[G4] Drives?

[Doug Burton]

On Jan 30, 2008, at 8:13 PM, John Niven wrote:

> You cannot use SATA drives unless you have a SATA
> interface. For a MDD that means a PCI card.
>
> If you have no investment already in upgraded drives
> AND you have a a spare PCI slot, SATA drives are a
> great investment. The cables are very thin which tends
> to help airflow inside the case, plus if you move up
> to a better machine latter they are more likely to be
> usable.
>
> The analogy: parallel ATA hose uses a wide, low
> pressure pipe to fill a bucket, whereas serial ATA
> uses a thin pipe but running at a very high pressure
> to push the same, or more, water through in a given
> time.
>
> ATA133 = 133Mbytes per second.
> SATA = 1.5Gbits per second.

I find this a bit misleading in that you state the drive speeds in two  
different formats.  Why not just tell it like it is and say:

ATA133 = 133 Mb per second
SATA = 150 Mb per second

> I believe these two are comparable in throughput.
>
> History made wider busses to increase throughput,
> without increasing the clock speed. A good example is
> the 64bit wide PCI slots in G4 towers. They only run
> at 33MHz but if you have a 64bit PCI card, then they
> have the same throughput as a more modern 66MHz 32bit
> PCI.
>
> But wider busses are harder to design and route in
> small spaces. So the trend is to make narrow busses
> that are well designed and shielded so that they can
> be run faster.
> John
>
> --- Dan Watson <ypsi7267 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> An ATA is what is also known as a "parallel ATA" The
>> other is a
>> "serial" ata, which is supossed to be faster. I
>> don't believe it will
>> work in your MDD
>>
>> On Jan 30, 2008 7:33 PM, Dan A Currie
>> <dancurr at frontiernet.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> What is the difference between ATA and SATA hard
>> drives?
>>>
>>> Will SATA drives work in my G4 MDD?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> Dan