converts 3112 cards on OS9 bootable cards at a little cost.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: widter on November 03, 2015, 01:52:03 AM
I have found that this one proved to be flash-able to use in a Mac G4. Quality of the card is so-so.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/331677428152

I used this guide:
http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/guide-to-flashing-pc-sil3112-sata-cards-for-mac.1690231/

Hope this helps ;-)

I thought I should post an update on this: I bought one of these cards a while back and then posted the above. Flashing went well and was remarkably easy. I put the card in a MDD and it is working happily with an SATA HD.

I bought another card from the same seller since. One would think the same scenario would happen, but not so: While flashing is also no problem for this second card, it is creating issues in the 2 Macs I have tried putting it in.
- A Quicksilver won't boot at all with it installed, it wont' even allow a PRAM reset (so it would seem the boot procedure is not working).
- A MDD IS booting with the card installed, but has problems accepting the IDE drives as startup drives. Basically, "Startup Disc" won't see the IDE system folders as valid, and after a reboot (or startup), I get to see the "?" disc symbol for a while every time.

Any thoughts on these strange findings?
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: widter on November 04, 2015, 11:46:20 PM
I have interesting news for supernova777 and some others.

It seems that I have successfully reverse-engineered the Seritek firmware to fit on standard 128k EPROMs. This firmware will enable SIL3112 cards to register under OS9 as SCSI cards, making them more compatible than when using the Wiebe firmware.

I have yet to do more testing, I am writing this early. But initial signs are looking good, and since we all love os9...

Please note, this firmware will NOT work under X. Including X would make the firmware too big to fit on a 128k EPROM. (Should it turn out that you need X compatibity later on, you could go back to the Wiebe firmware.)

I will get back to you when my testing is concluded. If it turns out positive, I will upload the firmware. And if you have a PC with a floppy disc drive around, you can then flash your own cards... yes. A PC. ;-)

Stay tuned...
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: supernova777 on November 05, 2015, 03:32:07 AM
wow... i was hoping this day would come! is it really true?
u did this by removing the osx code from the firmware? as i suggested might be possible? (dont ask me where or when i said this but i know i did, sometime somewhere)
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: widter on November 05, 2015, 03:39:45 AM
wow... i was hoping this day would come! is it really true?
u did this by removing the osx code from the firmware? as i suggested might be possible? (dont ask me where or when i said this but i know i did, sometime somewhere)

Big secret how I did it, supernova, hehe!  ;)

But basically you are right. The firmware was constructed in such that they put in the os9 code first, followed by the osX code. The new firmware I created had to be exactly 128k long, which can be easily done in a HEX editor. The hard part is really understanding the code enough to know where to cut.

As I said, I need to test this more thoroughly. I did see that the card registered perfectly as a SCSI card under 9.2.2, but I have not had time to run speed tests or even reliabity tests. Quicksilvers seem not to like it, but that's hardly news.

Somewhat exiting is that Firmtek lists ATAPI support for the firmware - whether this means you can connect optical drives, I have not tested yet either. It might.

I'll try getting back to the forum asap. If all turns out well, I'll upload a complete package of all you need to conduct the flashing (provided a PC w/ floppy disc).

Thanks for your interest. Your comment acutally was part of the necessary inspriration for me!  ;D
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: supernova777 on November 05, 2015, 04:46:21 AM
im pretty sure i have used optical drive via SATA.. on my Tempo Sata Serial card

if u have succeeded in doing this.. its a very big news for our vintage macos9 community.. to be able to easily flash any sil3112 card + use sata in g3/g4 + mac os 9.. this is a huge plus for many people on a budget.. let me be the first to thank you

u have confirmed that they are booting mac os 9?
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: widter on November 05, 2015, 04:48:13 AM
im pretty sure i have used optical drive via SATA.. on my Tempo Sata Serial card

Yup, but it seems the Wiebe firmware (that most people use for flashing) is not supporting ATAPI. Hey, you could extract the firmware of your card and share it ;)
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: supernova777 on November 05, 2015, 06:28:32 AM
im pretty sure i have used optical drive via SATA.. on my Tempo Sata Serial card

Yup, but it seems the Wiebe firmware (that most people use for flashing) is not supporting ATAPI. Hey, you could extract the firmware of your card and share it ;)

no point it uses the larger eeprom.
and the firmware is freely available from seritek to download.
also it was figured out that the seritek firmware includes limited copyright protection code that checks the size + manufacturer type of the eeprom aswell.. not sure if u knew this

its easy enuff to just use a cd connected via ATA..
why are u talking about wiebetech. wiebetech firmware doesnt support os9..
which firmware did u reduce? u said u reduced the seritek originally.. now u are talking about wiebetech? confusing.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: MacTron on November 05, 2015, 06:53:04 AM
WoW!
Great job, thanks. I hope that this firmware will end working well. It will help to a lot of people.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: MacTron on November 14, 2015, 01:55:12 AM
@ widter: How is this work going?
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: widter on November 15, 2015, 11:27:02 PM
Hej, sorry about the late reply. I have been on a business trip.

Honestly, there have been some setbacks. I have now tested several different cards, all of the 10 Dollar price range. While the modified firmware works with some cards, it does not with others. With some cards, Mac OS 9 will find them correctly and System Profiler will show them as a "Firmtek SCSI card", but attached devices will not mount or be unreliable.

I will conduct further investigation into this. Part of the problem is the "copy protection" in Firmteks firmware that only allows for certain EPROM chips to be used by the cards.

I have spoken with a Swedish hardware engineer, it seems that it could be difficult to change the EPROM specifications in the firmware to fit every card out there.

So far: I'm really sorry if I got your hopes up too much. Firmtek did a good job at making this harder than expected.  :P  I will let you know if I come to a sollution that is more promising on a wide scale.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: tiousable on August 07, 2016, 03:37:59 PM
One for the "not working" pile:
(http://i.imgur.com/Lm3FqCl.jpg)
Bought from here (http://www.aliexpress.com/item//32219550861.html). I have the Wiebetech firmware on it, and the "9.2.2 Universal" CD seems to identify the card just fine but does not see any disks connected to it - is that a known issue with the Wiebe FW?.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: MacTron on August 08, 2016, 07:15:34 AM
... is that a known issue with the Wiebe FW?.

The Wiebetech firmware doesn't work on Mac Os 9. IIRC

... and this card port layout ( one external and two internal ) won't be compatible with Mac Os 9 firmware, I think.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: tiousable on August 08, 2016, 12:54:12 PM
OK, thanks, I'm going to try the Firmtek 1S2 fw then. Kinda expected this and already ordered the parts earlier (stock prom's too small, and probably is the wrong kind too (dat darn copy protection...)).

Regarding the layout, it's really just two channels, and you have a jumper block to redirect the data lines of one of the internal connectors to the external one. So it's really not as weird as it might look at first glance.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: geforceg4 on August 25, 2016, 12:34:20 AM
seritek firmtek are the best solution for mac os 9 users.
or purple sonnet tempo (Which is same thing)
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: geforceg4 on September 24, 2016, 10:44:27 PM
I have interesting news for supernova777 and some others.

It seems that I have successfully reverse-engineered the Seritek firmware to fit on standard 128k EPROMs. This firmware will enable SIL3112 cards to register under OS9 as SCSI cards, making them more compatible than when using the Wiebe firmware.


it is a shame we have so many users like this.. who come in and then dissappear!!!! widter? what happened to you? you cant drop some serious news like that and then leave without sharing for the benefit of all? ??? ?
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: geforceg4 on September 24, 2016, 10:46:23 PM
do we have any japanese speaking users? that can get their hands on one of these mathey pci sata cards?


https://www.google.ca/search?num=30&q=msata-p02mac&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjAhsmq6KnPAhUS0IMKHQIUAcYQ7xYIGygA&biw=1258&bih=639 (https://www.google.ca/search?num=30&q=msata-p02mac&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjAhsmq6KnPAhUS0IMKHQIUAcYQ7xYIGygA&biw=1258&bih=639)

(to extract the firmware)

(http://manam.up.seesaa.net/image/2005020827a11094.jpg)


(http://www.pasocomclub.co.jp/img/4538124003394.jpg)

seems to be the same as the ratoc card

https://www.google.ca/search?sourceid=chrome-psyapi2&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8&q=(masata-p02mac%20%7C%20REX-PS30X)&oq=(masata-p02mac%20%7C%20REX-PS30X)&aqs=chrome..69i57.6745j0j7
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: max1zzz on September 26, 2016, 02:51:49 PM
I'm still trying to get my hands on a Mathey Msata-13UMAC as it looks like it uses the via6421a chip, PC cards based on this are both really cheap and really easy to get hold of. Just I have never seen a Mathey Msata-13UMAC for sale anywhere....
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: geforceg4 on September 28, 2016, 03:05:10 PM
for those who were reading the thread above.. the user named widter has informed me that he has no intention of making his firmware hack public now or in the future.. so the search continues.. hopefully i wont give up + ill eventually be able to find someone whos capable of backward engineering the firmware or downsizing it to fit a normal/common size rom chip

Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: max1zzz on September 28, 2016, 04:47:41 PM
Everyone gets so caught up on the size of the chip, The size of the chips is really not important here

The problem is that the firmware preforms a flash id check, if the firmware detects the flash chip is not a am29lv040, mx29lv040 or pm39lv040 the firmware will refuse to load. You can cut down the firmware to fit on the 1mbit flash chips the cards ship with but they still won't work as they will still fail the flash id check.

To get the firmware to work on these cards unmodified you would need to disable this check and cut the firmware down, the latter process being (in theory) quite easy (probably just cutting out the compressed OSX kexts in the firmware that aren't needed for our uses would do). The former is the difficult one, and thus far I haven't seen any one who has accomplished it.

At this point the only option is to swap the flash chip with one of the 3 mentioned above, they are a standard standard size but for some reason are pretty hard to come by (I guess that's why seritek chose them....)
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: geforceg4 on September 28, 2016, 08:14:23 PM
i remember all of those details.. so yea..
its public knowledge now.., the goal is to 1) backward engineer + remove both the brand + size checks from the firmware 2) reduce the size anyway possible, one way possibly being by removing the osx related code.. (it was also thought that there might be further code-logic where the script inside the firmware checks the size of the firmware itself to make sure it hasnt been tampered with etc)


once thats accomplished, it would make it possible for anyone to get a SIL3112 card and be able to use any mac or pc to re-flash a card without doing any physical hardware chip swap - de-soldering + re-soldering
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: max1zzz on September 29, 2016, 11:56:52 AM
Interesting, Just been re-reading the thread over at 68k and just noticed something interesting about what dougg3 said about the flash id check

Quote
The firmware extracts a couple of kexts into OS X, and one of the kexts checks for supported flash chips during the OS X boot process and fails to load if the board doesn't have a supported flash chip. (In fact, on a newer revision of the firmware that they don't have available on the website for download, it causes a kernel panic...)

So the driver checks the flash chip and not the firmware, dougg3 only ever looked at the OSX kext's - this leaves a real good chance that the OS9 driver might not.
If this is the case we may be able to just cut down the firmware after all.... Looks like I have some testing to do at the weekend :)
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: geforceg4 on September 29, 2016, 03:23:15 PM
Everyone gets so caught up on the size of the chip, The size of the chips is really not important here

The problem is that the firmware preforms a flash id check, if the firmware detects the flash chip is not a am29lv040, mx29lv040 or pm39lv040 the firmware will refuse to load.


well the 040 indicates the size of the chip.. (4M-BIT [512K x 8] but you probably know that already) .. so the size of the chip is part of the check for the specific size + make that was part of the check that was thought to exist in the firmware.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: madalynmcworm on October 24, 2016, 08:20:38 AM
Is this still something we are working on?

I'm having a heck of a time finding any SATA cards that are native. I see these si(i|L)3112 cards for $8 on ebay. I don't see any confirmation that the $8 cards work. One post was the first went well, the next two failed.

Do we know what the firmware instruction set is for REing it? Or any more real info?

Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: geforceg4 on October 24, 2016, 08:15:08 PM
Is this still something we are working on?

I'm having a heck of a time finding any SATA cards that are native. I see these si(i|L)3112 cards for $8 on ebay. I don't see any confirmation that the $8 cards work. One post was the first went well, the next two failed.

Do we know what the firmware instruction set is for REing it? Or any more real info?


the SIL cards themselves dont work untill they are modified by a professional whos familiar with the process in making them mac bootable..
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: madalynmcworm on October 25, 2016, 08:57:46 AM
Is this still something we are working on?

I'm having a heck of a time finding any SATA cards that are native. I see these si(i|L)3112 cards for $8 on ebay. I don't see any confirmation that the $8 cards work. One post was the first went well, the next two failed.

Do we know what the firmware instruction set is for REing it? Or any more real info?


the SIL cards themselves dont work untill they are modified by a professional whos familiar with the process in making them mac bootable..

Is there a defined process for modifying those cards that is public?
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: MacTron on October 25, 2016, 10:22:29 AM
Is there a defined process for modifying those cards that is public?

Yes, it's public but complex: You have to change the EPROM of the card and flash it with the Mac Firmware.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Knezzen on November 25, 2016, 10:38:43 AM
Just wanted to share the QuickBench results from my KingSpec 120gb SATA SSD connected to the Sil3114 based card I bought from max1zzz.

QuickBench™ 1.5 Test Results File
©2000 Intech Software Corp.
Test file created on fredag 25 november 2016 at 19.37.39
Test Volume name: Copland

Xfer Size     Sequential Read   Sequential Write    Random Read      Random Write

1 KByte         3.772 MB/sec    565.163 KB/sec      2.134 MB/sec    577.968 KB/sec
2 KBytes        7.202 MB/sec      1.110 MB/sec      7.250 MB/sec      1.127 MB/sec
4 KBytes       12.749 MB/sec      2.228 MB/sec     12.346 MB/sec      2.186 MB/sec
8 KBytes       23.196 MB/sec      4.101 MB/sec     19.734 MB/sec      4.214 MB/sec
16 KBytes      20.864 MB/sec      8.297 MB/sec     28.591 MB/sec      8.505 MB/sec
32 KBytes      62.751 MB/sec     16.107 MB/sec     36.350 MB/sec     15.476 MB/sec
64 KBytes      78.340 MB/sec     28.115 MB/sec     47.863 MB/sec     27.315 MB/sec
128 KBytes     89.580 MB/sec     43.093 MB/sec     39.700 MB/sec     42.769 MB/sec
256 KBytes     96.779 MB/sec     59.297 MB/sec     59.275 MB/sec     61.216 MB/sec
512 KBytes    100.766 MB/sec     77.188 MB/sec     76.233 MB/sec     76.578 MB/sec
1 MByte       102.913 MB/sec     89.473 MB/sec     95.815 MB/sec     78.484 MB/sec
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Protools5LEGuy on November 25, 2016, 02:37:20 PM
Just wanted to share the QuickBench results from my KingSpec 120gb SATA SSD connected to the Sil3114 based card I bought from max1zzz.

I would swear max1zzz does magic on 3112
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Knezzen on December 01, 2016, 10:23:15 AM
So the SeriTek/1v4 arrived today from Italy. I took out the Sil3112 based card I bought from Max and put the SeriTek in it's place. The first thing I did was take some new benchmarks with QuickBench.

So this is the exact same SSD with the same 9.2.2 installation I used with the Sil3112 card.

QuickBench™ 1.5 Test Results File
©2000 Intech Software Corp.
Test file created on torsdag 1 december 2016 at 18.19.38
Test Volume name: Copland

Xfer Size     Sequential Read   Sequential Write    Random Read      Random Write


1 KByte         4.498 MB/sec    688.468 KB/sec      3.342 MB/sec    723.170 KB/sec
2 KBytes        8.677 MB/sec      1.377 MB/sec      9.825 MB/sec      1.411 MB/sec
4 KBytes       15.241 MB/sec      2.712 MB/sec     16.758 MB/sec      2.782 MB/sec
8 KBytes       27.832 MB/sec      5.247 MB/sec     28.123 MB/sec      5.420 MB/sec
16 KBytes      25.469 MB/sec      2.950 MB/sec     40.406 MB/sec     10.234 MB/sec
32 KBytes      76.238 MB/sec     19.184 MB/sec     51.610 MB/sec     18.941 MB/sec
64 KBytes      94.812 MB/sec     33.307 MB/sec     67.067 MB/sec     33.499 MB/sec
128 KBytes    112.289 MB/sec     51.318 MB/sec     82.476 MB/sec     52.636 MB/sec
256 KBytes    120.314 MB/sec     72.897 MB/sec    109.185 MB/sec     73.063 MB/sec
512 KBytes    125.294 MB/sec     90.588 MB/sec    118.810 MB/sec     91.037 MB/sec
1 MByte       127.379 MB/sec    105.403 MB/sec    122.983 MB/sec    104.777 MB/sec

You can really see that the 64bit SeriTek gives an overall speed improved.
I'm very satisfied with the results  -afro-
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: madalynmcworm on January 31, 2017, 12:04:18 PM
Hmm. Been a bit busy, maybe I missed something. Has anything new been learned or has a wiki been made with a flashing process and proper chips, etc for making this work?

I'm fine with soldering / flashing it myself; It just appears to be a bit scattered as far as info goes for me. I'd like a confirmed process that seems to be the agreed upon way to do this and not "Oh this guy said this and then did this and then vanished. Some other guy used this and it worked maybe...".


Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: stephenvalente on February 06, 2017, 07:10:37 AM
I'm watching the item below. Anyone use this?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/142222150212
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: MacTron on February 06, 2017, 08:13:51 AM
I'm watching the item below. Anyone use this?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/142222150212

It does not support Mac OS 9.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: stephenvalente on February 06, 2017, 01:50:28 PM
I'm watching the item below. Anyone use this?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/142222150212

It does not support Mac OS 9.

Apologies; was too focussed on looking at it working with the Power Mac G4 and not the OS!
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: stephenvalente on February 20, 2017, 01:43:21 AM
Managed to get a 2-port Sonnet SATA card here in the U.K. Will install in one of my mirror door G4's when time allows. Amazed to find one!
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: tiousable on May 28, 2017, 04:20:03 AM
Well, I finally got around to replacing the flash on the card I mentioned earlier. Have the Seritek 1S2 (v5.1.3, I seem to recall there being others, which I have yet to try) firmware on it right now. The card shows up, as well as the attached SSD, and I can start initializing the disk, but then it just... sits there, being busy... updating the screen every second or two so it's not totally stuck. Is that a known failure mode? Do I have to install to an IDE drive and clone that to a SATA one, maybe?
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: IIO on July 06, 2017, 07:18:56 AM
my sonnet recently started to do weird things in both OS9 and OSX. there is also a chance that the problems are caused by a dying quicksilver PSU, but otherwise i tracked it down to the sonnet card by a long list of tests.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: wnlewis on December 19, 2017, 03:25:17 PM
I recently bought a Firmtek/Seritek 1V4 and several Firmtek/Seritek 1SC1 adapters. I put the jumper on a Seagate Barracuda 750 Gb drive to set it for master, put the 1SC1 adapter on it, and plugged the cable into the 1V4 card. Then I selected OS 9.2.2 as the boot drive (on the Seagate) and restarted the G4 (AGP with a 1 GHZ upgrade). The G4 booted into 9.2.2 just like it was supposed to. So that was step one in a project I am working on. Neal Lewis
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: macStuff on December 24, 2017, 08:16:38 AM
the combination of a pci sata card and a healthy modern hard drive = disk performance that i would have loved to have had
back in 1999, 2000, 2001 time period, for g3s + lower end g4's i think its a must have upgrade for any serious hobbyist or vintage mac enthusiast!
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: MacTron on December 26, 2017, 07:25:38 AM
All the SATA PCI cards for Mac os 9 are 32 bits.

I was wrong here... the Seritek 1eVE2+2 and the Seritek 1V4 are both 64 bits.

It would be interesting to see some test results with those SATA cards against this adaptors.

(http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=2023.0;attach=1494)

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,2023.msg27432.html#msg27432
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: macStuff on December 26, 2017, 12:22:21 PM
it would be an amazing accomplishment to be able to find an easy modification to allow the generic SIL3112 cards to be able to be mac os9 bootable..

looking at the graph above just posted by mactron, yes the 64bit is far + away the leader .+ "BEST" but for me, the performance of the sil3112 is not far behind but the biggest difference is the PRICE! these sil3112 cards are only 10$ a pop or can be found in large quanitities + availability; wheras the 64bit ones are hard to find and about 3-4 times as costly,
small price to pay to have the BEST for those who are obsessed with achieving the best performance..

but for me, im more than happy with the performance jump simply using a sil3112 pci card over the built in disk which can be ATA33 or ATA66 or ATA100 depending on which PCI MAC you are using..
because of the PRICE! is so cheap..  the main problem is the stupid tricky firmware.. performing all these unneccessary checks..with the sole purpose of ensuring their own profit margin,

whats funny to me is that the creators of the seritek firmware + other bootable sata firmwares, this is not something that they "OWN COPYRIGHT OF" because noone can "OWN" the ability to boot the mac.... except for maybe apple.

these developers who developed this firmware must have done so with the help of apples developer support, somewhere, there must be information on how to achieve this, if only we could find someone who is a firmware programmer; i think if it were possible to remove these unneccessary steps from the firmware, or to create a new, bootable firmware, that this might shave some seconds off the startup time and also remove some other "hardware incompatibility" that has been observed as a result of the firmware "messing up" its configuration at boot time;

if only we could find someone who is a firmware programmer
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: macStuff on June 03, 2019, 06:30:52 AM
@ widter: How is this work going?

ive ordered a card on which to test with ; and ill be attempting to get this 'done' myself
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: macStuff on June 03, 2019, 06:33:44 AM
I'm watching the item below. Anyone use this?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/142222150212

It does not support Mac OS 9.

the sil3114 has been confirmed to work on a powermac g4 under osx after being flashed with the sil3112 wiebetech firmware; i plan on attempting to do the same with the seritek 1s2 firmware;
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: macStuff on June 03, 2019, 07:06:33 AM
time to kick this up a notch + get this done - for the benefit of all ppc macos users worldwide
we need a new source of bootable pci cards
im not gonna sit back and watch losers sell tempo sata cards on ebay for 400$
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Pushpull76 on November 18, 2019, 06:32:35 AM
Just bought a Tempo Sata X4p for experiments and modifications.
I'll change for sure the connectors (I'll add 4 internal serial ata connectors instead of the external ones) and I'll check if macos 9 can boot. Later, I'll check for the chipset and the ROM content.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Pushpull76 on November 18, 2019, 06:57:36 AM
Can someone post for me the exact codes/photos of the original seritek roms ? To be honest, instead of find a firmware programmer, I think I can simply buy a batch of 10/20 chipset compatible cards, swap the rom chips and sell them to you all.
Tell me if you are interested.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: IIO on November 18, 2019, 04:02:10 PM
in my opinion it would even make a lot of sense if it was not bootable.

(best option to boot is a small SSD with a 3 euro adapter from ATA the 100 controller of the 2001 - mdd macs; in te case of quicksilver you easily get that SSD in the case in addition to 4 3,5" HDDs)

it just has to work properly in OS9 - including a simple to use option to update the firmware / reflash it for everyone - and people will buy it.

isnt the X4 a bit too pricey as basis? for what do you think you could offer modified cards?
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Pushpull76 on November 19, 2019, 02:39:10 AM
in my opinion it would even make a lot of sense if it was not bootable.

(best option to boot is a small SSD with a 3 euro adapter from ATA the 100 controller of the 2001 - mdd macs; in te case of quicksilver you easily get that SSD in the case in addition to 4 3,5" HDDs)

it just has to work properly in OS9 - including a simple to use option to update the firmware / reflash it for everyone - and people will buy it.

isnt the X4 a bit too pricey as basis? for what do you think you could offer modified cards?

I bought the X4 because I need it under mac os X on a G4 MDD; I'm curious to see if a drive or raid formatted with the os9 compatibility flag will work under os9, which is present on my G4 on another drive. The chipset on the X4 is probably a Marvell one; don't know how many cards around have the same chipset.

The idea is to buy some cards, which we know are compatible at 100% with the Firmtek chipset, unsolder the rom, put a plcc32 socket on the board and insert the rom which we know is compatible with the firmtek updater. I think we are in the range of 25-30 euro for a card. I'm doing some experiments with scrappy cards here to see if it can be done without problems.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: macStuff on November 20, 2019, 01:18:10 AM
your best bet (highest rate of success) would be to find more sil3112 cards someplace
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Pushpull76 on November 20, 2019, 02:46:34 AM
your best bet (highest rate of success) would be to find more sil3112 cards someplace

I bought from Amazon this card

(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/811LswKwGzL._AC_SL1500_.jpg)

The chipset is ok and I can buy them in good quantities. The only doubt I have is on the ROM chip position.
As you can see from the image, there are small components around, exactly where I wanna put a socket for the ROM. I have probably to solder the new chip directly on the board.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: IIO on November 20, 2019, 11:28:20 AM
the final product should in all cases support JBOD
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Pushpull76 on November 20, 2019, 05:02:49 PM
It seems someone is already producing a batch :-D

https://www.ebay.it/itm/2-Port-SATA-PCI-Controller-Card-Apple-Macintosh-PowerMac-G3-G4-G5-SSD-OSX-OS-9/264403383346?hash=item3d8fab7432:g:7csAAOSwgYpdMbyJ
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: IIO on November 20, 2019, 05:45:09 PM
1s2 ... "not compatible with quicksilver" :)

damn.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: vectrex on November 20, 2019, 06:24:12 PM
I recognize this is off topic but,

Also curious that the same seller listed above has a 256mb Nvidia card listed as compatible with OS 9 (No 3D accel):

https://www.ebay.com/itm/nVidia-Geforce-5200-256mb-AGP-Video-Card-For-Apple-PowerMac-G4-G4-Cube-VGA-x2/264411989688

they are also listing the radeon 9700 128mb here:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/ATi-Radeon-9700-PRO-128mb-AGP-Video-Card-For-Apple-PowerMac-G4-G5-AGP-OS-9/264514597602?hash=item3d964c72e2:g:gPMAAOSw7iZdt-cr

Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Pushpull76 on November 21, 2019, 07:51:44 AM
Update : I received the PCI card and, surprise, the chipset is Silicon Image 3512, not 3112.
As far as I know, the 3512 chipset is a revised version of the 3112, so....as I already wrote, I will try to solder the socket and put the new rom before try to update it with the seritek firmware. Let's see what happens....

(positive thing: the rom has no smd components around, so I can simply manage to solder the PLCC32 socket).
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: IIO on November 21, 2019, 07:46:42 PM
I recognize this is off topic but,

Also curious that the same seller listed above has a 256mb Nvidia card listed as compatible with OS 9 (No 3D accel):


he also has usb enclosures labelled as "firewire 400" ... as always, use ebay with caution :D

but it is great that someone at least cares about our retro OS and offers such cards.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Pushpull76 on November 22, 2019, 06:44:37 AM
I recognize this is off topic but,

Also curious that the same seller listed above has a 256mb Nvidia card listed as compatible with OS 9 (No 3D accel):


he also has usb enclosures labelled as "firewire 400" ... as always, use ebay with caution :D

but it is great that someone at least cares about our retro OS and offers such cards.


Honestly....they don't care about retrocomputing at all. They simply stole works done by other from forums and groups and they try to gain money, that's simple. As you can see, they want 50$ from a card that, in quantity, you can pay under 10$; a compatible rom, if needed, is under 3$. Solder the new rom and put on the new firmware is something you can do in half an hour. I already seen this stuff around; a complete ripoff of a dac converter built by a guy on a public forum.....sold by chinese vendors at a price which is a 1/3 of the original one.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: IIO on November 22, 2019, 07:47:30 PM
yes of course is it only a business for them, but as you say, it is 30 minutes work and the 45 euros would include shipping within europe - i would get one if it would support my QS machines.

no doubt i´d rather buy from you.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Pushpull76 on November 23, 2019, 09:24:42 AM
Works started, first check of the pinouts of the rom chips.
They are phisically interchangeable for sure but some pins of the original memory are NC (pin 1 and 30); on the bigger rom chip are adress lines A17 and A18. Vcc is 5 volts, so no problems here (some chips run on 3.3 volts).
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Pushpull76 on November 23, 2019, 09:45:02 AM
On SiI 3512 chip, the address lines to check are pin 55-56.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: DieHard on November 24, 2019, 01:28:41 PM
I am very curious if this end up to be an OS9 solution... Surprised Macstuff has not responded
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: (S)ATAman on December 09, 2019, 06:13:46 AM
for those who were reading the thread above.. the user named widter has informed me that he has no intention of making his firmware hack public now or in the future.. so the search continues.. hopefully i wont give up + ill eventually be able to find someone whos capable of backward engineering the firmware or downsizing it to fit a normal/common size rom chip

1) I have absolutely no need to reverse-engineer it. Guess, why... ;) 8) :P
2) You can't fit it in a smaller chip. The exceptions are the ATA cards. And that simply because hot-swap is not supported in the standard ATA. So the ATA code is much smaller than SATA.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: macStuff on January 10, 2020, 07:14:46 AM
it was always theorized that the chips included kexts for osx that might be removed to remove the footprint of the rom, sacrificing dual osx/os9 compatibility for simple os9 compatibility without having to solder a new chip
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: (S)ATAman on January 10, 2020, 09:52:31 PM
it was always theorized that the chips included kexts for osx that might be removed to remove the footprint of the rom, sacrificing dual osx/os9 compatibility for simple os9 compatibility without having to solder a new chip

I often use LZARI to compress the "9" driver (SIM) and most of the FCode.
It's evil to have a self-modifying code, but it's even more evil not to have anything at all.

The 3124 code is compressed (this is why you won't see much dumping the ROM) and so is the Promise 20268/20269.

The 3124 code remains compressed, but it won't be copy-protected at all.
The reason is to prevent gentleman like our favorite seller from HK officially benefit from the new code, patching what is inside of the ROM.
The Promise code always has to be compressed because the space is ridiculously small.

What is sacrificed is in the first line the PC BIOS, the rest is as it has to be, but no cut (even the BIOS) is welcome.
The BIOS itself can be confusing because many have "software RAID" capability.

I think one should rather go with the (software) RAID from either Intel or SoftRAID.

And from all kind of RAID the easiest + safest is arguably the RAID 10, maybe 50 or 60.
I am using a pair of RAID-10 at both homes, both largely mirrored (except of course the latest stuff).

These RAID-10s are on NAS from Thecus, but I am looking forward to make Marvell SAS chips (inside of Thecus boards) work on "X" or just find the Thecus board with SImage 3132 chips, these would work if the Thecus is converted to a "Hackintosh".

Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: macStuff on January 10, 2020, 11:42:08 PM
right but alot of people here only care about os9 bootability; being able to accomplish that main goal with little care for osx bootability fits a niche want for alot of people here who dont care to dual boot osx/os9 but putting the focus on os9
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: (S)ATAman on January 11, 2020, 06:20:32 AM
right but alot of people here only care about os9 bootability; being able to accomplish that main goal with little care for osx bootability fits a niche want for alot of people here who dont care to dual boot osx/os9 but putting the focus on os9

And "X" bootability can be achieved even without having the driver in the ROM, both PPC and Intel.
Placing the driver in the ROM is mandatory for "9" and BIOS boot only.

To be honest and without extra unnecessary offense towards the very estimated and very honorable establishment in Redmond, WA: the BIOS has the least priority.



Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: mePy2 on February 02, 2020, 04:01:26 AM
Yup, that's the ones I have 2 internal & 2 external.....for some reason I couldn't find it on their site because I couldn't remember the model number. I guess a brain fart or senior moment must have occurred. Bootable OS9 is hard to find. i will run a speed test but it wont be until next weekend.

Any news? :P
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: (S)ATAman on February 11, 2020, 12:10:12 PM
Yup, that's the ones I have 2 internal & 2 external.....for some reason I couldn't find it on their site because I couldn't remember the model number. I guess a brain fart or senior moment must have occurred. Bootable OS9 is hard to find. i will run a speed test but it wont be until next weekend.

Any news? :P

The "X" driver is I think ready to roll. Completely re-done and updated.
The OF code was updated to the new port multiplier family.
Wasted several days on the flash utility, will waste some more.

The "9" for 3124 is not started, but given the state of the "X" should not take very long.

Took a break for few days.

The Sonnet PATA cards are a triviality, at least enable the Mac mode and let every card being flashed.
Except that I need a Quicksilver or similar Mac. The MDD does not work to flash a virgin (PC-based) card because of the bug in OpenFirmare it has.

Looking to make the driver for Sonnet work with PCIe adapter on any recent Mac, that would solve.
But the 3124 is a priority, in particular that it seem to be one of the fastest adapters possible for a legacy hardware.
I got over 200 MB/Sec on reads and over 170 MB/Sec on writes using a single SSD.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: GorfTheChosen on February 19, 2020, 06:28:40 AM
Yup, that's the ones I have 2 internal & 2 external.....for some reason I couldn't find it on their site because I couldn't remember the model number. I guess a brain fart or senior moment must have occurred. Bootable OS9 is hard to find. i will run a speed test but it wont be until next weekend.

Any news? :P

The "X" driver is I think ready to roll. Completely re-done and updated.
The OF code was updated to the new port multiplier family.
Wasted several days on the flash utility, will waste some more.

The "9" for 3124 is not started, but given the state of the "X" should not take very long.

Took a break for few days.

The Sonnet PATA cards are a triviality, at least enable the Mac mode and let every card being flashed.
Except that I need a Quicksilver or similar Mac. The MDD does not work to flash a virgin (PC-based) card because of the bug in OpenFirmare it has.

Looking to make the driver for Sonnet work with PCIe adapter on any recent Mac, that would solve.
But the 3124 is a priority, in particular that it seem to be one of the fastest adapters possible for a legacy hardware.
I got over 200 MB/Sec on reads and over 170 MB/Sec on writes using a single SSD.

Sometime today the nice mail lady will presumably deliver to me a SiL 3124 card which I have been waiting several weeks for.

So I look forward to any progress you are making on this project (no pressure ...  ;D)

Best of luck.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: (S)ATAman on March 11, 2020, 07:36:51 PM
I'm still trying to get my hands on a Mathey Msata-13UMAC as it looks like it uses the via6421a chip, PC cards based on this are both really cheap and really easy to get hold of. Just I have never seen a Mathey Msata-13UMAC for sale anywhere....

I looked up the via6421a - it looks like quite easy chip. But I don't want to spread all my resources now.
I would rather finish all the 3124 work + CMD 680/3112/3114 first.

Apologies for being slow, I can't work other way than as the engineer and sometimes I could be stuck with design or re-design questions.

The Promise world with 20268 - 20271 is an other thing, they painted themselves into corner with stupidly designed copy-protection.
I already converted one TX2 to the "real thing" (happened few days ago) but successfully ruined other Promise cards I have.

I recall, putting them back to normal is possible with beige machines only.

If anyone would give me access to a "beige" machine in the Frankfurt - Basel - Straßburg - Karlsruhe area would be nice.

Unfortunately I may bring with me a gift no one wants (COVID-19).
So better to wait few weeks.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: DieHard on March 13, 2020, 10:13:31 AM
Quote
I recall, putting them back to normal is possible with beige machines only.

If anyone would give me access to a "beige" machine in the Frankfurt - Basel - Straßburg - Karlsruhe area would be nice.

Any member that's close, please get him a Beige Desktop G3, any storage advancements for OS 9 are historic at this point, ant we are blessed to even have a possibility of success.

Quote
Unfortunately I may bring with me a gift no one wants (COVID-19).
So better to wait few weeks.

Let's hope not, don't even say that, you must stay healthy for the collective :)
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Philgood on March 13, 2020, 01:12:37 PM
I'm willing to give 10€. Diehard, maybe start a FundMe campaign?
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: (S)ATAman on March 13, 2020, 06:34:19 PM
Quote
I recall, putting them back to normal is possible with beige machines only.

If anyone would give me access to a "beige" machine in the Frankfurt - Basel - Straßburg - Karlsruhe area would be nice.

Any member that's close, please get him a Beige Desktop G3, any storage advancements for OS 9 are historic at this point, ant we are blessed to even have a possibility of success.

Quote
Unfortunately I may bring with me a gift no one wants (COVID-19).
So better to wait few weeks.

Let's hope not, don't even say that, you must stay healthy for the collective :)

It already happened - and to say the least, it does not affect positively the performance.
I have difficulty to concentrate.
Got lost today with the car and do not even know, where I turned the wrong direction.
Went 77 (this is considered to be traffic impairment), it felt for me like going 100+.
Have to sleep at random times. The dry cough and the headache is horribly annoying.
Pretty much that's it.

Almost everybody has it here, people just don't talk. Was in grocery store (after picking up PCI cards and G4 D/A in the pack station) called "Mix Markt".
That is a store chain similar to Trader's Joe, except most of the produce is from Eastern Europe.
Asked at the check-out, how is the situation in Germany.
In true East European (she was from RU) matter I was told: "Here everyone of us is a PRINCESS" (i.e. is "crowned").

The borders are semi-closed. The main crossing at Iffizheim is monitored by the (French) police - once in a while.
They have special thermometers and can pull over everyone who has fever.
But they flash from the distance, so we can see and U-turn.

The next crossing over the defunct railroad bridge is not monitored at all - so we go there.

The Czech lady who works in the DHL pack station (see G4 D/A) lives in France, she hopes that the border over the defunct railway bridge won't be closed - otherwise people in Germany can't pick up the packages sent from Germany. She is an exception being not ill (yet).

The symptoms - I can testify - are a mere annoyance and reduce the quality of the software unless I pay extra attention.

Far worse than COVID-19 is drinking and driving. And people do that on daily basis. And let's not compare the mortality due DUI vs. COVID-19.


Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: (S)ATAman on March 13, 2020, 07:01:56 PM
Few more examples, how "bad" COVID-19 is.

1) I successfully modified a Promise FastTrak100TX-2 card.
2) After that, I did something I don't remember.
3) After that, I screwed up every single Promise card I have, except the FastTreak100TX-2 above mentioned.

Now, they show up on x64-Macs only. Except the one I modified. I honestly do not remember, what I did!
But the "healthy" Mac-converted FastTreak100TX-2 is here as a witness.

Than... just made a tea, forgot to put the hook on the edge of the glass, the entire thing sunk like a submarine.

Than, as mentioned, got scared driving way to fast. Looked at the instrument: 77mph.
It felt (the road was even like a mirror) driving 105. It's American model, can't get more due electronic speed block.

Other than these... Ah, yes, broke today the green AGP "handle" on the "brand-new" G4 D/A (or whatever it is called, same model as Quicksilver).
Just broke it off. The computer came with 128 Rage Pro (!!!) junk, have bunch of Apple-brand 9000 and 9000 Pro-s, the first thing is of course to throw away the Rage Pro.

But not the way I did!

This is the first time in my life I broke the AGP slot "handle". Not a big loss, but it's amazing how clumsy I became.

And so on.

Bunch of fried Promise cards, one broken AGP handle, kitchen looks like a mess because I am tired and my tea filter hook is yucky = all victims of COVID-19.

People are far more afraid to lose their jobs than to get infected.
As it looks, the second will likely happen anyway: Chancellor Angela Merkel announced, she expects 60-70% of the population to get infected.

I hope, she and her colleagues of other countries will do the job regarding the economy, the panic does not help and there is no need to have it.

Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: (S)ATAman on March 15, 2020, 04:12:13 AM
Hehe, most people from Marseille to Moscow can't buy any ammo legally and easy way.
I mean, in both places I could if I would apply to all permits - but 99.99....9% of the people don't waste their time with such stupidity.
Actually, who would be allowed - won't want to get that permit anyway.

In my case I would rather buy few (more) good PCIe - PCI(-X) bridges that work.
See the update with AHCI on G4.


The situation here is that everyone who can tries to stay at home, hoarding is less prevalent (but I did see some simplicities buying tons of meat).
Who have to work, trying to get away with jokes and sarcasm.

The mortality statistics is far better, than reported, that is for sure. The statistics how many people are sick is completely off, probably by x10 or more.
The reason is no one wants to go to hospital and being locked away. So only people who are really ill report the case.
The rest trying to fit a new AHCI controller in an old G4MDD. That is a 400FW G4, I just upgraded the processor with a pull from a 800FW machine.

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,5385.0.html

So in the theory - since I wrote the AHCI driver for G5, later I could port it to G4 as well.
The controller is a common Marvell, the trick is the CORRECT bridge!

I am using the StarTech which is slightly more expensive, about $30 - $50 on fee-bay.
Do not buy the Chinese-made one for $20-$25, it DOES NOT WORK, PIECE OF JUNK.
The one which works is made in Taiwan.

Say thanks to "COVID-19", would not happen that soon, staying ill within 4 walls is sometimes not that bad.
My "crown" is already over 10 days "old", so statistically it means ca. 10 more days. 8)
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: mrhappy on March 17, 2020, 07:13:55 AM
Hey (S)ATAman... How are you doing? I hope you're starting to feel better! Your 'real world' reporting was more informative than all of the 24/7 news channels here in the US!! Get well OS9 brother!! :)
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: (S)ATAman on March 17, 2020, 05:01:17 PM
Hey (S)ATAman... How are you doing? I hope you're starting to feel better! Your 'real world' reporting was more informative than all of the 24/7 news channels here in the US!! Get well OS9 brother!! :)

Thanks - not to bad, but everyone who has "XY" chromosome set and is over 35 should prepare that in bad case there could be a quite dangerous pneumonia (that's for "XX", too). And in good case - a royal, crowned pain in the @ss (your prostate will say you a loud "hello"). If you do not know, what that word ("prostate") does mean, you will learn it. ;D

So get the relief medication just in case. Not a big deal, just pain in the @ss.

Otherwise this was the first day of the curfew.
Since I don't speak French, I learned it not even from our embassy, but from a worker at Belarus embassy in Paris.
Called them because of a trivial matter, the guy told me: "oh, behold - the military police just took over the streets".
I told him: "oops"....

Than later called U.S. embassy to learn, what to do. The most useless folks ever. I was switched to a county simplicity who is somewhere in West Virginia. I asked her, what to do with the curfew and that I am infected and stuck in France.
She told me: "go to the hospital". That was the point, where I had to hang up.

(Because the guy from BY told me things just the opposite, but that time the paperwork wasn't available on-line).
Than called an other embassy, the "second" one of us.

They provided me with the paperwork to fill and to keep when I have to take the trash out or buy groceries.
Otherwise told the same, what the Belarus guy told: don't invent any own idea (like running to hospital), as long as your only pain is "downstairs" and cough + dizziness: stay firmly at home, don't even call emergency (let the others call, who are over 70 and have fever). Don't go to the hospital: my car has very inviting U.S. plates, the police will immediately pull me over and in best case give 200 Euro fine, in worst case 3 years prison for curfew violation.

So if I would follow what that goose from Department of State did tell me: 200 Euro +/- 3 years in prison.
And fill out that simple paper!

The paper what we have to fill out is attached. Quite simple: your name, birthdate, where you stay in France, why are you out of your home. And the U.S. embassy was unable to provide me with that paper!

Other than these annoyances the life goes forward, just a bit slower.
We try to make jokes about our @ss and the dangerous COVID-bats from dark, horrible East Europe with Vampire State Building.

I was shocked to learn, in the States people buy ammo! What for?

People are very supportive of the curfew, the trick is not to stop the disease: it is impossible.
The trick is to gain time until vaccine is available and try to slow down the pandemic as much as possible.
I am not in any statistics, neither is the majority of people.
Because of that, the real mortality is far less, than the official rate: if officially, say, 40 people of 1000 would die due complications, the real infection number is closer to 10000 - we just are encouraged not to report it, mainly because the test is long + expensive and why would I make doctors busy for minor inconveniences I have, while others may need urgent help?


So, I think, it is better to prepare with some minor relief medication.
However, taking any medication against the fever is STRICTLY FORBIDDEN: it could make things much worse.
Otherwise see, what the Consul of Belarus embassy told, together with "our" second embassy lady and apply it.

The scare or panic does not help of course. Ah, yes, do not buy any canned food, totally useless. In 2020 one will run out of food, not even in rural NKorea. But taking a bit less risk and order fresh things on-line makes sense.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: IIO on March 17, 2020, 10:09:05 PM
i just ordered a dozen of sidewinder rockets from amazon to be well prepared for the zombie apocalypse.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: mrhappy on March 18, 2020, 06:48:30 AM
Glad your doing OK (S)ATAman !! Thanks for the update... once again very informative on a 'real world' level. It gives us a better idea of what is REALLY going on there and also where we are likely headed in the US.

Maybe OS9Lives should create a separate category for COVID related topics as I've seen a few other forums do. It seems better to get info from actual people that we trust instead of 'media outlets' that feed us with carefully crafted statements and such... not that I have anything against being manipulated!! Haha! ;D

Anyway... Thanks again for the helpful update and keep them coming!!  ;D

Get Well!!! 
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: (S)ATAman on March 19, 2020, 04:09:31 PM
Quote
was shocked to learn, in the States people buy ammo! What for?

simple... when Beto O'Rourke and Joe Biden go door to door, we'll have a little present for them...

ROFL - I already have quite efficient ammo against people of Biden's age, got it for free. 😷👑
But don't wish him anything bad, just may he retire happily and enjoy the life.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: (S)ATAman on March 19, 2020, 04:41:18 PM
Glad your doing OK (S)ATAman !! Thanks for the update... once again very informative on a 'real world' level. It gives us a better idea of what is REALLY going on there and also where we are likely headed in the US.

Maybe OS9Lives should create a separate category for COVID related topics as I've seen a few other forums do. It seems better to get info from actual people that we trust instead of 'media outlets' that feed us with carefully crafted statements and such... not that I have anything against being manipulated!! Haha! ;D

Anyway... Thanks again for the helpful update and keep them coming!!  ;D

Get Well!!!

Thanks - it's stagnating, with few hours daily when the body temperature wants to rise, rises slightly and than goes back.
But working is bit hard, do not have enough will power to press and more often than not just fall asleep.
This is what the Big Boss(es) in Embassy(es) and the doc told me to do, so I follow the leader(s).

The quality of the U.S. citizen service improved overnight, they are now extremely well-informed, professional and not letting people down.
Thumbs up for them.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: IIO on March 24, 2020, 11:25:29 PM
simple... when Beto O'Rourke and Joe Biden go door to door, we'll have a little present for them...

it´s funny how trump accuses the chinese - the US is probably the country which lies the most about their own situation (that´s what think here in europe)
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: (S)ATAman on March 29, 2020, 05:23:50 PM
simple... when Beto O'Rourke and Joe Biden go door to door, we'll have a little present for them...

it´s funny how trump accuses the chinese - the US is probably the country which lies the most about their own situation (that´s what think here in europe)

I think just that no one was prepared. The most funny accusation is of course that Chinese created the virus intentionally.
They can't make a decent PCI - to - PCIe bridge board!

Tried the one you can buy on eBay for ca. $24 and it absolutely does not work:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/ST42-PXE8112-PCI-to-2-5Gbps-PCI-Express-1-0-PCI-X-Bridge-32Bit-Adapter-Card-SH/254426719650

On "X" I got "panic" under 10.2.8, 10.3, 10.4.11 and 10.5.8
On "9" I got MacsBug screen.

This was even without any PCIe card.

Than I got the Startech bridge board for $35 (or maybe it was 35 Euro?), a seller from Poland sent it to me. It is made in Taiwan.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/PCI-to-PCI-Express-Adapter-Card/123341684227

No panics, all registers to be seen and on 10.5.8 even Apple AHCI driver did load on G4 MDD.

- which one you would buy?
- can they make a decently "working" COVID-19?

The "opposite" bridge (using PCI card in Thunderbolt chassis) made in China

https://www.ebay.com/itm/PCI-Express-x1-to-PCI-Bridge-card-PEX8112-AA66-Chipset-pci-slot-converter-card/193394307550

is equally a piece of junk.

Did not try the Startech yet, they have that, too - but it's $10 more, as usual.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/PCI-Express-to-PCI-Adapter-Card/123341684302


The price of Startech cards is inflated, the realistic one is the price of Chinese junk + 10 Euro / + $10.


I assume, it will work, just have way to much things to do and this COVID-19 makes me sleep most of the day.


The Chinese cards are like the problem my friend from Serbia had. (And don't forget - they know about the 3114 / 3112 sleep problems - just want to save money by not using Micrel!)

My friend ordered bunch of power supplies from China, it was fine.
Later he ordered more, they did cost 30¢ less.

He made external boxes, one self-detonated in Bucharest, the other box self-detonated in Sarajevo.

He had to drive from Belgrade to Bucharest and from Belgrade to Sarajevo to fix the problem and exchange the power supply.
He complained to Chinese that he ordered power supplies for external drives, not explosive devices.
They wrote back that they changed the design to save him 30¢.
He answered that the cost of gasoline from Belgrade to Bucharest and back and from Belgrade to Sarajevo and back is more, than 2 x 30¢.
Chinese did not understand that part. Wow.


Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: IIO on March 30, 2020, 04:36:13 AM
PCI to PCIe is a lie. it´s cofefe. the democrats invented it.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: (S)ATAman on April 01, 2020, 10:36:54 PM
PCI to PCIe is a lie. it´s cofefe. the democrats invented it.

It kind of works here, but need more extensive tests.
For now everything is postponed, to make the 3112 and 3114 work without protection and in full modus operandi.
The next will be probably 3124 and than Marvell 6042. The 3124 has Open Firmware, but no "9". 6042 has neither, but it is a better chip than 3124.

Unfortunately need a "beige" G3 and some magic for Promise, their copy protection is THAT "good" (20269), it confuses a heck of me.
And I wrote the code for 20269.

I am not in hurry, will wait till borders are open, now I can't buy any beige (unless I want to pay for international shipping) because I can't reach my post box in Germany.
Luckily there is time and more, than enough things to do.

My employer from the US is OK to send me masks, here I can't buy any.

And as far as the COVID-19... the brother of my "ex", his wife and my older kid got it, not only me. We think, my youngest kid may had it, too.
We ate it for lunch - but still unsure, was it really tasty or not. More barbecue sauce would be better.
My wife is all the time next to our youngest kid, if he had - I think, it's impossible that she won't have it. Unlike the rest of us, she did not notice anything.

But don't do that at home on your own, please. Our gang is really bad-ass.  ;D
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: IIO on April 02, 2020, 04:55:46 AM
stay well. yes i can imagine that your whole family is like you. even the smallest ones eat firmware for breakfast.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: toomanydatsuns on June 16, 2021, 02:40:18 PM
Finally catching up on this fascinating thread, and it knocked loose a buried memory from my time working at a network storage appliance vendor... There might be an interesting SSD option for the Late 2005 PCIe G5.

Our company's marketing was all about selling "IOPS" (anyone remember FusionIO? ::)), and we ended up being an early adopter of the OCZ RevoDrive. The biggest complaint about the original RevoDrive / RevoDrive X2 was that OCZ used a "lazy" design and didn't implement a "real" PCIe RAID controller.

(https://images.anandtech.com/reviews/storage/OCZ/RevoDrive3X2/_DSC8251sm.jpg)

The card itself has a PCIe 1.0 x4 interface, but the signal is immediately routed to a Pericom PI7C9X130 (a reversible PCIe to 64-bit PCI-X bridge). The Pericom connects to (S)ATAman's old friend, the Silicon Image SiI 3124. From there, the 3124 is connected to two Sandforce SF-1200 series SSD controllers (or four on the X2), and each of those connects to a bunch of MLC chips.

My recollection is that the X2 really could only get close to 1GB/s in perfect laboratory conditions, but generally had pretty good performance in "real life".

But, as long as the G5 and/or Open Firmware don't freak out about the Pericom bridge, I'd bet that (S)ATAman's 3124 firmware could be flashed onto one of these cards, and it might be a very nice option for the PCIe G5s. OCZ even used to provide a flashing tool for Windows and Linux, though I have no idea where to find it now.

I found a few threads on MacRumors talking about using it on the 1,1-5,1 Mac Pro, using an off-the-shelf SiI3124 driver:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/ocz-revodrive-x2-pcie-ssd.1045512/?post=12841570#post-12841570 (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/ocz-revodrive-x2-pcie-ssd.1045512/?post=12841570#post-12841570)
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/revodrive-in-mac-osx.1246308/?post=13550721#post-13550721 (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/revodrive-in-mac-osx.1246308/?post=13550721#post-13550721)


And some reviews of the card itself from back in the day, getting into a bit of the architecture:

https://www.techspot.com/review/342-ocz-revodrive-x2-pcie-ssd/page2.html (https://www.techspot.com/review/342-ocz-revodrive-x2-pcie-ssd/page2.html)
https://www.anandtech.com/show/3997/ocz-revodrive-x2-review (https://www.anandtech.com/show/3997/ocz-revodrive-x2-review)


These things are getting cheap on eBay, so I've ordered one for a laugh. If anyone knows how the G5s respond to that particular Pericom bridge, I'd love to know. Otherwise, I'll post an update in a week or two when it arrives  ;D
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Pushpull76 on October 14, 2022, 02:41:43 AM
I bought several time ago a new Sonnet Tempo X4P to do some experiments, is there any way to use it under macos 9 ? Maybe with a Seritek firmware reflash?
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: V.Yakob on December 16, 2022, 11:47:46 AM
Now I've got to PCI - SATA on my MDD 2003.

I used this (https://tinkerdifferent.com/threads/sata-in-an-old-world-pci-power-mac-impossibru-updated-9-21-22.1494/) instruction on the forum as a basis.

Bought several boards SIL3112 (https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003256985538.html) and ROM chip (https://aliexpress.com/item/1005003577898872.html) on Aliexpress.
Such ROM chips can be used to replace: AM29LV040B, MX29LV040, PM39LV040.

A ROM chip was installed on the boards I received after a few weeks of tedious waiting: AM28F010-150JC. According to the datasheets (https://www.datasheets.com/en/part-details/am28f010-150jc-infineon-technologies-ag-31973349) specification, this ROM has a supply voltage range of 4.5V - 5.5V, but the new PM39LV040 (https://www.datasheetbank.com/PM39LV040-70JC-Datasheet-PDF-PMC) ROM has a power supply of 2.7V - 3.6V. In order for magic smoke not to get out of the board, it is necessary to transfer the (jumper) 0 Ohm resistor R25 to R24.

Original
(http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=306.0;attach=11152;image)

Modified
(http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=306.0;attach=11154;image)

After flashing the chip ROM, replacing the ROM on the board and transferring the resistor, it's time for truth - testing!

When I turned on PM for the first time after installing the board, I was interested in seeing the board in EFI, for this:
1. hold during booting ⌥ (Option);
2. when the boot menu appears, press CTRL+Z;
(I think it's easier than ⌘+⌥+F+O  ;D )
3. to list all devices, enter: dev / ls

If Seri-Tek is on the list, then everything is done correctly, and you can connect disks. If the disks are already connected, enter multi-boot to return to the boot menu.
(http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=306.0;attach=11144;image)

I connected 2 SSDs: Netac SSD 256GB and Crucial CT250MX500SSD1.

Mac OS 9, Mac OS X 10.4, Mac OS X 10.5 were installed without problems and work perfectly.

The first thing that caught the eye was that the disk size is displayed correctly. When connected to PATA or through a PATA to SATA adapter, the disk capacity was always 128 Gb, despite the fact that I could make 3 partitions of 80 GB each, and they would be displayed normally. At the same time, in Mac OS X, the disk size is always displayed correctly.
(http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=306.0;attach=11130;image)

Of course, I checked the speed of these disks with QuickBench.
Netac tests
(http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=306.0;attach=11132;image)(http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=306.0;attach=11134;image)(http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=306.0;attach=11136;image)

Crucial tests
(http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=306.0;attach=11138;image)(http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=306.0;attach=11140;image)(http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=306.0;attach=11142;image)


Just in case, I attach the firmware (SIL3112-Flashing.zip) for the ROM chip here. Also on the macrumors forum (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/guide-to-flashing-pc-sil3112-sata-cards-for-mac.1690231/page-6) I came across compressed firmware (SIL3112-reduced.zip) up to 64kb for SIL3112, they report that it works, but I haven't checked it yet, maybe I'll do it later.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: V.Yakob on December 19, 2022, 08:11:49 AM
Today I checked the operation of sleep mode on Mac OS 9.2.2, Mac OS 10.4 and Mac OS 10.5 -- without problems. The computer falls asleep according to the configured schedule from inactivity and wakes up after interacting. I didn't notice any hangs.
I also checked the operation of large disks: 500 GB and 1000 GB.
In Mac OS 10.4 and 10.5, everything works normally, without problems.
In Mac OS 9.2.2, such disks cannot be initialized: the process hangs and terminates without any errors, but the disk remains unlabeled.
If initialization is performed in another OS, the disk is mounted with the correct size and seems to work fine.

Connected HGST 1 Tb.  :o
(http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=306.0;attach=11159;image)


Question(!)
I know that such cards do not work in QuickSilver, and it seems that there is an option to fix it by replacing the voltage regulator (U2). Who knows for sure in which other models such a problem manifests itself?
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: ivanshpak on December 19, 2022, 11:11:48 AM
Check out the reduced ROM Seritek, it's interesting.

And by the way, I can’t find the message where it was posted
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: V.Yakob on December 19, 2022, 12:00:21 PM
This is a reduced weibetech. It probably won't work for booting, but it can be useful in OS X. Apparently, there are boards where applicable. I added it here so as not to lose it.
But as I said, I haven't tried it.
Link (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/guide-to-flashing-pc-sil3112-sata-cards-for-mac.1690231/page-6).
(http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=306.0;attach=11163;image)
(http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=306.0;attach=11161;image)


Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: zefrenchtoon on January 24, 2023, 04:49:13 AM
Hi!

Here is some work from dosdude1 ... one more time  -afro-

https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/silicon-image-sil3112-flashing-easier-way-using-flashrom.7013/page-2#post-470798
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: DieHard on January 24, 2023, 09:42:37 AM
Literally 10 years later from when this topic was started by Chris and Dosdude unearths the lost Dutchman's treasure...

Quote from Dosdude:
Quote
I have a huge update for you all. After many hours of reverse engineering, I was able to SUCCESSFULLY PATCH that SeriTek 1S2 ROM for the SIl3112 cards, allowing it to work with ANY 512K EEPROM! It functions just as it would with a "supported" EEPROM, working with and booting both OS X and OS9! The patched ROM image is attached. Please test, and let me know how it works!

See link in previous post and pictures

The SeriTek 1S2 2 Port SATA PCI G4 Card averages $150 or MORE on fleabay, so this is a game changer and a gift by Dosdude who is obviously not a greedy person, in fact a true hero in my eyes.

So I am guessing in theory, cards like this @ $15 amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/2-Channel-Array-Expansion-SATA150-Windows/dp/B083LQ2VKC/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3R5CBQUVFBJQY&keywords=Controller+Card+Sil3112&qid=1674583970&sprefix=controller+card+sil3112%2Caps%2C281&sr=8-1

will be able to be turned into inexpensive OS9 Bootable SATA cards. 

Perhaps there is a kind soul that wants to make a small, but reasonable profit, and give us a price for cards that are modded and ready to go.  Everyone's time is worth money and many will not be able to make their own card, so it is critical that a member that has the time and resources will take this knowledge and help the masses.  Hopefully, this will make the precious OS9 bootable SATA cards in reach for all :)
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: smilesdavis on January 24, 2023, 12:15:03 PM
just when i found 2 sonnets after a year of search rofl
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: dosdude1 on January 24, 2023, 05:58:43 PM
I suppose I should have posted in this thread instead, but yes indeed, I have successfully patched out the EEPROM ID check in the SeriTek/1S2 ROM! After doing so, though, I had intended to see if I could reduce the ROM enough to get it to fit onto a 128K EEPROM, but unfortunately there is just too much there to be able to reduce it and retain its full functionality. With that said, however, there is an older version of the ROM, v5.0.7, that apparently is small enough to fit on a 128K EEPROM. Of course it never actually worked with a 128K EEPROM installed, as the ID check prevented it, but with the appropriate patches, could be made to work no issues. The problem, though, is I haven't been able to find a copy of that version of the ROM anywhere. So if someone could dig up a copy, that would be AMAZING, and of course be the ultimate solution to flashing these cards without having to replace their EEPROM. My patched version of the SeriTek/1S2 v5.1.3 ROM is attached.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: joevt on January 24, 2023, 09:42:13 PM
How much bigger than 128K is the patched ROM? Maybe you could add compression to make it fit (if it isn't already compressed). The lzss algorithm is probably simple enough to implement in Open Firmware. The Sonnet cards used this method.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: dosdude1 on January 24, 2023, 09:59:48 PM
How much bigger than 128K is the patched ROM? Maybe you could add compression to make it fit (if it isn't already compressed). The lzss algorithm is probably simple enough to implement in Open Firmware. The Sonnet cards used this method.
It comes out to around 138K. Most of the space is being taken up by the OS X NDRV, but that is already compressed (it's an mkext shoved in as binary data).
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: joevt on January 25, 2023, 01:53:44 AM
I would run it through a compressor to see if it can get to less than 128K anyway. Compare compressing with and without the mkext part.

Here's a lzss decompressor (C code) https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/question-how-powerful-of-a-graphics-card-will-work-in-a-beige-power-macintosh-g3.2303689/post-31602677
I used it for decompressing New World Mac Open Firmware.
I included a version that does compression and decompression but I haven't checked if the compression produces output that can be decompressed by the version that decompresses Mac New World Open Firmware. It shouldn't matter. The point is that the decompression algorithm is simple enough to implement in Open Firmware.

I would decompress to memory outside the Open Firmware dictionary since that is a limited resource. I would avoid using encode-bytes+ if that is using space in the dictionary. Maybe there's a fcode trick to include binary blobs larger than a string of 256 characters. I am thinking something like this:
Code: [Select]
" "(00012345)" \ encode the size of the binary blob in a small string here; the following code only works if the address of this string is pointing to this fcode
decompress \ this takes the address from the stack of the string, reads the 4 bytes representing the length of the binary blob below, adds an offset to skip this decompress call and skip the following branch fcode to get the address of the blob,
\ branch fcode goes here to jump over the following 12345 bytes of the binary blob.
« 12345 bytes of stuff goes here»
executedecompressedfcodeimage
To make this work will also require modification to the tokenizer to support arbitrary length binary blobs that will produce the fcode output described above.
Another problem is that this only works for blobs that are less than 32K since that is the limit of the branch fcode. In that case, do it without the branch, have the blob at the end of the uncompressed first stage fcode, include the offset of the binary blob in the string that encodes the length.
Actually, the Open Firmware spec says that strings are copied from fcode to a temporary buffer (str0 or str1 in Mac Open Firmware), therefore you can't get a pointer to fcode that way. You may just want to map the PCI ROM and get the binary blob from that. Or forget this and use encode-bytes+.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: ssp3 on January 25, 2023, 03:56:30 AM
It comes out to around 138K. Most of the space is being taken up by the OS X NDRV, but that is already compressed (it's an mkext shoved in as binary data).

Indeed, starting from around offset 0x21d70 it contains all zeroes.
I know nothing about ROM dissasembling, their structures etc. (I wish, I knew, since I'm trying to finalize my WD MyBook Studio Firewire jailbreak), but, can't the firmware, by someone skilled in the trade
a) be optimized at the machine code level manually, or/and
b) decompiled and then re-compiled with different optimization level (min size) or with different compiler
to get the final file size under 128k?

I've loaded the firmware in Hopper and, when looking at some of the procedures in pseudo-code mode and checking/unchecking 'remove potentially dead code' checkbox, there were some differences.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: joevt on January 25, 2023, 06:57:23 AM
Indeed, starting from around offset 0x21d70 it contains all zeroes.
I know nothing about ROM dissasembling, their structures etc. (I wish, I knew, since I'm trying to finalize my WD MyBook Studio Firewire jailbreak), but, can't the firmware, by someone skilled in the trade
a) be optimized at the machine code level manually, or/and
manually is a lot of manual work.

b) decompiled and then re-compiled with different optimization level (min size) or with different compiler
to get the final file size under 128k?
You can decompile and re-compile fcode with just a couple clicks. There's no optimizing that can be done here except the tokenizer can choose to convert some 5 byte literals to single byte fcode (the numbers -1,0,1,2,3 for example). A smarter tokenizer could reuse duplicate field definitions - basically a field is an fcode that adds a number to a number on the stack. A 5+ field for one struct is exactly the same as a 5+ field for another struct. Also, a tokenizer could replace code that doesn't use fields with a field fcode - for example "100 +" could be replaced with a 100+ field fcode if it exists.

You can disassemble assembly code into something that can be reassembled with some effort. There's no optimization for assembly code.

Decompiling from assembly to C code is difficult. Tools like Hopper or IDA usually don't produce code that can be easily compiled that behaves exactly the same as the original. Optimizers can be applied to C code though.

I've loaded the firmware in Hopper and, when looking at some of the procedures in pseudo-code mode and checking/unchecking 'remove potentially dead code' checkbox, there were some differences.
What did you load in Hopper? The firmware for a Power Mac PCIe card contains a lot of Open Firmware code which Hopper knows nothing about. Did you extract the NDRV? Without extracting the NDRV it will contain 5 or 6 bytes of fcode for every 250+ bytes of PowerPC code. Hopper doesn't produce pseudo code for PowerPC code - are you looking at Intel code? The "remove potentially dead code" option might make the pseudo code easier to read - or it might make the pseudo code less accurate.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Borgmac on January 25, 2023, 07:14:39 AM
Quote from DieHard
Quote
Perhaps there is a kind soul that wants to make a small, but reasonable profit, and give us a price for cards that are modded and ready to go.  Everyone's time is worth money and many will not be able to make their own card, so it is critical that a member that has the time and resources will take this knowledge and help the masses.  Hopefully, this will make the precious OS9 bootable SATA cards in reach for all :)
I am not up to that level yet, but I have been working on the famous Chernobyl Quicksilver to find an easy way to install Linux and Flashrom to be able to flash the Sil3112 SATA cards on a PowerMac G4.
Starting from a very basic knowledge of UNIX, it took me a while to find an easy Linux setup without burning one CD for every Linux version.
I have found a solution, using the cheap IDE to SATA adapter for an Inland 120 GB SSD, but it is using an app (BalenaEtcher) requiring Mac OS 10.10 minimum
The next step is to install the Flashrom program, compatible with the Linux version installed.
Then I will need to find a way to copy directly the Linux CD to the SSD without the BalenaEtcher, which I know is possible
Will continue to work on that and flash my first card.
Then I could have some time available...

Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: ssp3 on January 25, 2023, 08:20:17 AM
What did you load in Hopper? The firmware for a Power Mac PCIe card contains a lot of Open Firmware code which Hopper knows nothing about. Did you extract the NDRV? Without extracting the NDRV it will contain 5 or 6 bytes of fcode for every 250+ bytes of PowerPC code. Hopper doesn't produce pseudo code for PowerPC code - are you looking at Intel code? The "remove potentially dead code" option might make the pseudo code easier to read - or it might make the pseudo code less accurate.
As I already said, I have no idea what kind of code is contained in 1s2 firmware. And it was my question to someone skilled in the trade, not a statement ;)
I loaded it in Hopper just for kicks and saw that parts of it were recognized as Intel procedures, albeit with some strange looking instructions here and there.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: joevt on January 25, 2023, 10:04:16 AM
I looked at the dosdude 1S2_512-patched.rom.

My tokenizer saves 199 bytes by converting numbers like 0,1,2,3 from 5 bytes to 1 byte. The fcode is 138343 bytes. 135.1 KiB.
Without the fcode that encodes the ndrv and mkext, the fcode is 10595 bytes. 10.3 KiB.
lzss cannot compress the mkext - it grows from 70069 to 75172 bytes.
lzss does a pretty good job on the ndrv - it shrinks from 54648 to 30527 bytes.
That's probably sufficient to get the size of the rom to less than 128 KiB (after you add forth code that does lzss decompression). You wouldn't have to compress all the fcode, or even the fcode that produces the ndrv. Instead compress the ndrv binary, include that as a series of encode-bytes+ in the forth code, then add forth code that uses the lzss decompress function on the result of that to create the blob for the ndrv property.

The lzss decompression function is less than 50 lines of C code so it should be pretty easy to convert it to forth.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: joevt on January 25, 2023, 10:35:19 AM
A couple things: the fcode appears to be missing the fcode-end at the end of the rom.
Code: [Select]
" 5.1.3.1S2"
encode-string
" rom-revision"
property

fcode-end

pci-end

And this function is weird because the if ... then crosses a repeat. It's like the if is a conditional break or leave instruction.
Code: [Select]
: colon_definition_function_8a2 \ (8a2) [0b5 0b7]
get-msecs \ [125]
begin \ [0b1]
readstatusreg \ [859]
dup \ [047]
0<> \ [035]
over \ [048]
0ff \ [010]
<> \ [03d]
and \ [023]
swap \ [049]
0c0 \ [010]
and \ [023]
40 \ [010]
<> \ [03d]
and \ [023]
if \ (0x14) [014]
get-msecs \ [125]
over \ [048]
- \ [01f]
1388 \ [010]
< \ [03a]
while \ (0x6) [014]
repeat \ (0xffd5) [013 0b2]
then \ [0b2]
drop \ [046]
; \ [0c2]
I don't think it's a problem. It just looks weird. My tokenizer accepts this interpretation and produces the following fcode that results in the same interpretation
Code: [Select]
001418: b(:) \ [0x0b7]
001419:     get-msecs \ [0x125]
00141B:     b(<mark) \ [0x0b1]
00141C:         readstatusreg \ [0x859]
00141E:         dup \ [0x047]
00141F:         0<> \ [0x035]
001420:         over \ [0x048]
001421:         b(lit) \ [0x010] 0xff
001426:         <> \ [0x03d]
001427:         and \ [0x023]
001428:         swap \ [0x049]
001429:         b(lit) \ [0x010] 0xc0
00142E:         and \ [0x023]
00142F:         b(lit) \ [0x010] 0x40
001434:         <> \ [0x03d]
001435:         and \ [0x023]
001436:         b?branch \ [0x014] 0x14
001439:             get-msecs \ [0x125]
00143B:             over \ [0x048]
00143C:             - \ [0x01f]
00143D:             b(lit) \ [0x010] 0x1388
001442:             < \ [0x03a]
001443:             b?branch \ [0x014] 0x6
001446:                 bbranch \ [0x013] 0xffffffd5
001449:             b(>resolve) \ [0x0b2]
00144A:         b(>resolve) \ [0x0b2]
00144B:     drop \ [0x046]
00144C:     b(;) \ [0x0c2]
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: dosdude1 on January 25, 2023, 11:09:43 AM
It comes out to around 138K. Most of the space is being taken up by the OS X NDRV, but that is already compressed (it's an mkext shoved in as binary data).

Indeed, starting from around offset 0x21d70 it contains all zeroes.
I know nothing about ROM dissasembling, their structures etc. (I wish, I knew, since I'm trying to finalize my WD MyBook Studio Firewire jailbreak), but, can't the firmware, by someone skilled in the trade
a) be optimized at the machine code level manually, or/and
b) decompiled and then re-compiled with different optimization level (min size) or with different compiler
to get the final file size under 128k?

I've loaded the firmware in Hopper and, when looking at some of the procedures in pseudo-code mode and checking/unchecking 'remove potentially dead code' checkbox, there were some differences.
It's not exactly that simple... There are two NDRVs in the ROM that need to be patched. One for OS X, and one for OS 9. There is no EEPROM ID check in the actual FCode itself. For the OS X one, the first thing you need to do is extract the binary blob into a raw binary file, which will then create an mkext file you can work with. Next, you'll need to unpack the mkext. You can do so using "mkextunpack" under OS X. This should be done under an older OS X version (I used 10.4 Tiger) on a PowerPC machine for best results, though for this step it doesn't really matter. Once you have the kexts extracted, NOW you can open them in IDA, or other disassembler of choice, and begin reverse-engineering. "FT_ATA_Sil3112.kext" is the one where the EEPROM ID check is implemented. You WILL need at least some knowledge of PowerPC assembly in order to make much sense of it, and make any changes. Once you determine and make desired binary patches, you will then need to reverse the extraction process... Use OS X 10.4 on PPC to create new mkext with modified kexts (you can use "kextcache"), and get the modified mkext back into the EEPROM -- That's the tricky part, which I had to make a few scripts for, use FCode tokenizer, etc.

The OS 9 binary is quite a bit easier... All you need to do for that one is extract the binary blob into a binary file, and start reverse-engineering... It is not compressed or packed in any way.

Lastly, the zeroes at the end of the ROM are not needed, they are just there from when the ROM image was dumped from a 512K EEPROM. They can simply be removed.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: dosdude1 on January 25, 2023, 11:32:17 AM
I looked at the dosdude 1S2_512-patched.rom.

My tokenizer saves 199 bytes by converting numbers like 0,1,2,3 from 5 bytes to 1 byte. The fcode is 138343 bytes. 135.1 KiB.
Without the fcode that encodes the ndrv and mkext, the fcode is 10595 bytes. 10.3 KiB.
lzss cannot compress the mkext - it grows from 70069 to 75172 bytes.
lzss does a pretty good job on the ndrv - it shrinks from 54648 to 30527 bytes.
That's probably sufficient to get the size of the rom to less than 128 KiB (after you add forth code that does lzss decompression). You wouldn't have to compress all the fcode, or even the fcode that produces the ndrv. Instead compress the ndrv binary, include that as a series of encode-bytes+ in the forth code, then add forth code that uses the lzss decompress function on the result of that to create the blob for the ndrv property.

The lzss decompression function is less than 50 lines of C code so it should be pretty easy to convert it to forth.
This is probably the best way to go... I'll start working on this and see if I can get that implemented.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: ssp3 on January 25, 2023, 01:53:00 PM
It's not exactly that simple...
Thanks for the insight. I learn something new every day  8)
P.S. Love your Mac OS X USB Drive Creator. Excellent tool!
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: joevt on January 25, 2023, 05:54:04 PM
It's not exactly that simple... There are two NDRVs in the ROM that need to be patched. One for OS X, and one for OS 9. There is no EEPROM ID check in the actual FCode itself. For the OS X one, the first thing you need to do is extract the binary blob into a raw binary file, which will then create an mkext file you can work with. Next, you'll need to unpack the mkext. You can do so using "mkextunpack" under OS X. This should be done under an older OS X version (I used 10.4 Tiger) on a PowerPC machine for best results, though for this step it doesn't really matter. Once you have the kexts extracted, NOW you can open them in IDA, or other disassembler of choice, and begin reverse-engineering. "FT_ATA_Sil3112.kext" is the one where the EEPROM ID check is implemented. You WILL need at least some knowledge of PowerPC assembly in order to make much sense of it, and make any changes. Once you determine and make desired binary patches, you will then need to reverse the extraction process... Use OS X 10.4 on PPC to create new mkext with modified kexts (you can use "kextcache"), and get the modified mkext back into the EEPROM -- That's the tricky part, which I had to make a few scripts for, use FCode tokenizer, etc.

The OS 9 binary is quite a bit easier... All you need to do for that one is extract the binary blob into a binary file, and start reverse-engineering... It is not compressed or packed in any way.

Lastly, the zeroes at the end of the ROM are not needed, they are just there from when the ROM image was dumped from a 512K EEPROM. They can simply be removed.
What's the point of an mkext in a PCI rom? If the Mac OS X kernel can use the mkext, it can also use the extracted kexts saved to disk. I suppose the mkext makes using read only media easier (can you connect sata CD or DVD's to the SATA card?). Also, without the mkext, you need to be able to copy the kexts to the drive. I suppose if you were using XPostFacto, the kexts could be copied to a helper disk (built in SCSI or ATA).

Anyway, if you think there are PCI cards with 64K ROMs, then removing the mkext would make the firmware fit in those cases.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: joevt on January 25, 2023, 06:15:53 PM
This is probably the best way to go... I'll start working on this and see if I can get that implemented.
Maybe consider using dingusppc to test your decompression algorithm.

I use a script named run to start dingusppc:
Code: [Select]
#!/bin/bash
cd /Volumes/Work/Programming/dingusppc/joevt-dingusppc/build/bin
thewindow="$(osascript -e '
tell application "Terminal"
    set currenttab to do script ""
    tell currenttab
        tell current settings
            set custom title to "dingusppc Modem Port"
            set title displays device name to false
            set title displays shell path to false
            set title displays window size to false
            set title displays settings name to false
            set number of columns to 140
            set number of rows to 80
        end tell
        do script "clear; sleep 2; cd /Volumes/Work/Programming/dingusppc/joevt-dingusppc/build/bin; socat UNIX-CLIENT:dingussocket -,cs8,parenb=0,echo=0,icanon=0,isig=0,icrnl=0" in currenttab
    end tell
    return currenttab
end tell
')"

# 2.4
./dingusppc -d -b "/Volumes/Work/Open Firmware and Name Registry/ROM PowerPC Mac/ROM PM G3/ROMs/@FFC00000 len-400000" --serial_backend=socket --rambank1_size=256 --rambank2_size=256 --rambank3_size=256 --fdd_img=FATFLOPPY.img --pci_B1=Nv47

sleep 1
osascript -e 'tell app "Terminal" to close '"${thewindow#*of }"

Then I execute it using ./run
Include -d for debug. When you start dingusppc, it will show the debug prompt, then you can printenv and setenv and nvedit to modify Open Firmware settings. I set input and output device to ttya and auto-boot? to false so it will enter Open Firmware after you leave debug mode by typing go

Include --serial_backend=socket so that serial port will go to a socket (not available for Windows).

The run script uses AppleScript to automatically open that socket into a new Terminal.app window. Or you could manually enter the socat command in a new Terminal.app window that you create yourself.

Use my fork at https://github.com/joevt/dingusppc
Use the xcode-project fork.
It requires installing sdl2 which you can do with homebrew.

Create code for the sata pci card similar to promise20269.c   This implementation doesn't handle any of the registers but it is enough to load the rom. Since it doesn't handle the registers, the fcode takes a while to complete but it does complete. Another option is to just replace the rom (since I didn't include it in the fork) because you just want to test decompression of the ndrv.

To add a PCI card to slot C1, add to the command line:
 --pci_C1=PCIDeviceName
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: ssp3 on January 26, 2023, 06:20:19 AM
Question - are there any tools available that can extract above mentioned mkext and ndrv or do I have to find them manually in hex editor? Preferably without compiling that requires capstone, macports, brew, High Sierra and all that kind of stuff  ;) Asking out of pure curiosity.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: joevt on January 26, 2023, 08:27:53 AM
Question - are there any tools available that can extract above mentioned mkext and ndrv or do I have to find them manually in hex editor? Preferably without compiling that requires capstone, macports, brew, High Sierra and all that kind of stuff  ;) Asking out of pure curiosity.
It's a process. Use detok to convert a rom to text (or use my DumpPCIRom.sh script which uses detok and produces forth code that can be used with toke). Extract the lines that encode the ndrv or mkext properties, use search and replace to remove the non-hex stuff, use xxd to convert hex to binary, research mkext, google utilities that can build mkext or extract kexts.
 https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/question-how-powerful-of-a-graphics-card-will-work-in-a-beige-power-macintosh-g3.2303689/
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: IIO on January 26, 2023, 11:15:54 AM

What's the point of an mkext in a PCI rom?

i was thinking something similar.

in case it is impossible to fit everything onto the card, maybe it could make sense to provide the OSX functionality with a premade kext installer and have only the OS9 driver on the card?

the requirement of installing a driver for a card is not a big deal for the enduser.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: dosdude1 on January 26, 2023, 11:31:40 AM

What's the point of an mkext in a PCI rom?

i was thinking something similar.

in case it is impossible to fit everything onto the card, maybe it could make sense to provide the OSX functionality with a premade kext installer and have only the OS9 driver on the card?

the requirement of installing a driver for a card is not a big deal for the enduser.
That's definitely a possibility, though my goal was to retain the original ROM's functionality. If compressing the OS 9 NDRV doesn't end up working out, I'll just modify the ROM and rip out the OS X mkext. The kexts can indeed simply be installed into OS X as normal.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: ssp3 on January 26, 2023, 12:11:52 PM
It's a process. Use detok to convert a rom to text (or use my DumpPCIRom.sh script which uses detok and produces forth code that can be used with toke). Extract the lines that encode the ndrv or mkext properties, use search and replace to remove the non-hex stuff, use xxd to convert hex to binary, research mkext, google utilities that can build mkext or extract kexts.
 https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/question-how-powerful-of-a-graphics-card-will-work-in-a-beige-power-macintosh-g3.2303689/

Eek! That's way too much body movement for someone who just curious. (Disclaimer - I don't have the card and don't plan to use any).
EDIT. Found "FT_ATA_Sil3112.kext v.5.3.1" inside the InstallPPC.app that's on 5.3.1 firmware/software dmg, although its binary is 255k.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: refinery on January 26, 2023, 06:19:05 PM
I would think the purpose of having the mkext would be for cases where somebody is trying to boot off the disk on the card... if you have no disk on the internal bus, how's it going to load a driver for the card from a disk it doesnt know how to access yet at that stage of booting?
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: IIO on January 26, 2023, 06:44:38 PM
I would think the purpose of having the mkext would be for cases where somebody is trying to boot off the disk on the card... if you have no disk on the internal bus, how's it going to load a driver for the card from a disk it doesnt know how to access yet at that stage of booting?

of course you are right, i forgot about that scenario. you wouldnt be able to boot into X from it.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: dosdude1 on January 26, 2023, 08:50:07 PM
I would think the purpose of having the mkext would be for cases where somebody is trying to boot off the disk on the card... if you have no disk on the internal bus, how's it going to load a driver for the card from a disk it doesnt know how to access yet at that stage of booting?

of course you are right, i forgot about that scenario. you wouldnt be able to boot into X from it.
Once you got the kext into the target install of OS X on the target drive, it will be able to boot from it just fine... Just a bit of a pain, having it embedded in the ROM is much more convenient.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: joevt on January 26, 2023, 11:18:33 PM
I would think the purpose of having the mkext would be for cases where somebody is trying to boot off the disk on the card... if you have no disk on the internal bus, how's it going to load a driver for the card from a disk it doesnt know how to access yet at that stage of booting?
You are saying that Mac OS X can't boot from a disk unless there's a kext in firmware.

So how does Mac OS X boot from a built-in SCSI or ATA disk? Those do not have kexts in firmware.

I believe Open Firmware is used to read kexts or kext cache but you can check BootX source code to verify that.
 https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/mac-os-x/0596003560/ch02s01s01.html
 https://flylib.com/books/en/3.126.1.47/1/
 https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/BootX/blob/814114e6a6cf10dfa512c520f5a1c1fb9c58a432/bootx.tproj/include.subproj/fs.h
BootX contains HFS+ file system driver that calls Open Firmware.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: ssp3 on January 27, 2023, 03:56:15 AM
Apparently, kextcache by default produces compressed mkexts. Probably that's the reason why lzss couldn't compress it further.
What happens if one makes uncompressed mkext and then compresses it with lzss? Any gain in size reduction?
(I can't test it myself, I have neither original 513 mkext, nor any 10.4/10.5 PPC machines).

From kextcache man:
Quote
-compressed
              Compress the mkext or prelinked kernel (enabled by default).
-uncompressed
              Do not compress the mkext or prelinked kernel.  If specified as
              the only other argument with -c, uncompresses an existing pre-
              linked kernel file in place.

Also, what about upx or mpress? Do they exist for PPC and, if so, can they be used on kexts?
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: ssp3 on January 27, 2023, 05:04:59 AM
Once you got the kext into the target install of OS X on the target drive, it will be able to boot from it just fine... Just a bit of a pain, having it embedded in the ROM is much more convenient.

Re. embedded in ROM. There's this bit from SeriTek/1S2, version 5.3.1 install instructions:
Quote
WHEN TO UPGRADE FIRMWARE
If your current firmware is working for you, FirmTek does not
recommend updating the firmware.
<snip>
One exception to this rule: Leopard users will want to upgrade. The
new 5.3.1 firmware corrects a Leopard wake on sleep issue. However,
Tiger users that are not experiencing problems should stay with
their existing firmware.

So, to cover the Leopard wake on sleep issue, one has to be prepared to deal with 5.3.1 firmware, which is 175k in size compared to 138k of 5.1.3.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: peeperpc on January 27, 2023, 10:04:46 AM
Once you got the kext into the target install of OS X on the target drive, it will be able to boot from it just fine... Just a bit of a pain, having it embedded in the ROM is much more convenient.

Re. embedded in ROM. There's this bit from SeriTek/1S2, version 5.3.1 install instructions:
Quote
WHEN TO UPGRADE FIRMWARE
If your current firmware is working for you, FirmTek does not
recommend updating the firmware.
<snip>
One exception to this rule: Leopard users will want to upgrade. The
new 5.3.1 firmware corrects a Leopard wake on sleep issue. However,
Tiger users that are not experiencing problems should stay with
their existing firmware.

So, to cover the Leopard wake on sleep issue, one has to be prepared to deal with 5.3.1 firmware, which is 175k in size compared to 138k of 5.1.3.

I tried 5.3.1 firmware for a day, with 10.5.8 as the main OS (MDD Mac).

- With 5.1.3, using a 2TB Seagate drive with an ATA/SATA adapter as the boot drive, it takes noticeably longer before the system finds the drive and starts booting from it. But with 5.3.1, the startup time is back to normal. Yes, the boot drive is on the internal ATA100 bus but somehow the firmware can still interfere.

- With 5.1.3, I can use smartmontools with the drive connected to the card. But with 5.3.1, I can't.

- I've had no sleep issue with 5.1.3 nor 5.3.1.

In the end, I reverted to 5.1.3. Since smartmontools is more important for me than shorter boot time.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: dosdude1 on February 03, 2023, 12:27:18 PM
I have another absolutely MASSIVE update for you all... I was able to implement an LZSS decompression algorithm in the ROM, and use it to decompress a stored LZSS-compressed version of the OS9 NDRV. As such, the ROM has been reduced in size to UNDER 128K! This means that you can now flash it onto cards WITHOUT having to replace the original 128k EEPROM! Of course this image also includes my patched OS9 and OS X NDRVs that remove the EEPROM ID check. The updated ROM image is attached, along with my custom Forth LZSS decompression implementation. Hope you all enjoy!

EDIT: Updated ROM padding to 128K for Flashrom support.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: ssp3 on February 03, 2023, 12:33:39 PM
Cool!  8)
Silly question - does compression impact data transfer rate anyhow?
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: dosdude1 on February 03, 2023, 12:36:03 PM
Cool!  8)
Silly question - does compression impact data transfer rate anyhow?
Not at all, all it does is decompress the LZSS-compressed OS9 NDRV binary upon system power on, at that point it is loaded into memory and is then executed by the OS during boot.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: ssp3 on February 03, 2023, 12:59:14 PM
Not at all, all it does is decompress the LZSS-compressed OS9 NDRV binary upon system power on, at that point it is loaded into memory and is then executed by the OS during boot.
Thanks for the info! You did a great job and big favour to Mac users!


Off-topic. Are you familiar with ARM thumb mode firmware reversing? I'm thinking of liberating some WD Firewire external enclosure(s). I've been partially successful, but lacking further skills. If interested, let me know, I'll PM you.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: dosdude1 on February 03, 2023, 04:01:17 PM
Not at all, all it does is decompress the LZSS-compressed OS9 NDRV binary upon system power on, at that point it is loaded into memory and is then executed by the OS during boot.
Thanks for the info! You did a great job and big favour to Mac users!


Off-topic. Are you familiar with ARM thumb mode firmware reversing? I'm thinking of liberating some WD Firewire external enclosure(s). I've been partially successful, but lacking further skills. If interested, let me know, I'll PM you.
I've never worked with anything ARM, so I'm not immediately familiar. Though I could always take a look and figure it out.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: joevt on February 03, 2023, 09:29:37 PM
I have another absolutely MASSIVE update for you all... I was able to implement an LZSS decompression algorithm in the ROM, and use it to decompress a stored LZSS-compressed version of the OS9 NDRV. As such, the ROM has been reduced in size to UNDER 128K! This means that you can now flash it onto cards WITHOUT having to replace the original 128k EEPROM! Of course this image also includes my patched OS9 and OS X NDRVs that remove the EEPROM ID check. The updated ROM image is attached, along with my custom Forth LZSS decompression implementation. Hope you all enjoy!

EDIT: Updated ROM padding to 128K for Flashrom support.
Which lzss compression algorithm did you use?

Last time I looked at your ndrv (earlier in this thread (http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,306.msg50229.html#msg50229)), it was 54648 bytes decompressed and 30527 bytes compressed, but the compressed version in this update is 31377 bytes. So you're either using a different compression or a different ndrv. I tried decompressing this using the C algorithm I was using before but that turns the 31377 bytes into 96180 which is way too large. Compressing that produces 31229 bytes - not matching the 31377 input bytes - which means my lzss is different than yours (the lzss can't be successful unless a round trip of decompression and compression produces output that matches the input).

Your decompression algorithm in fcode is 572 bytes. You can shrink that to 429 bytes (143 less bytes) if you use headerless instead of external. This doesn't matter in this case since you've achieved the goal of shrinking the rom to < 128K but it could be useful for other storage device roms or for creating a 64K rom.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: dosdude1 on February 03, 2023, 10:03:28 PM
I have another absolutely MASSIVE update for you all... I was able to implement an LZSS decompression algorithm in the ROM, and use it to decompress a stored LZSS-compressed version of the OS9 NDRV. As such, the ROM has been reduced in size to UNDER 128K! This means that you can now flash it onto cards WITHOUT having to replace the original 128k EEPROM! Of course this image also includes my patched OS9 and OS X NDRVs that remove the EEPROM ID check. The updated ROM image is attached, along with my custom Forth LZSS decompression implementation. Hope you all enjoy!

EDIT: Updated ROM padding to 128K for Flashrom support.
Which lzss compression algorithm did you use?

Last time I looked at your ndrv (earlier in this thread (http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,306.msg50229.html#msg50229)), it was 54648 bytes decompressed and 30527 bytes compressed, but the compressed version in this update is 31377 bytes. So you're either using a different compression or a different ndrv. I tried decompressing this using the C algorithm I was using before but that turns the 31377 bytes into 96180 which is way too large. Compressing that produces 31229 bytes - not matching the 31377 input bytes - which means my lzss is different than yours (the lzss can't be successful unless a round trip of decompression and compression produces output that matches the input).

Your decompression algorithm in fcode is 572 bytes. You can shrink that to 429 bytes (143 less bytes) if you use headerless instead of external. This doesn't matter in this case since you've achieved the goal of shrinking the rom to < 128K but it could be useful for other storage device roms or for creating a 64K rom.
Originally I was planning on using the C lzss implementation you use as it was, however when I was doing initial tests with it, I found that decompressing the NDRV after compressing it with the same implementation resulted in garbage. I fixed this by simply changing the following:

Code: [Select]
#define EI 11
#define EJ  5
#define F ((1 << EJ) + 1)

After making these changes, that implementation began working properly to compress and decompress the NDRV, but resulted in the slightly larger compressed file size. I then wrote the Forth implementation based on the decoding logic of that C implementation.

Also, I intentionally left the named FCode words in there as I thought it would help prevent a potential issue where tokenized FCode numbers may conflict with those already in the ROM (as I wasn't able to detokenize the ROM into a re-tokenizable format). I got around this issue by making a slight modification to the tokenizer source code, starting the FCode number at 0xA00 instead of 0x800, to ensure the generated FCode numbers would not conflict with those already there. So of course I could re-tokenize it headerless, but no need to bother since it already fits into the 128K ROM as it is.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: joevt on February 04, 2023, 01:06:28 AM
Originally I was planning on using the C lzss implementation you use as it was, however when I was doing initial tests with it, I found that decompressing the NDRV after compressing it with the same implementation resulted in garbage.
Not sure why the decode didn't work for you. Did you try the C decode algorithm or only the fcode decode algorithm? I found that using the default C decode/encode, the decode of the encoded ndrv correctly produced bytes that match the original ndrv:
Code: [Select]
/Volumes/Work/Programming/lzss/lzss/lzss e driver,AAPL,MacOS,PowerPC.bin driver,AAPL,MacOS,PowerPC.lzss
text:  54648 bytes
code:  30527 bytes (55%)

/Volumes/Work/Programming/lzss/lzss/lzss d driver,AAPL,MacOS,PowerPC.lzss driver,AAPL,MacOS,PowerPC_reverse.bin

bbdiff driver,AAPL,MacOS,PowerPC.bin driver,AAPL,MacOS,PowerPC_reverse.bin
/Volumes/Work/Open Firmware and Name Registry/ROM Firmtek 1S2/dosdude/driver,AAPL,MacOS,PowerPC_reverse.bin and /Volumes/Work/Open Firmware and Name Registry/ROM Firmtek 1S2/dosdude/driver,AAPL,MacOS,PowerPC.bin are identical.

md5 driver,AAPL,MacOS,PowerPC.bin driver,AAPL,MacOS,PowerPC_reverse.bin
MD5 (driver,AAPL,MacOS,PowerPC.bin) = dc939ef1b4a4145f552c012be20211d7
MD5 (driver,AAPL,MacOS,PowerPC_reverse.bin) = dc939ef1b4a4145f552c012be20211d7

Also, I intentionally left the named FCode words in there as I thought it would help prevent a potential issue where tokenized FCode numbers may conflict with those already in the ROM
Fcode words get fcode numbers regardless if they are external or headers or headerless.

(as I wasn't able to detokenize the ROM into a re-tokenizable format).
You manually inserted the fcode of the compression algorithm and compressed ndrv into the fcode of the rom and then updated the checksum?

My DumpPCIRom.sh script can create tokenizable Forth text from fcode. (I need to add a small fix for non-PCI ROM fcode files, then I should make a GitHub repository). It's part of the process I used for modifying Nvidia GPU firmwares so they can work in Old World Macs for example.
 https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/question-how-powerful-of-a-graphics-card-will-work-in-a-beige-power-macintosh-g3.2303689/
It was also used nearly 20 years ago in the work for flashing PC Radeon graphics cards (7000, 8500, 9000, 9100) for Mac. Back then it was an MPW script.

I got around this issue by making a slight modification to the tokenizer source code, starting the FCode number at 0xA00 instead of 0x800, to ensure the generated FCode numbers would not conflict with those already there.
My tokenizer has a tokenizer command that you can put into the Forth text that changes the fcode number that will be used for the next word.
Code: [Select]
tokenizer[ a00 next-fcode ]tokenizer
I should fix my DumpPCIRom.sh script to add that line when it encounters a word definition that is not using the expected next fcode number as in the case with your compressed rom. next-fcode isn't usually necessary. It's there so that the tokenization can more closely match the original fcode since the names produced by DumpPCIRom.sh for headerless words includes the fcode number as part of the name like in this example:
Code: [Select]
: colon_definition_function_801         \ (801)     [0b5 0b7]
    my-space                            \           [103]
    9                                   \           [010]
    +                                   \           [01e]
    dup                                 \           [047]
    " config-b@"                        \           [012]
    $call-parent                        \           [209]
    5                                   \           [010]
    or                                  \           [024]
    swap                                \           [049]
    " config-b!"                        \           [012]
    $call-parent                        \           [209]
    ;                                   \           [0c2]
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: V.Yakob on February 04, 2023, 04:07:12 AM
EDIT: Updated ROM padding to 128K for Flashrom support.
Which computer do you use Flashrom on?
I don't have a PC, but I installed it via brew Flashrom on the PowerMac G4 MDD, and it seems that the PPC version does not support "--programmer satasii", despite the fact that it is stated in man.
I also installed Debian on this machine, but the result is the same.:(

In the near future I will try to upload this firmware through the programmer.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: joevt on February 04, 2023, 07:11:21 AM
Which computer do you use Flashrom on?
I don't have a PC, but I installed it via brew Flashrom on the PowerMac G4 MDD, and it seems that the PPC version does not support "--programmer satasii", despite the fact that it is stated in man.
I also installed Debian on this machine, but the result is the same.:(

In the near future I will try to upload this firmware through the programmer.
For macOS, doesn't Flashrom require DirectHW to do PCI stuff or memory mapping stuff? I made a DirectHW (https://github.com/joevt/directhw) for all macOS versions and architectures but I only tested the pci stuff with pciutils (https://github.com/joevt/pciutils) (lspci, setpci, pcitree.sh (https://gist.github.com/joevt/e3cd4ff08aae06279134969c98ca3ab7)).
It might not have all the stuff required for satasii even for Intel macOS?
According to the flashrom makefile, satasii requires: DEPENDS_ON_RAW_MEM_ACCESS and DEPENDS_ON_LIBPCI
I think DirectHW.kext can do both of those but some other stuff might be required. I have not tried building or using flashrom.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: ssp3 on February 04, 2023, 09:25:46 AM
Can't you just rename the firmware file to ROMFILE.1S2 and replace with it the original that's inside the Mac "SeriTek1S2Flasher.app"?
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: dosdude1 on February 04, 2023, 10:11:45 AM
EDIT: Updated ROM padding to 128K for Flashrom support.
Which computer do you use Flashrom on?
I don't have a PC, but I installed it via brew Flashrom on the PowerMac G4 MDD, and it seems that the PPC version does not support "--programmer satasii", despite the fact that it is stated in man.
I also installed Debian on this machine, but the result is the same.:(

In the near future I will try to upload this firmware through the programmer.
In order to use Flashrom, you must do so using a PC running Linux (though there may be a DOS version you can use as well, not sure). Flashrom under Mac OS does require DirectHW.kext, so I wouldn't bother with that as I don't know if DirectHW.kext can be compiled for PowerPC. I do also have this copy of Flashrom for PowerPC Linux; you could try that and see if that works: http://dosdude1.com/files/flashromppc.zip
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: dosdude1 on February 04, 2023, 10:15:08 AM
Can't you just rename the firmware file to ROMFILE.1S2 and replace with it the original that's inside the Mac "SeriTek1S2Flasher.app"?
That application does not allow you to flash a "blank" card, or one that doesn't have one of the three "supported" 512K EEPROMs installed. I did already patch the OS9 version of this tool to be able to flash an unflashed card with any EEPROM, which I've attached here (already bundled with my compressed 128K ROM image), however in my testing I've found that sometimes the tool just locks up depending on the EEPROM you have installed. Definitely at least worth a try, though.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: V.Yakob on February 04, 2023, 10:18:12 AM
I made a DirectHW (https://github.com/joevt/directhw) for all macOS versions and architectures
Can you tell me how to compile a project to get kext? I only get a unix file.
I have very little experience in xcode, for all the time I collected 2-3 applications that I found on GitHub. ::)

Can't you just rename the firmware file to ROMFILE.1S2 and replace with it the original that's inside the Mac "SeriTek1S2Flasher.app"?
The firmware update utility performs a check, and if the card is not the same, it simply does not display it.
I have a modified board, the utility displays it, but does not display the non-modified card.
I also tried to use the firmware utility from Wiebe -- sees the board, starts the process, but can't interact, the process fails.
Developers have always been cunning and defended themselves from people like us. :)
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: V.Yakob on February 04, 2023, 10:32:07 AM
I do also have this copy of Flashrom for PowerPC Linux; you could try that and see if that works: http://dosdude1.com/files/flashromppc.zip
I tried it, on 10.4 and Debian (http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/current/) -- it doesn't work.
While I'm trying to build DirectHW.kext from the project (https://github.com/joevt/directhw/tree/master/DirectHW) joevt, but I can't do it yet.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: dosdude1 on February 04, 2023, 10:33:33 AM
Originally I was planning on using the C lzss implementation you use as it was, however when I was doing initial tests with it, I found that decompressing the NDRV after compressing it with the same implementation resulted in garbage.
Not sure why the decode didn't work for you. Did you try the C decode algorithm or only the fcode decode algorithm? I found that using the default C decode/encode, the decode of the encoded ndrv correctly produced bytes that match the original ndrv:
Code: [Select]
/Volumes/Work/Programming/lzss/lzss/lzss e driver,AAPL,MacOS,PowerPC.bin driver,AAPL,MacOS,PowerPC.lzss
text:  54648 bytes
code:  30527 bytes (55%)

/Volumes/Work/Programming/lzss/lzss/lzss d driver,AAPL,MacOS,PowerPC.lzss driver,AAPL,MacOS,PowerPC_reverse.bin

bbdiff driver,AAPL,MacOS,PowerPC.bin driver,AAPL,MacOS,PowerPC_reverse.bin
/Volumes/Work/Open Firmware and Name Registry/ROM Firmtek 1S2/dosdude/driver,AAPL,MacOS,PowerPC_reverse.bin and /Volumes/Work/Open Firmware and Name Registry/ROM Firmtek 1S2/dosdude/driver,AAPL,MacOS,PowerPC.bin are identical.

md5 driver,AAPL,MacOS,PowerPC.bin driver,AAPL,MacOS,PowerPC_reverse.bin
MD5 (driver,AAPL,MacOS,PowerPC.bin) = dc939ef1b4a4145f552c012be20211d7
MD5 (driver,AAPL,MacOS,PowerPC_reverse.bin) = dc939ef1b4a4145f552c012be20211d7
I just tested it again, and it definitely did work, so I must have just done something dumb I didn't realize. Guess I could try again with those parameters set back to their original values, but I don't see a need since it's already under 128K in size.

Also, I intentionally left the named FCode words in there as I thought it would help prevent a potential issue where tokenized FCode numbers may conflict with those already in the ROM
Fcode words get fcode numbers regardless if they are external or headers or headerless.
Yes, I quickly realized that LOL.

(as I wasn't able to detokenize the ROM into a re-tokenizable format).
You manually inserted the fcode of the compression algorithm and compressed ndrv into the fcode of the rom and then updated the checksum?
Correct, along with changing the size in the FCode header and the number of blocks in the PCI header. That was the only thing I could do not being able to re-tokenize the whole thing. I did try your DumpPCIRom.sh script, but it segfaulted when attempting to decode the original ROM when using that perl script, and produced too many untokenizable words when trying to decode it with the NDRVs stripped out (which apparently were what was causing the segfault).

I got around this issue by making a slight modification to the tokenizer source code, starting the FCode number at 0xA00 instead of 0x800, to ensure the generated FCode numbers would not conflict with those already there.
My tokenizer has a tokenizer command that you can put into the Forth text that changes the fcode number that will be used for the next word.
Code: [Select]
tokenizer[ a00 next-fcode ]tokenizer
I should fix my DumpPCIRom.sh script to add that line when it encounters a word definition that is not using the expected next fcode number as in the case with your compressed rom. next-fcode isn't usually necessary. It's there so that the tokenization can more closely match the original fcode since the names produced by DumpPCIRom.sh for headerless words includes the fcode number as part of the name like in this example:
Code: [Select]
: colon_definition_function_801         \ (801)     [0b5 0b7]
    my-space                            \           [103]
    9                                   \           [010]
    +                                   \           [01e]
    dup                                 \           [047]
    " config-b@"                        \           [012]
    $call-parent                        \           [209]
    5                                   \           [010]
    or                                  \           [024]
    swap                                \           [049]
    " config-b!"                        \           [012]
    $call-parent                        \           [209]
    ;                                   \           [0c2]
Ah, I didn't realize that.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: dosdude1 on February 04, 2023, 10:38:44 AM
I do also have this copy of Flashrom for PowerPC Linux; you could try that and see if that works: http://dosdude1.com/files/flashromppc.zip
I tried it, on 10.4 and Debian (http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/current/) -- it doesn't work.
While I'm trying to build DirectHW.kext from the project (https://github.com/joevt/directhw/tree/master/DirectHW) joevt, but I can't do it yet.
Try my patched OS9 copy of the SeriTek updater utility posted above (http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,306.msg50383.html#msg50383), it just may work. Of course ensure you're booted into Mac OS 9, not using Classic mode. I am still working on patching the OS X version, but it is significantly more difficult to do so.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: ssp3 on February 04, 2023, 12:51:04 PM
While I'm trying to build DirectHW.kext from the project (https://github.com/joevt/directhw/tree/master/DirectHW) joevt, but I can't do it yet.

Here, try this v1.6 (Intel/PPC). Just built it on Intel 10.6.8, xcode 3.2.6 with 10.4/10.5/10.6 sdk's. Still got two errors on build, but I don't want to dive deeper into it. Current master version produced even more errors, so I skipped it. I'm flying blind here, so it's not tested.

* Why don't you guys provide pre-built binaries on you githubs? Why do we all have to go thru all the pains?  ;)

Quote
** BUILD SUCCEEDED **

cc DirectHW.c -dynamiclib -framework IOKit -o libDirectHW.dylib
In file included from DirectHW.c:19:
MacOSMacros.h:54:6: warning: #warning x86_64
MacOSMacros.h:70:6: warning: #warning SDK 10.6+
cc -static -c DirectHW.c -o libDirectHW.a
In file included from DirectHW.c:19:
MacOSMacros.h:54:6: warning: #warning x86_64
MacOSMacros.h:70:6: warning: #warning SDK 10.6+
mv libDirectHW.dylib build/Release/libDirectHW.dylib
mv: rename libDirectHW.dylib to build/Release/libDirectHW.dylib: No such file or directory
make[1]: *** [libs] Error 1
make: *** [directhw] Error 2
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: V.Yakob on February 04, 2023, 02:27:58 PM
Here, try this v1.6. Just built it on Intel 10.6.8, xcode 3.2.6 with 10.4/10.5/10.6 sdk's.
Cool, thanx, I don't have OS X 10.6, I tried building for Intel 13.2 and PPC 10.4. ;D

Try my patched OS9 copy of the SeriTek updater utility posted above (http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,306.msg50383.html#msg50383), it just may work. Of course ensure you're booted into Mac OS 9, not using Classic mode. I am still working on patching the OS X version, but it is significantly more difficult to do so.

I tried the utility, it works!!
But this board apparently requires additional modifications, because after flashing the PowerMac G4 MDD (2003) won't boot. The boot hangs on the gray screen, the USB does not work (there was a trembling on my back). :o
Power on -> bong -> a boot disk search icon appears -> grey screen.
If you pull out the board, the computer is working properly.

EPROM Chip -- 39SF010A
Voltage regulator (U1) -- AMS 2911 1.8 0525
Voltage regulator (U2) -- AMS 2911CD 3.3 0323

There are no other boards for testing yet.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: ssp3 on February 04, 2023, 02:41:12 PM
For what it's worth, there's this interesting part by (S)ATAman in Firmtek pirate thread:
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,5268.msg38303.html#msg38303
Note that he mentions Sil3112DeviceNub.kext

And then there's a "InstallPPC.app" on SeriTek1S2_5.3.1.dmg, which has uncompressed
FT_ATA_Sil3112.kext and  Sil3112DeviceNub.kext
inside and which probably does just what (S)ATAman describes.
I guess, if one replaces the FT_ATA_Sil3112.kext with patched one (uncompressed) the app could be used to assist in flashing the cards.

Quote
First, we need to tell the system that there is an ATA device nub.
The simplest:

1) sudo cp -r  /Volumes/SeriTek2SE4Flash/Sil3112DeviceNub.kext /tmp
2) sudo cp -r /tmp/Sil3112DeviceNub.kext /System/Library/Extensions

Loading the kernel extension temporarily:
3) sudo cp -r /Volumes/SeriTek2SE4Flash/FT_ATA_Sil3132E.kext /tmp
4) sudo kextload /tmp/FT_ATA_Sil3132E.kext

After few seconds the Silicon Image 3124 controller is operational.
Do not attach any drives to it, proceed with flashing.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: ssp3 on February 04, 2023, 02:53:50 PM
I tried the utility, it works!!
But this board apparently requires additional modifications, because after flashing the PowerMac G4 MDD (2003) won't boot.

dosdude1, I think it would be cool if you could release the OS9 only stripped down version that does not use any kind of compression. One less variable in testing.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: dosdude1 on February 04, 2023, 02:56:32 PM
Here, try this v1.6. Just built it on Intel 10.6.8, xcode 3.2.6 with 10.4/10.5/10.6 sdk's.
Cool, thanx, I don't have OS X 10.6, I tried building for Intel 13.2 and PPC 10.4. ;D

Try my patched OS9 copy of the SeriTek updater utility posted above (http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,306.msg50383.html#msg50383), it just may work. Of course ensure you're booted into Mac OS 9, not using Classic mode. I am still working on patching the OS X version, but it is significantly more difficult to do so.

I tried the utility, it works!!
But this board apparently requires additional modifications, because after flashing the PowerMac G4 MDD (2003) won't boot. The boot hangs on the gray screen, the USB does not work (there was a trembling on my back). :o
Power on -> bong -> grey screen.
If you pull out the board, the computer is working properly.

EPROM Chip -- 39SF010A
Voltage regulator (U1) -- AMS 2911 1.8 0525
Voltage regulator (U2) -- AMS 2911CD 3.3 0323

There are no other boards for testing yet.
The voltage regulators could be causing this issue, apparently that can happen on some QuickSilver and/or MDD systems with some Sil3112 cards. Did you try this card in another machine? It does look like you were able to get it to boot in something, considering System Profiler sees it. Oh, and one other thing. Make sure you do NOT have two cards installed. The drivers in my ROM have been modified to remove the EEPROM ID check, and will conflict with another card if it still has the stock, unmodified ROM.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: dosdude1 on February 04, 2023, 03:00:43 PM
I tried the utility, it works!!
But this board apparently requires additional modifications, because after flashing the PowerMac G4 MDD (2003) won't boot.

dosdude1, I think it would be cool if you could release the OS9 only stripped down version that does not use any kind of compression. One less variable in testing.
I've already thoroughly tested the ROM, that isn't causing the issue. What could be causing an issue, though, is the voltage regulators on the card causing problems, which is a known issue with some cheap Sil3112 cards on later QuickSilver and MDD models. You have to modify one of the voltage regulators on the card to fix this issue. Another potential issue could be the OS9 utility not properly writing the ROM, but that wouldn't cause the system to stop booting.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: V.Yakob on February 05, 2023, 12:34:22 AM
The voltage regulators could be causing this issue, apparently that can happen on some QuickSilver and/or MDD systems with some Sil3112 cards. Did you try this card in another machine? It does look like you were able to get it to boot in something, considering System Profiler sees it. Oh, and one other thing. Make sure you do NOT have two cards installed. The drivers in my ROM have been modified to remove the EEPROM ID check, and will conflict with another card if it still has the stock, unmodified ROM.
With this board, MDD was launched, the board was defined in OS9, as can be seen on the screen.
I did the flashed when 2 boards were installed: modified (http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,306.msg49713.html#msg49713) and non-modifyed (http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,306.msg50389.html#msg50389).
Maybe the failure occurred because of this, or there may be a reason in the voltage regulators. In any case, this EPROM is now only to remove, for flashing by the programmer.
Someday later. :)
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: joevt on February 05, 2023, 02:06:23 AM
Can you tell me how to compile a project to get kext? I only get a unix file.
I have very little experience in xcode, for all the time I collected 2-3 applications that I found on GitHub. ::)
In Xcode 3.2.6 and earlier, there's a menu where you select the target (KEXT, framework, library) and the type of build (Release, Debug).

Here, try this v1.6 (Intel/PPC). Just built it on Intel 10.6.8, xcode 3.2.6 with 10.4/10.5/10.6 sdk's. Still got two errors on build, but I don't want to dive deeper into it. Current master version produced even more errors, so I skipped it. I'm flying blind here, so it's not tested.

* Why don't you guys provide pre-built binaries on you githubs? Why do we all have to go thru all the pains?  ;)

Quote
** BUILD SUCCEEDED **

cc DirectHW.c -dynamiclib -framework IOKit -o libDirectHW.dylib
In file included from DirectHW.c:19:
MacOSMacros.h:54:6: warning: #warning x86_64
MacOSMacros.h:70:6: warning: #warning SDK 10.6+
cc -static -c DirectHW.c -o libDirectHW.a
In file included from DirectHW.c:19:
MacOSMacros.h:54:6: warning: #warning x86_64
MacOSMacros.h:70:6: warning: #warning SDK 10.6+
mv libDirectHW.dylib build/Release/libDirectHW.dylib
mv: rename libDirectHW.dylib to build/Release/libDirectHW.dylib: No such file or directory
make[1]: *** [libs] Error 1
make: *** [directhw] Error 2
I didn't update the makefile since I only needed the kext which I build in Xcode instead of using make.
The xcodebuild command probably should be updated to specify the 10.6 project since the DirectHW folder contains two Xcode projects.
I think you need to change build to build/build10.6

The makefile installs the kext to /Library/Extensions/DirectHW.kext but that's not necessary for old versions of macOS. In old versions of macOS (10.8 and earlier) or new versions of macOS with SIP disabled (10.11 - 10.15) You can load it manually as long as it has proper file permissions. macOS 11 - 13 requires installing to /Library/Extensions and allowing the kext in Security preferences panel.

The makefile installs the framework, dylib, library, and object files to default locations on your system so that apps that don't compile or link the DirectHW.c file directly into their binary can use the code. DirectHW on PPC probably won't do anything for flashrom until you make changes and recompile flashrom.

Code: [Select]
pciutils testing:

                        arch    darwin  darwin2 darwin3 intel-conf1     How to load unsigned DirectHW.kext
10.4.11 Tiger           p       -       -       p       -               
10.5.8  Leopard         pP      -       -       pP      -               
10.4.11 Tiger             i     i       -       p i     pi               
10.5.8  Leopard           ix    ix      -       p ix    pix             
10.6.8  Snow Leopard       x    ix      -       p ix    pix             
10.7.5  Lion               x    ix      -         ix     ix             
10.8.5  Mountain Lion      x    ix      -         ix     ix             
10.9.5  Mavericks          x    ix      -         ix     ix             install to /System/Library/Extensions.
10.10.5 Yosemite           x    ix      ix        ix     ix             add "kext-dev-mode=1" to boot-args.
10.11.6 El Capitan         x    -       -         ix     ix             disable SIP.
10.12.6 Sierra             x    -       panic     ix     ix             disable SIP.
10.13.6 High Sierra        x    ix      ix        ix     ix             disable SIP.
10.14.6 Mojave             x    ix      ix        ix     ix             disable SIP.
10.15.7 Catalina           x     x       x         x      x             disable SIP.
11.7.2  Big Sur            x     x       x         x      x             disable SIP. Install to /Library/Extensions. Allow in "Security & Privacy" preferences panel. Restart.
12.6.2  Monterey           x     x       x         x      x             disable SIP. Install to /Library/Extensions. Allow in "Security & Privacy" preferences panel. Restart.
13.1    Ventura            x     x       x         x      x             disable SIP. Install to /Library/Extensions. Allow in "Security & Privacy" preferences panel. Restart.

                kernel          user
p = ppc         10.1            10.1
P = ppc64       -               10.5 SDK (only works on PPC Mac)
i = i386        10.4            10.4
x = x86_64      10.6            10.6
a = arm64       11              11

- for 10.1 to 10.3 : use GCC 3.3 and the oldest SDK.
- for 10.4 Xcode 2.2.x or 2.3, use GCC 4.0 and 10.4 SDK (not 10.4u).
- for 10.4 Xcode 2.4 or later, define KPI_10_4_0_PPC_COMPAT for PPC architecture, use 10.4u SDK for both PowerPC and Intel.
- for ppc64 user, 10.5 SDK has 64 bit libraries.

# darwin doesn't work from ppc userspace because AppleACPIPlatformExpert user client doesn't support cross endian.
# darwin doesn't work with ppc kernel since ppc doesn't have ACPI and doesn't use AppleACPIPlatformExpert.
# intel-conf1 method only supports registers 00-FF.
# both darwin3 and intel-conf1 require DirectHW.kext.
# darwin3 requires joevt/directhw.
# ppc userspace requires joevt/directhw.
# darwin and darwin2 require boot-args to contain "debug=".
# all require administrator rights.
# darwin2 requires OS X 10.10 or later.
# darwin and darwin2 don't seem to work in OS X 10.11; instead, use Darwin3 or intel-conf1 with DirectHW.kext.

Correct, along with changing the size in the FCode header and the number of blocks in the PCI header. That was the only thing I could do not being able to re-tokenize the whole thing. I did try your DumpPCIRom.sh script, but it segfaulted when attempting to decode the original ROM when using that perl script, and produced too many untokenizable words when trying to decode it with the NDRVs stripped out (which apparently were what was causing the segfault).
Maybe you need updated versions. What version of macOS were you using? I use it in Monterey currently. The script works with my version of detok.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: dosdude1 on February 05, 2023, 10:19:27 AM
Correct, along with changing the size in the FCode header and the number of blocks in the PCI header. That was the only thing I could do not being able to re-tokenize the whole thing. I did try your DumpPCIRom.sh script, but it segfaulted when attempting to decode the original ROM when using that perl script, and produced too many untokenizable words when trying to decode it with the NDRVs stripped out (which apparently were what was causing the segfault).
Maybe you need updated versions. What version of macOS were you using? I use it in Monterey currently. The script works with my version of detok.
Ah, that's probably why, then. I'm using OS X 10.9 Mavericks, with an unmodified version of Detok.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: ssp3 on February 05, 2023, 10:35:53 AM
I didn't update the makefile since I only needed the kext which I build in Xcode instead of using make.
The xcodebuild command probably should be updated to specify the 10.6 project since the DirectHW folder contains two Xcode projects. I think you need to change build to build/build10.6
First thing I did is yanked that other project and, yes, I used make. I did not use xcodebuild. For the kicks I tried to build it now directly in xcode and look what I got. ;)
I overlooked those warnings in terminal before, they were probably there.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: V.Yakob on February 06, 2023, 12:07:36 PM
That application does not allow you to flash a "blank" card, or one that doesn't have one of the three "supported" 512K EEPROMs installed. I did already patch the OS9 version of this tool to be able to flash an unflashed card with any EEPROM, which I've attached here (already bundled with my compressed 128K ROM image), however in my testing I've found that sometimes the tool just locks up depending on the EEPROM you have installed. Definitely at least worth a try, though.
But this board apparently requires additional modifications, because after flashing the PowerMac G4 MDD (2003) won't boot. The boot hangs on the gray screen, the USB does not work (there was a trembling on my back). :o
Another board, MDD booted with it, after flashing: Power on -> Bong -> the boot disk search icon appears -> gray screen. USB doesn't work, so I can't go to OpenFirware and see how the card is detected.
2 MDDs have the same behavior.
This time OS9 was booted from PATA HDD, the flashing was also performed without visible problems.
In general, for that "red" board, I will order EPROM chip 39SF040A, and flash the uncompressed firmware version, see what happens.
And with this "black" board (AM29F010B) I will do the same as last time: replacing the EPROM chip with PM39LV040 and transferring 0 ohms of the resistor.

Probably in a month. ;D

P.S. It's good that I bought a programmer last month. 8)
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: dosdude1 on February 06, 2023, 01:44:48 PM
That application does not allow you to flash a "blank" card, or one that doesn't have one of the three "supported" 512K EEPROMs installed. I did already patch the OS9 version of this tool to be able to flash an unflashed card with any EEPROM, which I've attached here (already bundled with my compressed 128K ROM image), however in my testing I've found that sometimes the tool just locks up depending on the EEPROM you have installed. Definitely at least worth a try, though.
But this board apparently requires additional modifications, because after flashing the PowerMac G4 MDD (2003) won't boot. The boot hangs on the gray screen, the USB does not work (there was a trembling on my back). :o
Another board, MDD booted with it, after flashing: Power on -> Bong -> the boot disk search icon appears -> gray screen. USB doesn't work, so I can't go to OpenFirware and see how the card is detected.
2 MDDs have the same behavior.
This time OS9 was booted from PATA HDD, the flashing was also performed without visible problems.
In general, for that "red" board, I will order EPROM chip 39SF040A, and flash the uncompressed firmware version, see what happens.
And with this "black" board (AM29F010B) I will do the same as last time: replacing the EPROM chip with PM39LV040 and transferring 0 ohms of the resistor.

Probably in a month. ;D

P.S. It's good that I bought a programmer last month. 8)
It is the decompression routine that's causing the issue, I've been able to verify that on my own MDD. Unfortunately so far I've been unable to figure out exactly WHY it's causing this issue, so I'm working on that now still. You should be able to recover the card without soldering by using Flashrom on a PC, or using an older Mac, which does not exhibit this issue.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: V.Yakob on February 06, 2023, 07:18:31 PM
You should be able to recover the card without soldering by using Flashrom on a PC, or using an older Mac, which does not exhibit this issue.
I don't have a PC. I don't want to buy an old system unit to restore the board.
There is also Quicksilver, but it is not yet possible to restore the power supply.
Only hardcore, only solder. 🤪
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: dosdude1 on February 07, 2023, 03:15:54 PM
I FINALLY got it figured out, well, sort of... I couldn't figure out what in my implementation was causing the issue, so I decided to make a new implementation, based off a different C implementation along with a (broken) Forth implementation I came across. With this decompression routine implemented, the USB probing issue stopped happening on my MDD! So now, finally, we have a fully working ROM that fits onto a 128K EEPROM! I have attached this new ROM below, along with my patched copy of the OS 9 SeriTek flasher tool with said ROM embedded, as well as the Forth source of the new decompression implementation.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: ivanshpak on February 08, 2023, 05:31:42 AM
I FINALLY got it figured out, well, sort of... I couldn't figure out what in my implementation was causing the issue, so I decided to make a new implementation, based off a different C implementation along with a (broken) Forth implementation I came across. With this decompression routine implemented, the USB probing issue stopped happening on my MDD! So now, finally, we have a fully working ROM that fits onto a 128K EEPROM! I have attached this new ROM below, along with my patched copy of the OS 9 SeriTek flasher tool with said ROM embedded, as well as the Forth source of the new decompression implementation.

Red PCB card Silicon Image via MDD 1.25 (FW 400) (5 Slot)
Prior Wiebe firmware
Boot into 9.2.2 (Maсtron image), with the SSD SanDisk Ultra 2 120GB

dosdude1 You are a god, you have made a huge contribution to our community! Where to donate!?
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: AtariMan on February 08, 2023, 05:38:43 AM
I've already flashed four boards.
All work in Sawtooth and MDD.
I can't believe this miracle!
Thank you very much for your work!!!
Title: Nondescript topic
Post by: FBz on February 08, 2023, 06:24:55 AM
BIG Congratulations!!!
And mucho kudos to dosdude1 (and everyone else in this effort).

Now perhaps someone can / will translate this into a step-by-step, D-I-Y for the rest of us?
You know… the “recipe” for what is necessary - with easy to follow instructions. ;)

AND while at it, how about some QuickBench and XBench results too?
(In various machines, booting OS 9 AND OS X.) Begin-new-thread?.

And quickly too, before the rest of the world finds out and these now
inexpensive cards exponentially rise in price. (aka: The Syntho 9600 Syndrome.)
*See also… the “G4 Mac Mini Madness”. ::)

C’mon with it.
Title: Re: aka: The Bootable PCI SATA / SSD
Post by: ssp3 on February 08, 2023, 07:02:20 AM
And quickly too, before the rest of the world finds out and these now
inexpensive cards exponentially rise in price. (aka: The Syntho 9600 Syndrome.)
*See also… the “G4 Mac Mini Madness”. ::)

Then don't hype it, don't run around bragging about it and don't make any clickbate Youtube videos.
Delete all praise posts that use red or oversized text  ;)

Lay low!  8)

dosdude1 isn't making money with this stuff and we all know that he's good, right? Lets not make life easier for fleebay sharks and similar "businessman".
Mac users, who really need their cards flashed, sooner or later will find this thread.
Just my 5 cents.
Title: Re: aka: The Bootable PCI SATA / SSD
Post by: FBz on February 08, 2023, 08:54:51 AM
And quickly too, before the rest of the world finds out and these now
inexpensive cards exponentially rise in price. (aka: The Syntho 9600 Syndrome.)
*See also… the “G4 Mac Mini Madness”. ::)

Then don't hype it, don't run around bragging about it and don't make any clickbate Youtube videos.
Delete all praise posts that use red or oversized text  ;)

Lay low!  8)

dosdude1 isn't making money with this stuff and we all know that he's good, right? Lets not make life easier for fleebay sharks and similar "businessman".
Mac users, who really need their cards flashed, sooner or later will find this thread.
Just my 5 cents.

Well, sooner or later the step-by-step process will out.
Whether it be here, 68kmla, MacRumors or wherever.
And while I completely understand the 5-cent viewpoint.
The D-I-Y will eventually be posted somewhere. ;)

And not at all about bragging rights.
More like sharing with those that have been confronted
with the overpriced SeriTek (and other) card options for so very long.

 So here, or just from some “enterprising”  Fleabay offering first?
*Available public domain Forum "how-to" info - or opportunistic profiteer?
Title: Re: Nondescript topic
Post by: IIO on February 08, 2023, 10:19:05 AM
BIG Congratulations!!!

Now perhaps someone can / will translate this into a step-by-step, D-I-Y for the rest of us?
You know… the “recipe” for what is necessary - with easy to follow instructions. ;)


the "which card(s) to buy" (for noobs) question from that other forum driver from last year is also still open.

which uh, reminds me on a certain project #someone wanted to start in november 22.

damn, i just killed the content of my boot drive on the main OS9 machine. lots of extra work in the next days.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: AtariMan on February 13, 2023, 09:56:23 PM
Has anyone tried to flash Silicon Image SIL3114?
dosdude1 is this possible with your firmware?
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: dosdude1 on February 13, 2023, 10:28:56 PM
Has anyone tried to flash Silicon Image SIL3114?
dosdude1 is this possible with your firmware?

I don't believe so, as that firmware is specifically designed for the Sil3112. You can definitely try it, but you'll probably have to flash it via Flashrom or using an EEPROM programmer, as the SeriTek/1S2 flashing tool probably won't detect it. Also, just note that the firmware I have posted is essentially unchanged from the stock SeriTek/1S2 firmware, the only differences are it has had the EEPROM ID checks patched out, and the OS 9 NDRV is compressed, allowing it to fit on a 128K EEPROM.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: AtariMan on February 13, 2023, 10:41:16 PM
Thank you for the detailed answer,
I'll try to flash it on a PC using Flashrom in the evening.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: AtariMan on February 14, 2023, 08:40:17 PM
Silicon Image SIL3114 does not work with SeriTek / 1S2 firmware,
but works without problems with WiebeSATA 3112 firmware.
Two out of four ports work.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: AtariMan on February 18, 2023, 05:44:06 PM
Hi dosdude1.
I found the firmware for SIL3114,
maybe you will be interested to see and try to flash the card.
Perhaps all 4 ports will work.

https://www.siig.com/download/search?keyword=SC-SA4M12
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: eastone on February 19, 2023, 02:13:40 PM
There's also another firmware for sil3512 but there is a  problem how to extract it from the archive...
https://www.siig.com/pub/media/files/drivers/0005/siig3512101updriver1.sit
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: redstudio on February 20, 2023, 03:22:13 AM
let me understand well. does the flasher linked by dosdude1 make pci sata 3112 work on powermac? also os9? no modifications to the board are needed? this would be great! let me know, thanks
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: dosdude1 on February 20, 2023, 11:08:38 AM
let me understand well. does the flasher linked by dosdude1 make pci sata 3112 work on powermac? also os9? no modifications to the board are needed? this would be great! let me know, thanks

That is exactly correct, though do be aware that the flashing tool may not work with the specific EEPROM on your card. In my testing, it worked with most EEPROMs, but not all. If it doesn't work, you can always flash using Flashrom on a PC. Still no card modification/soldering required. Once flashed, card will work and be bootable in both OS X and OS 9 (actually as old as System 7.5).
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: redstudio on February 20, 2023, 04:03:24 PM
unfortunately I don't have a card to test immediately.. I'll get a couple as soon as possible to try them.. if everything works you did a really great job Dosdude1.. you finally made it possible to pay little sata controller as PC users.. thanks a lot for your work!
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: chrisNova777 on February 21, 2023, 11:11:19 PM
glad someone picked up the ball and ran with it  8)  ;D i thought SATAMAN was gonna sort this couple years back
i obsessed about this pretty hard back in mid 2010s it was frustating knowing it was possible... technical difficulties always get in the way, its great when the walls that block progress come crashing down, this is great news for alot of reasons

"you get a 1S2, and you get a 1S2!, and you get a 1S2!" -- oprah

(https://media.tenor.com/V2AAznq_q84AAAAM/like-a-boss-hannibal-smith.gif)

just when i found 2 sonnets after a year of search rofl

lol
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: dosdude1 on February 23, 2023, 08:43:35 PM
Hi dosdude1.
I found the firmware for SIL3114,
maybe you will be interested to see and try to flash the card.
Perhaps all 4 ports will work.

https://www.siig.com/download/search?keyword=SC-SA4M12

There's also another firmware for sil3512 but there is a  problem how to extract it from the archive...
https://www.siig.com/pub/media/files/drivers/0005/siig3512101updriver1.sit

I was able to successfully extract both ROM images. From my analysis, it appears there are no EEPROM ID checks in the drivers, however I could not test the Sil3512 ROM as I don't have a card with that chipset on hand. Both ROMs will fit no issues onto a 128K EEPROM. These ROMs contain only an OS X driver, so they will not work under OS 9, but are bootable and will work just fine under OS X.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: AtariMan on February 23, 2023, 09:46:29 PM
Thanks a lot, I'll try it today.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: AtariMan on February 24, 2023, 07:47:27 AM
I flashed 3114, all 4 ports work and everything is fine.
Dosdude1 You are a genius and a very good engineer!
Of course, in Mac OS 9 there is no boot,
although it sees the disk, but 4 ports in Mac OS X are also good.
Sil3512 has not yet flashed, I'll try later.
Thanks again for your work.
You are a very valuable person for the PPC architecture.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: eastone on February 24, 2023, 08:39:14 AM
@dosdude1

Thank you very much! You are a great engineer! Btw, could you share the details of extracting the firmware and getting rid of those 20 bytes from the file? I am very curious how you did it :)

Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: smilesdavis on February 24, 2023, 09:50:14 AM
I flashed 3114, all 4 ports work and everything is fine.
Dosdude1 You are a genius and a very good engineer!
Of course, in Mac OS 9 there is no boot,
although it sees the disk, but 4 ports in Mac OS X are also good.
Sil3512 has not yet flashed, I'll try later.
Thanks again for your work.
You are a very valuable person for the PPC architecture.

Thanks for the headsup i almost sold my sonnet

But pop in attach drive boots. Love it
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: AtariMan on February 24, 2023, 10:16:24 AM
I stitched 3512, everything is fine!
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: eastone on February 24, 2023, 11:03:52 AM
I found another updater on my hard drive for siig with sil3512. ReadMe says this is the firmware for cards working under mac os 10.2 and above. The previous firmware was for cards working under mac os 10.1 and above. I don't know if there is any difference between these firmware for systems from 10.2 up.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: dosdude1 on February 24, 2023, 07:12:05 PM
@dosdude1

Thank you very much! You are a great engineer! Btw, could you share the details of extracting the firmware and getting rid of those 20 bytes from the file? I am very curious how you did it :)

Well, upon initial analysis, I found that the actual firmware image was encoded inside the executable binary of the kext (that comes with the SIIG firmware update package). I put in a little bit of time to see if I could figure out how the encoding was done, but ultimately I decided the easiest method would be to just spoof the properties of the card in Open Firmware to just make the updater think the card installed was the appropriate SIIG card it was looking for. Once I did that, all I had to do was simply run the updater, and it flashed the card no issues (though I had to put a different EEPROM on the card for it to work, as the updater only works with two specific EEPROM types. Yes, I attempted to patch this, but it simply does not have the necessary implementation to flash most EEPROMs). Then I just dumped the card's EEPROM, and there we go, a flashable ROM image!
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: smilesdavis on February 24, 2023, 11:13:51 PM
and does it boot in os9?
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: AtariMan on February 25, 2023, 12:58:11 AM
and does it boot in os9?
Sil3112 Mac OS 9 and OS X bootable. Sil3114 and Sil3512 Mac OS X only.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: eastone on February 25, 2023, 02:49:17 AM
Quote
I decided the easiest method would be to just spoof the properties of the card in Open Firmware to just make the updater think the card installed was the appropriate SIIG card it was looking for.

Thanks for the clarification! It sounds very simple if you know what to do :) Thanks again for your effort for our ppc community!
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: chrisNova777 on February 28, 2023, 04:46:18 AM
so is the new goal to get the 4-port card sil3114's booting OS9???
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Borgmac on March 02, 2023, 09:19:37 AM
Will continue to work on that and flash my first card.
Then I could have some time available...
I was writing this end of January and I had no idea it would take me more than one month to find a solution!
Let's start first with the disappointments:
And now the happy ending:

I have attached 2 files with the result of the checks that Flashrom is doing on SIL3112 and SIL3114. Just check the first 15 lines and the last 2.
You will see that flashrom is first detecting the SIL chip and then go through a long list of EEPROM to see if he find one on the card.

I will be back soon with some other news..
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Borgmac on March 02, 2023, 02:19:13 PM
OK, I succeeded to flash the SIL 3114 card with SIL3114CTU and SST39Sf010A by using Linux Lubuntu 16.04 remix v2 on a PowerMac G5. Version of the Flashrom is  v0.9.9-rc1-r1942 on Linux 4.4.0-21-powerpc64-smp (ppc64).
Been able to startup G5 and G3 computers with only one SSD connected to the PCI to SATA card or by selecting it at the startup menu.
(http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=306.0;attach=11777)
(http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=306.0;attach=11779)
Will come back later on with detailed process to install and work with Linux to get to this result using only PowerMac computers.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: joevt on March 02, 2023, 08:24:17 PM
OK, I succeeded to flash the SIL 3114 card with SIL3114CTU and SST39Sf010A by using Linux Lubuntu 16.04 remix v2 on a PowerMac G5. Version of the Flashrom is  v0.9.9-rc1-r1942 on Linux 4.4.0-21-powerpc64-smp (ppc64).
Been able to startup G5 and G3 computers with only one SSD connected to the PCI to SATA card or by selecting it at the startup menu.
Will come back later on with detailed process to install and work with Linux to get to this result using only PowerMac computers.
I made a version of flashrom that you can compile in Mac OS X 10.4 but I don't have a PCI card to test it with.
 https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/silicon-image-sil3112-flashing-easier-way-using-flashrom.7013/post-475781

If it doesn't work, then output from lspci from Mac OS X might be helpful:
sudo lspci -vvvnnxxx > PowerMac_lspci.txt
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: ssp3 on March 03, 2023, 08:06:10 AM
How about posting a compiled executable for mere mortals?
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Borgmac on March 03, 2023, 04:00:38 PM
I FINALLY got it figured out, well, sort of... I couldn't figure out what in my implementation was causing the issue, so I decided to make a new implementation, based off a different C implementation along with a (broken) Forth implementation I came across. With this decompression routine implemented, the USB probing issue stopped happening on my MDD! So now, finally, we have a fully working ROM that fits onto a 128K EEPROM! I have attached this new ROM below, along with my patched copy of the OS 9 SeriTek flasher tool with said ROM embedded, as well as the Forth source of the new decompression implementation.
Hi dosdude, I received the AM29F010, succeeded to solder it on the SIL3112 card and it is working perfectly in G5 and B&W G3 under OSX. Thanks again for this wonderful job.
I can see the card in OS9 (see attached picture) but I cannot boot in OS9 from the card.
I use the file attached to this post, is it the correct one, working in OSX and OS9?
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: dosdude1 on March 03, 2023, 06:18:50 PM
I FINALLY got it figured out, well, sort of... I couldn't figure out what in my implementation was causing the issue, so I decided to make a new implementation, based off a different C implementation along with a (broken) Forth implementation I came across. With this decompression routine implemented, the USB probing issue stopped happening on my MDD! So now, finally, we have a fully working ROM that fits onto a 128K EEPROM! I have attached this new ROM below, along with my patched copy of the OS 9 SeriTek flasher tool with said ROM embedded, as well as the Forth source of the new decompression implementation.
Hi dosdude, I received the AM29F010, succeeded to solder it on the SIL3112 card and it is working perfectly in G5 and B&W G3 under OSX. Thanks again for this wonderful job.
I can see the card in OS9 (see attached picture) but I cannot boot in OS9 from the card.
I use the file attached to this post, is it the correct one, working in OSX and OS9?

Yes, that ROM should work in both OS X and OS 9. Just check your drive, and ensure it is formatted correctly with a good copy of OS 9 installed that you know boots on that machine.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: smilesdavis on March 03, 2023, 06:44:57 PM
Hey so my sonnets are not worth 800 usd anymore? 🤣🤣
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: dosdude1 on March 03, 2023, 09:14:05 PM
Hey so my sonnets are not worth 800 usd anymore? 🤣🤣

I would sure hope not...
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: vectrex on March 03, 2023, 10:47:57 PM
Hi everyone,

Attempting to use dosdude1’s modified seritek flasher in os9 to flash one of the black Sil3112 cards in a MDD.

The seritek program detects the card and agrees that the card must be updated, but as soon as I click the update button, my whole system freezes. The flash program says ‘erasing’ and then I am unable to force quit and I have to physically power the system off.

I waited a long time before hard resetting the computer in case there was something with the flashing that required a long amount of time, but at this point I am convinced the program is freezing and not doing anything.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: dosdude1 on March 03, 2023, 11:07:04 PM
Hi everyone,

Attempting to use dosdude1’s modified seritek flasher in os9 to flash one of the black Sil3112 cards in a MDD.

The seritek program detects the card and agrees that the card must be updated, but as soon as I click the update button, my whole system freezes. The flash program says ‘erasing’ and then I am unable to force quit and I have to physically power the system off.

I waited a long time before hard resetting the computer in case there was something with the flashing that required a long amount of time, but at this point I am convinced the program is freezing and not doing anything.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

That means that the SeriTek tool doesn't like the EEPROM that's installed. Does your card have an AM28F010 EEPROM? If so, unfortunately, you cannot flash that EEPROM on the board, as it requires 12V for erasing and programming, which only can be done externally using an EEPROM programmer. Alternatively, you can replace the EEPROM on the card with a 29 or 39 series EEPROM, such as an AM29F010. These are programmable with only 5V, so these can be programmed on the board, and will work with the patched SeriTek utility. I really don't understand why these really cheap Chinese Sil3112 cards are now shipping with AM28F010 EEPROMs, but it's extremely annoying.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: ssp3 on March 04, 2023, 06:21:37 AM
I really don't understand why these really cheap Chinese Sil3112 cards are now shipping with AM28F010 EEPROMs, but it's extremely annoying.

This is common practice in Chinese manufacturing - substituting parts for whatever is in the parts bin at the moment, counterfeit parts including.

It has burnt many western companies that have either moved their manufacturing over there or are ordering their sh*t and re-branding it. Most have someone over there to do QC. But, as soon as you turn your back...
To paraphrase Forrest Gump - "Chinese [insert anything here] is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get.”
* It's not CHN bashing, I'm speaking from my own and people I know experience.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Borgmac on March 04, 2023, 07:25:39 AM
Yes, that ROM should work in both OS X and OS 9. Just check your drive, and ensure it is formatted correctly with a good copy of OS 9 installed that you know boots on that machine.
It is working very well. I probably had yesterday some issue with the booting of the B&W G3.
Try again today with 2 different partitions of an Inland SSD and it does boot without any issue.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: vectrex on March 04, 2023, 07:37:23 AM
Confirmed, both cards are using an AM28F010 EEPROM. Thanks for clarifying.

These were the ones I had purchased (EEPROM is not covered over like the picture illustrates) so I guess buyer beware for anyone else looking to purchase:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/194886253367

That means that the SeriTek tool doesn't like the EEPROM that's installed. Does your card have an AM28F010 EEPROM? If so, unfortunately, you cannot flash that EEPROM on the board, as it requires 12V for erasing and programming, which only can be done externally using an EEPROM programmer. Alternatively, you can replace the EEPROM on the card with a 29 or 39 series EEPROM, such as an AM29F010. These are programmable with only 5V, so these can be programmed on the board, and will work with the patched SeriTek utility. I really don't understand why these really cheap Chinese Sil3112 cards are now shipping with AM28F010 EEPROMs, but it's extremely annoying.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: V.Yakob on March 05, 2023, 12:18:28 PM
Question(!)
I know that such cards do not work in QuickSilver, and it seems that there is an option to fix it by replacing the voltage regulator (U2). Who knows for sure in which other models such a problem manifests itself?

And so, it's been some time since I started studying the operation of the SATA controller SIL3112 on Quicksilver. And today, finally, I have an answer.
A few months ago, we discussed it with FBz by email, and he sent me an interesting post (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/pci-sata-cards-what-is-the-state-of-compatibility.1650568/post-31802801) on macrumors.
I made an additional modification of the board since the last post (http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,306.msg49713.html#msg49713) -- replaced the voltage regulator with "FS8860 33C"
After that, QS starts without problems with SIL3112 installed and boots Mac OS 9.  8)

As a result, I checked this twice modified board in 3 computers: Power Macintosh G3, PowerMac G4 Quicksilver, PowerMac G4 MDD.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: redstudio on March 06, 2023, 10:09:53 PM
same situation.. weeks ago I bought 3 boards excited to be able to update them via software. Arrived yesterday they mount the AM28F010. I have the eprom programmer, can I disassemble these eproms, update the software and reassemble them? or do I need different eproms? is the firmware compatible with AM28F010 eprom ? let me know, thanks
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Borgmac on March 07, 2023, 05:19:24 AM
same situation.. weeks ago I bought 3 boards excited to be able to update them via software. Arrived yesterday they mount the AM28F010. I have the eprom programmer, can I disassemble these eproms, update the software and reassemble them? or do I need different eproms? is the firmware compatible with AM28F010 eprom ? let me know, thanks
As I do not have a programmer, I replaced the AM28F010 by AM29F010 and flash it on the computer.
But if you have a programmer that can supply the 12V for flashing the AM28F010, that should be ok.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Borgmac on March 07, 2023, 05:22:40 AM
As a result, I checked this twice modified board in 3 computers: Power Macintosh G3, PowerMac G4 Quicksilver, PowerMac G4 MDD.
Thanks a lot for this very good job, I will certainly try!
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: dosdude1 on March 07, 2023, 10:00:32 AM
same situation.. weeks ago I bought 3 boards excited to be able to update them via software. Arrived yesterday they mount the AM28F010. I have the eprom programmer, can I disassemble these eproms, update the software and reassemble them? or do I need different eproms? is the firmware compatible with AM28F010 eprom ? let me know, thanks

Yes, once flashed with the patched/compressed ROM externally via EEPROM programmer, the card will indeed work perfectly fine with the AM28F010. It's just very unfortunate and annoying that these cheap cards are now shipping with the AM28F010... Otherwise this wouldn't be an issue.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: redstudio on March 07, 2023, 10:18:28 AM
nothing.. I disassembled the AM28F010.. I put in the programmer, installed Rom downloaded here.. everything seemed in order.. flashed and checked everything is fine.. I soldered it doesn't work.. I don't understand.. it's not first time flash rom..always went well..has anyone tried this method? eventually I have new AM29LV040B Chips..could they be good to be mounted directly and flash on 3112 card with software?
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: dosdude1 on March 07, 2023, 11:55:59 AM
nothing.. I disassembled the AM28F010.. I put in the programmer, installed Rom downloaded here.. everything seemed in order.. flashed and checked everything is fine.. I soldered it doesn't work.. I don't understand.. it's not first time flash rom..always went well..has anyone tried this method? eventually I have new AM29LV040B Chips..could they be good to be mounted directly and flash on 3112 card with software?

I've personally tested my patched ROM with AM28F010, and I can guarantee that it does work. Just check your soldering; chances are that's the issue. Also make sure you read the chip content back and ensure it was actually flashed successfully.

If you do install an AM29LV040, then yes, you will then be able to flash via software.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: redstudio on March 08, 2023, 10:15:45 PM
You are right. defective welding..difficult because contact is below..however successful. works. great job everyone!
Title: SiL3112 VS. StarTech Adapter
Post by: FBz on March 10, 2023, 06:58:49 PM
                          Converted SATA SiL3112 Controller with AM29F010 VS. StarTech adapter with same 128 GB Inland SSD

(http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=306.0;attach=11900;image)
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: DieHard on March 11, 2023, 01:44:30 PM
Thank you FBz !

Real numbers, this is great !

OK, so the quick math tells us that in an MDD...

Part / Whole * 100
72.66 / 82.24 * 100 = 88.35%

So, it's safe to say that the lowly PATA/SATA adapter actually runs at about 88.35% as fast as the PCI sata card in the real world; or better said... the SATA PCI will give a performance boost of about (100-88.35) 11.65%.

Now don't get me wrong a boost of 11.65% is awesome, but we should also note that SATA card eats up PCI bandwidth to achieve that extra 11.65%, so I'm just saying for some people who fill their G4s with ProTools cards, or PCI audio interface cards with DSP cards (Powercore, UAD-1) then the IDE to SATA adapter may still be the best option since it's on a separate bus... just saying :)
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: V.Yakob on March 12, 2023, 03:21:37 AM
Now don't get me wrong a boost of 11.65% is awesome, but we should also note that SATA card eats up PCI bandwidth to achieve that extra 11.65%, so I'm just saying for some people who fill their G4s with ProTools cards, or PCI audio interface cards with DSP cards (Powercore, UAD-1) then the IDE to SATA adapter may still be the best option since it's on a separate bus... just saying :)
Any productivity growth from 5% can already be considered significant. ;)
As our FBz testing showed, my SATA-PATA bridges on the JM20330 controller are slower, so at first it seemed to me that the performance gain was greater.
But I agree with you, if the user needs to use many or all of the PCI slots on PM, then the best practice is to use the bridge, even on the JMicron controller.
Again, if the user needs to connect large partitions in Mac OS 9, the only possible option is to use a PCI card. As you probably remember, as an experiment, I connected an HGST disk with one 1 TB partition.

In any case, dealing with this issue has been interesting over the past few months.  :)
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: IIO on March 12, 2023, 06:02:02 AM
2TB volumes work fine with the cheap green adapters, but what you dont have without PCI solutions is multiple ATA controllers.
in the case of MDDs you can double and in the case of quicksilvers you can triple your internal storage with 1 additional 2-port IDE or 4-port SATA card, which is why a proper (and available) 4-port SATA card would be awesome to have.

to be honest, i bought a sonnet in 2005 mostly because i did not know about cheap adapters. :) but then later i was happy for the additional storage it allowed.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Borgmac on March 12, 2023, 06:50:24 AM
As our FBz testing showed, my SATA-PATA bridges on the JM20330 controller are slower, so at first it seemed to me that the performance gain was greater.
I made some tests with SIL 3114 and I was quite surprised to see that SIL 3114 is slower than SIL 3112 AM28F010 replaced by AM29F010 flashed with new flashrom from dosdude1. I thought I read somewhere that SIL3114 based cards were supposed to be faster than SIL3112.
(http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=306.0;attach=11908)
(http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=306.0;attach=11910)

It looks like the Sinloon adapter has still some good days to live...

(http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=306.0;attach=11912)

In any case, dealing with this issue has been interesting over the past few months.  :)
Same for me, it gave me the opportunity to lear Linux on PowerMac and to solder my first chip!
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: chrisNova777 on March 12, 2023, 10:50:49 AM
its the year 2032...
diehard.. still refuses to die...
still emphasisizing for you to not over-use your PCI BUS!! ehehehe
MACOS9! FOREVERRRRRR

whos gonna do the benchmark of two ssd's on two seperate PCI cards in RAID0 stripe
PCI BUS is trembling in fear

in all seriousness tho, if the sil3114 wont boot, couldnt there still be a way to force it to boot with an OF command?
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: DieHard on March 13, 2023, 01:09:42 PM
its the year 2032...
diehard.. still refuses to die...
still emphasisizing for you to not over-use your PCI BUS!! ehehehe
MACOS9! FOREVERRRRRR

OK, Chris, you got me there :)

Still reminds us of the old debates... hehe

I am sure, as stated an 11% increase is very beneficial, and that for the majority of users, I admit, SATA PCI card is the way to go; I am only mentioning this for the users that might not have a chassis and are using the slots for core/farm cards or the users that have (2) or more DSP cards and an interface PCI card.  DAW users are the ones that need to weight it all, even you, if you decide to add (2) or more cards with your MotU PCI card will see the light, audio pops and clicks are a real thing when you max out the PCI bus and then use it to write data.  I had to personally test and load up G4s back it the day, and it was a factor, even though, I know you like to ignore that, but hey, everyone can experiment and make their own choices, I am just putting it out there for those who google their way here and are going for an old DAW.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: chrisNova777 on March 22, 2023, 02:49:32 PM
my SIL3112 card has the winbond w29C011AP-15 thats 128k right?

for me personally -- re ssd its not even about the benchmarks its about the actual real world feel of feeling that the system is more responsive
that is what i experienced the first time i got the sonnet tempo sata card (purple one)

it definately was a huge thing, back in the late 90s + early 2000s .. but the disk performance was total shit compared to now
mechanical vs ssd theres no comparison in seek/access/wait times


Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: n8blz on March 23, 2023, 04:48:54 PM
I FINALLY got it figured out, well, sort of... I couldn't figure out what in my implementation was causing the issue, so I decided to make a new implementation, based off a different C implementation along with a (broken) Forth implementation I came across. With this decompression routine implemented, the USB probing issue stopped happening on my MDD! So now, finally, we have a fully working ROM that fits onto a 128K EEPROM! I have attached this new ROM below, along with my patched copy of the OS 9 SeriTek flasher tool with said ROM embedded, as well as the Forth source of the new decompression implementation.

Please tell me you made a video of you doing this!!
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: IIO on March 23, 2023, 06:54:31 PM
did you notice? huge pricedrop for consumer SSDs.

2 TB SSDs are now below €100, about where 1TB models were 4 weeks ago.

for massive data writing jobs or for archival puposes (i.e. in the cupboard) you still need HDDs, but for everyhting else you have no longer any excuses.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: chrisNova777 on July 06, 2023, 04:35:14 AM
it feels alot more than 11.65% .. like anyone going from a normal hdd to a ssd the change is instantly felt.
every read + write is faster... it adds up ;)
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Yrouel on August 06, 2023, 04:55:40 AM
As it was discussed here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/pci-sata-cards-what-is-the-state-of-compatibility.1650568/post-31775847 the issue with the QuickSilver seems related to the slow 3.3V regulator which makes the 1.8V rail that feeds off of it lag behind just enough to make the Mac hang.

I didn't have a FS8860 33C (I tried another random one but didn't work) so I lifted the input of the 1.8V regulator and fed 5V directly to it (so both regulators feed off of the 5V rail instead of being chained together).

It works! However the 1.8V regulator (AMS1117 1.8 ) gets quite toasty so I don't think this is a sustainable mod in the long run and I wouldn't recommend it

*Some images cropped and re-sized for display purposes. -FBz
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: ssp3 on August 06, 2023, 03:02:17 PM
Put a few 1A or so diodes in series to drop the voltage. Chinese did it on some JM20330 adapters.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: Yrouel on August 07, 2023, 04:55:26 AM
Put a few 1A or so diodes in series to drop the voltage. Chinese did it on some JM20330 adapters.

Yeah that's also how some of my CF to IDE adapters are able to be dual voltage. I didn't have SMD diodes at hand so I just used a wire.
This was just to prove the card could work and it was meant to be temporary anyway.

I just got the Adaptec card and it's working perfectly pretty much as is (minus having disabled the EEPROM).
Strangely however it wasn't recognized by flashrom using the "satasii" programmer even after disabling the EEPROM, I was able to flash it from Mac OS 9 with the patched dosdude1 flasher though so all is well
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: dosdude1 on August 19, 2023, 08:22:46 PM
I FINALLY got it figured out, well, sort of... I couldn't figure out what in my implementation was causing the issue, so I decided to make a new implementation, based off a different C implementation along with a (broken) Forth implementation I came across. With this decompression routine implemented, the USB probing issue stopped happening on my MDD! So now, finally, we have a fully working ROM that fits onto a 128K EEPROM! I have attached this new ROM below, along with my patched copy of the OS 9 SeriTek flasher tool with said ROM embedded, as well as the Forth source of the new decompression implementation.

Please tell me you made a video of you doing this!!
I mean... Not sure what I'd really show? It'd just be me sitting there writing a bit of Forth code haha. Not exactly the most exciting of videos.
Title: Re: Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)
Post by: DieHard on August 20, 2023, 12:49:54 PM
Yeah, that would be kinda boring...

But, I watched this video 2X for it's entertainment value...

[youtube]apEKAY11NQs[/youtube]

I must say, you are my hero, I am kinda feeling a little gay saying that... I better cancel my Netflix subscription... whatever it's 2023.

All jokes aside, you are one tenacious MF, have you ever given up on anything ?