[P1] OT: large HDs may not need upgraded controller cards

[Jim Shimozawa]

Last week installed a 120GB in my 1999 G4 AGP 'Sawtooth' tower.
At first I thought about getting a 160GB instead, then I remembered 
about the ceiling and the upgrade needed. I'm still satisfied - knowing 
how expensive disk space used to be just a few years ago. Heck, I still 
remember spending at least $300 for a 250meg external drive from La Cie 
for my Mac SE.
Jim


On Sunday, September 7, 2003, at 09:25 PM, e.mkeene wrote:
>
> There has been a ceiling on how large a hard drive can be installed in 
> all the G4 towers older than the MDDs. The ceiling was 137GB. A 
> controller upgrade was required to access more than that on larger 
> drives. However, it has recently been discovered that starting with 
> the Quicksilver 2002 towers, they have been able to access 48 bit 
> addressing even though this has not been announced. There is no way 
> other than to install the drive and check it to see if it will work in 
> your tower. So far all the reports have confirmed it for the late 2002 
> towers.
>
> I got my tower in late May 2002 and having found a great buy on a 
> 200MB took the chance. It installed just fine and immediately was 
> visible to the profiler and disk utility as a 190 gb HD. I formatted 
> it with the disk utility and it is happy as a bedbug. Here is a site 
> with more info
>
> http://xlr8yourmac.com/IDE/big_ide_drive_support.html#storytop
>
>