Promise Ultra33 in PowerMac?

Promise Ultra33 in PowerMac?

[Michel Lanners]

Hi all,

I'm thinking about adding a Promise Ultra33 UDMA IDE controller to my
PowerMac. Those things, and especially the IDE disks, are so damned
cheap...

Anyway, does anybody have any idea whether such a beast would work with
the current ide driver stuff? I guess that PCI-wise, there should be no
problem. It's more a question of who initialises te board, as that may
be done by BIOS on-controller in an i386 machine, and has to be done by
the driver on a PowerPC box.

Using i386 boards in a PowerPC box under Linux can be done, as
demonstrated by my Compaq-OEM Matrox Millenium which works happily
(excpet a few quirks not related to its i386-ness).

Any thoughts (apart from 'drop that idea, buy SCSI' ;-) ?

Thanks

Michel

PS Andre, you got this mail because you're listed as maintainer of the
IDE stuff. If you know any other more apropriate oracle to answer this,
please forward...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michel Lanners                 |  " Read Philosophy.  Study Art.
23, Rue Paul Henkes            |    Ask Questions.  Make Mistakes.
L-1710 Luxembourg              |
email   mlan@cpu.lu            |
http://www.cpu.lu/~mlan        |                     Learn Always. "


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Re: Promise Ultra33 in PowerMac?

[Andre M. Hedrick]

On Wed, 10 Mar 1999, Michel Lanners wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> I'm thinking about adding a Promise Ultra33 UDMA IDE controller to my
> PowerMac. Those things, and especially the IDE disks, are so damned
> cheap...

I have inital patches to allow a PPC with PCI support to use an Ultra33;
however, the individual that started tests never finished them.

> Anyway, does anybody have any idea whether such a beast would work with
> the current ide driver stuff? I guess that PCI-wise, there should be no
> problem. It's more a question of who initialises te board, as that may
> be done by BIOS on-controller in an i386 machine, and has to be done by
> the driver on a PowerPC box.

You need the Uniform-EIDE 6.19 update to begin.

> Using i386 boards in a PowerPC box under Linux can be done, as
> demonstrated by my Compaq-OEM Matrox Millenium which works happily
> (excpet a few quirks not related to its i386-ness).
> 
> Any thoughts (apart from 'drop that idea, buy SCSI' ;-) ?

SCSI is native to Macintosh; however, I do have new chipset code that
Mac EIDE specific, the laptops I think.

> Thanks
> 
> Michel
> 
> PS Andre, you got this mail because you're listed as maintainer of the
> IDE stuff. If you know any other more apropriate oracle to answer this,
> please forward...
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Michel Lanners                 |  " Read Philosophy.  Study Art.
> 23, Rue Paul Henkes            |    Ask Questions.  Make Mistakes.
> L-1710 Luxembourg              |
> email   mlan@cpu.lu            |
> http://www.cpu.lu/~mlan        |                     Learn Always. "
> 

Andre Hedrick
The Linux IDE guy  --  http://www.dyer.vanderbilt.edu/server/udma/

APC UPS Daemon Support Center.
			http://www.brisse.dk/site/apcupsd/
Going FSF/GNU or GPL2 source soon.




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Re: Promise Ultra33 in PowerMac?

[Michel Lanners]

Hi Andre and Mark,

On  10 Mar, this message from Andre M. Hedrick echoed through cyberspace:
>> I'm thinking about adding a Promise Ultra33 UDMA IDE controller to my
>> PowerMac. Those things, and especially the IDE disks, are so damned
>> cheap...
> 
> I have inital patches to allow a PPC with PCI support to use an Ultra33;
> however, the individual that started tests never finished them.

Any news on the subject? I'll probably go shopping next week, so now's
the time to buy one of those boards, if there is a chance we can get
them to work...

How's the status of the Ultra/66 support under Linux? Your patches seem
to include support, but is it usable? I might not be able to get an
Ultra/33 anymore; most shops around here don't have them anymore. Plus,
the Ultra/66 costs exactly the same as the Ultra/33 before; so I might
as well get the best choice right now...

Do you think you have all the necessary code for the setup of the
board in your driver? As the on-board i386 BIOS code will not be
executed, this might be the biggest problem. As a 'dirty' solution, one
might try to use a bare-bones i386 emulator to run the BIOS code. That
has been done before for a VGA board on a PowerPC. If I remember
correctly, that emulator needed only around 100 kB of code... 

Any thoughts about Maxtor drives in general, and the Diamond Max Plus
5120 (91024D4) specifically? That one seems to be fast and quiet...
optimal choice for a desktop box!

Thanks

Michel

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michel Lanners                 |  " Read Philosophy.  Study Art.
23, Rue Paul Henkes            |    Ask Questions.  Make Mistakes.
L-1710 Luxembourg              |
email   mlan@cpu.lu            |
http://www.cpu.lu/~mlan        |                     Learn Always. "


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Re: Promise Ultra33 in PowerMac?

[Andre M. Hedrick]

On Thu, 1 Jul 1999, Michel Lanners wrote:

> Hi Andre and Mark,
> 
> On  10 Mar, this message from Andre M. Hedrick echoed through cyberspace:
> >> I'm thinking about adding a Promise Ultra33 UDMA IDE controller to my
> >> PowerMac. Those things, and especially the IDE disks, are so damned
> >> cheap...
> > 
> > I have inital patches to allow a PPC with PCI support to use an Ultra33;
> > however, the individual that started tests never finished them.
> 
> Any news on the subject? I'll probably go shopping next week, so now's
> the time to buy one of those boards, if there is a chance we can get
> them to work...
> 
> How's the status of the Ultra/66 support under Linux? Your patches seem
> to include support, but is it usable? I might not be able to get an
> Ultra/33 anymore; most shops around here don't have them anymore. Plus,
> the Ultra/66 costs exactly the same as the Ultra/33 before; so I might
> as well get the best choice right now...

Yeah Baby............just the other night I rocked both cards and I am in
the process of moving them from (EXPERIMENTAL) to SUPPORTED.

Ultra/33 is unlimited number of cards and NO BIOS chip installed!!!!
Ultra/66 is questionable for one reason only, I am 1 and 1 with this card.
One good card (rock solid) and one bad card (does not register its
presence in a PCI slot).

> Do you think you have all the necessary code for the setup of the
> board in your driver? As the on-board i386 BIOS code will not be
> executed, this might be the biggest problem. As a 'dirty' solution, one
> might try to use a bare-bones i386 emulator to run the BIOS code. That
> has been done before for a VGA board on a PowerPC. If I remember
> correctly, that emulator needed only around 100 kB of code... 

Why bother...............intel centric world bought us Bill Gates and
PnP-crap, so I am an Intel linux guy..............

> Any thoughts about Maxtor drives in general, and the Diamond Max Plus
> 5120 (91024D4) specifically? That one seems to be fast and quiet...
> optimal choice for a desktop box!

I like the Quantum KA series at 384MB/s internal transfer (I think this is
the right number, regardless, it smoked the IBM stuff by 50MB/s).

Andre Hedrick
The Linux IDE guy





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