[G4] swapping boot drive to PCI ATA controller card

[Philip J Robar]

On Sep 28, 2005, at 11:33 PM, Ronald Steinke wrote:

>> From: Wayne Clodfelter <wayne at troutnc.com>
>>
>> I have purchased an UltraATA 133 card to get better performance from
>> my internal ATA drives on my QuickSilver.
>> Is it as simple as install the card and reroute the controller end of
>> the drive cable from the built-in controller on the mobo to the card
>> and restart? Or is there more to it than that?
>> Thanks.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Wayne Clodfelter
>
> I have never tried to connect the motherboard IDE controller to a  
> PCI card IDE controller, but it seems to me that it would be a  
> terrible mistake to attempt such a move. When I installed my Sonnet  
> IDE controller card, there was no information about making a  
> connection from the MoBo to the card except for the PCI socket  
> circuitry. The extra drives were connected to the controller card  
> sockets by the new ribbons and that gave me an additional two  
> functional hard drives in the case of my G4 Gbit.
>
> If someone else can give an exact reason, other than my fear of  
> trying to run two controllers (the MoBo one AND the card one)  
> through the same circuit on the PCI card, it would certainly  
> advance my Mac knowledge.

Wow, you're very confused about what's being asked here. Nobody said  
anything about connecting the two controllers to each other. Wayne is  
talking about moving the IDE cable from the IDE controller on the  
motherboard to the newly installed PCI IDE card in the hope that his  
hard drive will perform better there.

Performance wise, while you might be able to measure the difference  
between the two controllers I doubt that you'll be able to notice the  
difference - even with a new drive let alone a drive that shipped  
with your machine. See this review for some numbers: <http:// 
www.gamepc.com/labs/print_content.asp? 
id=ata133&MSC...B2A680C6E3843AA936461303A&cookie%5Ftest=1&cookie% 
5Ftest=1>.

As to whether you can just move the drive and still expect it to boot  
I don't know. I know that you can't do it on Sun's UNIX, Solaris,  
without editing some configuration files. Maybe I'll give it a try on  
one of my emergency boot drives tomorrow.


Phil