Apple IDE Cannot Access Beyond 137GB 112
An anonymous reader writes: "iMacLinux reported on a PenguinPPC story about Apple hardware being unable to address more than 137GB of space on IDE drives. The Apple computers only have ATA-66, which can only address 28 bits, while ATA-100/133 can address 48 bits. Solutions include using a PCI controller, FireWire or SCSI."
Why is this just an Apple problem? (Score:1)
Re:Why is this just an Apple problem? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why is this just an Apple problem? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why is this just an Apple problem? (Score:1)
Re:Why is this just an Apple problem? (Score:1)
Re:Why is this just an Apple problem? (Score:3, Insightful)
Kings to Paupers (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, while Apple's FireWire support is certainly commendable, lack of USB 2.0 (in a slight war with Intel in competition with Firewire) and the inferior hard drives that ship with even the best machines is lackluster at best.
It is time to let Apple know that drive performance is just as high on our list as such cool things as 1394. I can't plug my DV camcorder up to it (which certainly does reduce marketing value), but a fast IDE bus is still extremely important.
If you're in the mac market, or own one now, make sure to let Apple sales know what you think.
Re:Kings to Paupers (Score:2, Informative)
Even if Apple releases 800 Mbits/sec FireWire, the drives still won't go any faster. The ultimate bottleneck is the drives themselves. The fastest drives have a maximum sustained transfer rate of about 41MB/sec. That doesn't come close to the 50MB/sec theoretical rate of FireWire or the 66MB/sec theoretical rate of ATA/66.
Re:Kings to Paupers (Score:3, Informative)
(1) The ATA/100 would still gain you the larger address space, allowing larger capacities. Since
160GB drives are here (and a scant us$250 to boot), this is quite important.
(2) I agree that the faster bus in theory won't get you more performance with a _single_ drive. But the fact is, that benchmarks say otherwise. For whatever reason, the faster burst speed of the bus has slightly improved the overall speed. I'm not a particularly good hardware engineer, but when I run `hdparm` on a couple of drives, I like the faster speed regardless of reason... (I still hate IDE and would much prefer SCSI, but I can't get a 160GB SCSI drive for $250.)
(3) ATA/100 controllers are dirt cheap. I can't believe that the extra few bucks wouldn't be worth it in marketing value alone.
Re:Kings to Paupers (Score:1)
Exactly what planet are you on where Apple markets to people who give a damn one way or the other whether they have an ATA/100 instead of an ATA/66 hard drive.
Apple I'm sure mind geeks buying their machines, and they've made a few overtures, but Apple, and Jobs in particular, wants people on it's terms. If those terms don't appeal to you, smile brightly and wave and wish you good luck with whatever else you use.
And adding cost to a machine is the last thing Apple wants to do with everyone screaming 'till kingdom come about how Apple's hardware is overpriced, etc. Whatever margin Apple has, those few bucks per machine that Apple would pay for an ATA/100 controller would not be absorbed by that margin, and the "overpriced" hardware would only increased in cost for the end consumer. I'm sure there's a shitload of little improvements that could be made to the hardware, but it adds up, and you've got to draw the line somewhere.
And if you want SCSI, you can special order your G4 with SCSI drives. Yeah, it costs, but SCSI costs as you yourself admit. The normal everyday user that buys a Mac for the home does not need SCSI. I don't care how fast it is. They just don't need it. Office workers don't need SCSI. They just don't need it. The speed doesn't matter for what they do. Hence, the cheaper machines use a cheaper alternative.
ya damn skippy (Score:1)
that was my exact first thought. first the airport, then the ipod, and now this.
granted, 137GB is a lot of space, but give me a weekend with my girlfriend in bed^H^H^H^H^H^H^H at the lake, and i could fill that up in a relatively short time.
most mac users are creative by trade in some way or another, and those folks seem to find creative ways to use drive space.
on the other side of the market, the fact that there ARE competitors is a huge benefit in a case like this. chances are the others guys stuff doesnt have the same issue, and if it does, thats that many more orginizations rushing to fix it to be first on the market.
people buy macs because they believe they are superior, and stuff like this makes it much harder to believe.
Re:Kings to Paupers (Score:1)
Re:Kings to Paupers (Score:1, Insightful)
Apple offers IDE as the default because it works well and inexpensively. If you want SCSI, you can order Ultra 160 drives in your PowerMac direct from Apple. They give you an option, so take it. I instead ordered an ATA RAID card and have never hard a problem with drive performance. Imagine if Apple started putting SCSI drives in their iMacs - nicer drives and they also had to raise the price tag by $300. Doesn't really sound like a smart move for a consumer oriented product, does it?
Firewire? (Score:1)
Is there such a thing as a 'native firewire' drive?
Can having an ATA controller in a firewire case make it possible to get around the motherboard limitations?
Re:Firewire? (Score:2)
I seem to recall that when firewire was being develped (some time before it actually debuted on the B&W powermacs), there was talk about an internal version of firewire that would have a significanly faster transfer rate. Unfortunately, it doesn't ever seem to have come about.
Re:Firewire? (Score:1)
I think that is correct, but it doesn't mean that someone couldn't make a firewire-native HD. You would just have to put a different controller board on it. It would be more expensive than an IDE drive, just because the controller would have to be "smarter".
Yep, that's right. Firewire is a lot like SCSI in the way it works (main differences are larger address size, more flexible topology, and serial instead of parallel) so the complexity (and hence the price, ignoring the effects of supply/demand) would probably be similar to SCSI. More expensive than ATA because the board has to be "smarter" like SCSI.
Re:Firewire? (Score:1)
A 160GB firewire drive may allow full capacity because the IDE logic (necessarily ATA-100+) is inside the drive enclosure, and the IDE addressing is done there. The Firewire storage/drive spec just has to support the larger sizes, and it does.
Re:Firewire? (Score:3, Informative)
Can having an ATA controller in a firewire case make it possible to get around the motherboard limitations?
1) Yes, it is possible to have a "native" firewire drive. However, since nobody but apple has an internal firewire port, no drive manufacturer is going to make one. They'll stick with bridge chipsets and cheap IDE disks.
2) Yes, a FireWire bridge is the second best method to get around chipset limitations. The best is to use a PCI expansion card, as the PCI bus is (currently) faster than FireWire in terms of transfer speeds.
Re:Firewire? (Score:2)
Waiting for SerialATA (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Waiting for SerialATA (Score:2, Informative)
I don't really see a problem here. (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple's online store shows the dual 1 GHz systems with 2x80 GB ATA drives, but with an option to do 3x72 GB Ultra 160 SCSI drives. Then, of course there's always FireWire.
explain this: (Score:1)
Dave
Re:explain this: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:explain this: (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:explain this: (Score:1)
identify the drive model and manufacturer
consult the manufacturers website
set the appropriate jumpers
sacrifice a small goat to scsi gods
Re:explain this: (Score:1)
The reason it didn't see the drive is because Apple crippled HD Setup so it only works on Apple drives. There is a patch floating around that will make it work with any drive (check net/openBSD's site) or you could use a third party formatter.
Re:explain this: (Score:1)
(It's either a change from 00 to FF or FF to 00, I don't remember which. In any case, you can't miss it. The wfwr resource should only be 2 bytes.)
Re:explain this: (Score:1)
I haven't used it in a long while but I thought there was a semi-idiot proofed, point and click patch floating around to do it for the ResEdit challenged.
Re:explain this: (Score:1)
Standard hardware has limitations, over. (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, the problem and the solution were all neatly bundled up into this story. Hey, I bet a standard Mac can only use 4 IDE devices before you have to add another hard drive controller. *Gasp*. I assume people who need more devices add appropriate upgrades.
A Note about Large disks vs. UDMA/100 (Score:2, Informative)
I mention this because it's quite possible that the solution to this problem is a little software update from Apple. You computer may not be obsolete yet.
Why is this an apple story? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why is this an apple story? (Score:3)
But I don't care. I threw a 160GB drive in an external FireWire case and it worked like a charm so it doesn't bother me (ok, I'll grant my reason for this was the two 80GB drives in the computer, but still....). =)
Re:bits & bytes (Score:2, Informative)
3200 / 8 equals roughly 400 MegaBytes per second.
Show me a drive that can saturate that!
Re:bits & bytes (Score:2)
Re:bits & bytes (Score:1)
Re:bits & bytes (Score:2)
Re:bits & bytes (Score:2)
Re:bits & bytes (Score:2)
Re:bits & bytes (Score:1)
Re:bits & bytes (Score:2)
Absolute minimum price for system you describe:
$3,657.00
$1000 for final cut pro
$4,657 minimum now
And apple recomends you buy:
$2000 for after effects
$1000 for Commotion 4
$700 Hollywood FX
And their best system is 12 grand
plus 5 grand for software.
3.5 grand for Canon's XL1S
How much crack do you smoke?
I could make a cluster that would make the top 500 list for that much money.
Acard ATA-133 RAID for Macs (Score:2)
Seriously... (Score:1)
Apple > ATA-66 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Apple ATA-66 (Score:1)
"The KeyLargo IC implements a single Ultra DMA/66 hard disk interface. This interface supports the boot drive and can accommodate a second hard drive."
http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/hardware/De
The only differences between the previous (pre 1GHz) G4 and the new ones is the graphics card, higher bundled RAM and new G4 processor.
http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/hardware/De
David
Re:Apple ATA-66 (Score:1)
Re:Apple ATA-66 (Score:1)
I wish I could say the same. I'm typing this from my new iBook (600Mhz Combo drive). I was once part of the 'Apple is fast' crowd. but after using it for 3 days, and I've gone to the 'Apple is slow' crowd. Well, atleast for all the G3 macs.
I think I'll pulug in a 256MB stick and make my final desicion then. It's currently 128MB. And I've heard alot of people say that it's not enough. I think they are right.
The question is how much faster it will run after the RAM injection.
Hmmmm..... Back on topic again. I've always found that Apple are a bit slow when compared to the lastest PC standards, and it's quite annoying sometimes. But then, they are usaly ahead in other areas--like FireWire and USB for example.
Re:Apple ATA-66 (Score:1)
Re:Apple ATA-66 (Score:1)
Thanks for the window compression tip.
Re:Apple ATA-66 (Score:1)
Re:Apple ATA-66 (Score:1)
-scratching my head (Score:1)
I'm perfectly happy to use one of my more-or-less-useless PCI slots for one of these cards. They just gather dust anyways.
easy solved... (Score:1)
Re:easy solved... (Score:1)
I have 3 160GB drives, G4/800DP and OSX and the acard card... the drives are stuck in 128GB land...
Any suggestions?
What about Sun? (Score:1)
What about Sun's IDE on Blade 100, Netra X1?
Would be nice to have one of those for compatibility testing, was just wondering if they're any good otherwise.
Re:Need more space (Score:1)
Hmmm, I was just about to get a 160GB drive. Suppose I'll have to opt for a samller drive - I've got a 10GB and a 30GB drive at the moment and as far as I'm aware I will have to remove one of them to install another IDE hard drive - or else get a SCSI card. Is this right or am I going to be able to install another IDE drive in some other way?
You could just get an ATA card. There are ATA-133 cards out there, which should allow you to use a 160 GB drive. Go to the Macintosh Product Guide [apple.com] and search for "ATA PCI card" or something.
10 MB is enough... (Score:1)
Re:10 MB is enough... (Score:1)
10 mb might be good for standard home use, but in the design world it doesn't even come close
Internal Firewire! (Score:2)
Drives can be powered by the firewire bus, if necessarily (but why bother unless their usage is low, like zip drives), the cables are much easier to manage than ribbon cables and make getting around inside far easier (Apple has solved this in their G4 cases, but most haven't).
It's also 400 megabits (at the moment), is DMA (needs it for guaranteed bandwidth, for cameras and so on), inherantly needs no drivers, and so on. I've also seen PCI Firewire cards that have internal connectors (three external USB2, two external Firewire, and one each internal), so when will we start seeing the drives?
--Dan
Re:Internal Firewire! (Score:2)
Re:Internal Firewire! (Score:2)
Perhaps it's not for everyone, but me, I'd like the opportunity to make that choice. Even if it's just for adding other internal devices, like CD-ROM/CD-RW drives, zip drives, disk drives, etc., and leave the main drive IDE, I think it would be a great help. Most devices don't even need 400 megabits, let alone anything ATA/133 can offer, so why waste device space? It's just silly, and the cables are much nicer anyway.
--Dan
Re:Two years of stagnation (Score:2)
Re:Two years of stagnation (Score:1, Flamebait)
I'm not a PC fanboy. I work with Apples for a living. I respect them as far as user experience goes but never will I make the mistake of assuming that an Apple has any speed at all. Quadra 650? Put netBSD on that thing. you might learn what memory management and multitasking are. I'm sure you put a lot of love into some old macs but it is time to move out of the world of education and into a real machine. The world loves an underdog but they are beaten -- often
Re:Two years of stagnation (Score:2)
Re:Two years of stagnation (Score:1)
DivX
If you are going to bash a group for something, get the facts straight. I can view DivX on this Mac, and the DivX programming group even released their own codec for MacOS 9/X users. Not to mention DivX Player for OS 9 users, and Jamby's DivX component for QT under OS X, plus others have given Jamby's CLI tools a decent GUI interface so that converting the hacked AVI format to something QT can natively read is easy (the DivX hack produced non-standard AVI files, and QT chokes on non-standard AVI files).
The thing is, your posts has holes, and isn't even on-topic. If you are going to use this board to bash us, at least do it over the topic. Suffice it to say, I have a pre-G3 8600 @ 300Mhz which runs pretty damn well. PDF is not an issue in readability or speed, especially when running OS X (unsupported) on this machine. However, I do realize this 5-year-old machine doesn't do what I need it to these days, and a jump to a better machine will do me a world of good for the arenas I intend to enter after college.
On the topic itself, this is hardly new, and as one person pointed out, the 48-bit addressing can be done in software. Or as another person pointed out, get the free ATA133 card that comes with most large HDs from Maxtor or Western Digital, or whatever. This isn't exactly a Mac-only issue, has been around for awhile, and I am not even sure why it was posted in the Apple section. I ask, should this ARTICLE be moderated as (-1, Flamebait)?
Re:MPEG 4 (Score:2)
The DivX 4.xx codec was originally Microsoft's but was extended by Intel for SSE. I know you will not claim Macs have SSE tucked inside the Velocity engine. DivX 4.11 allows the conversion of DVDs to MPEG 4 in real time. Meaning as you watch it, it's recording. You see, PC users are cheap bastards (or just not suckers) and are not willing to pay an extra 1000 bucks for a super drive to copy DVDs when they can do it for free.
The problem is, right now, 95% of the people ripping movies are using this fast codec. And DivX Networks, the makers of "the playa" and the codec, does not support Apple because of the aforementioned help they got from Intel. SO, Apple is ass out and must use the $1000 solution. And sure the drive is not $1000 but the machine that carries the drive starts at a price point $1000 higher than a PC capable of ripping DVDs in real time and burning said movies to CD a MUCH cheaper medium because it avoids the MPAA's tariff on DVDs.
As for picture quality, it's good enough that I cannot tell the difference between DVD and MPEG4 at 1600x1200 @ 32bit on my DP2040u 22 inch monitor, where I chose to spend the thousand dollars I saved by buying a PC instead of another Mac. What is the price point for 22" on the Apple side of the house? $2,499.00, more than an entire PC with a 22 inch monitor.
And for playback, because Apple cannot seem to understand the relevance of file extensions and thinks all MPEG4s are created equal, you can see the picture when you play back a DivX 4.11 MPEG4 but you cannot hear the sound.
Of course there is always iMovie. Not iMovie2 unfortunately. The original iMovie was a great application. It's a shame they had to change it. But like you said it doesn't matter because you are, luckily, abandoning the platform anyway and your current machine would take $344 to buy 256 megs of a dead end ram spec (256 megs of ram for PC costs about $80) and a $300 processor upgrade. $80 for an ATA/66 card and $100 for usb/firewire support. For $830 you can build yourself an extremely fast PC, comparable in performance to a G4 933.
Nice of you to come over from macslash. krevinek@mac.com I presume? You stated the same thing over there very nicely.
"Oi, should I mention again that MPEG-4 (the video codec) isn't MPEG-4 (the actual standard)? The MPEG-4 Apple is going to support is the MPEG-4 file format. What MPEG-4 compliant codecs will be available, we shall see (DivX, MPEG4v3 or whatever IS NOT MPEG-4). Sorry for the rant, just a little annoyed."
Osama is evil, evil is a state of mind, Osama lost his. So if he lost his mind, and evil is a state of mind, how can he be evil?
I'm sure your head is strained keeping your stories straight.
Oh, and welcome to
I've been trolled and lost an hour responding.. crap.
Re:MPEG 4 (Score:1)
1) It does not completely follow the final guidelines put forth by the standard for MPEG-4 video codecs.
2) It isn't available using the MPEG-4 file format, which was based on the QT4 streaming format, not the AVI format, and DivX
3) DivX
4) MPEG-4 video codecs are supposed to be fairly cross-compatible from my understanding, encoding with one codec and decoding with another should be little to no problem, as long as they are BOTH MPEG-4 compliant. DivX
There is a huge difference between MPEG-4 based, and MPEG-4 compliant. DivX
As I stated, as it stands now, it is illegal to release any true MPEG-4 encoder/decoder to the public, since you have to pay royalties to the MPEG LA. However, since the MPEG LA hasn't finalized their licensing scheme for MPEG-4, nobody is going to pay out royalties to them until they nail it down. Plus, the current working license requires content creators/replicators/publishers to pay out royalties to them, and this is pissing quite a few people off. NEVER make the mistake of thinking DivX
Sure DivX
The source of the DivX
Also, I got 256MB of RAM for this thing, 2 FPM DIMMs for 70$, still more than I would be paying for a decent PC133, but isn't the 300+$ you claim, and your price for the PC RAM is off as well, I can get 256MB for about 50$. Question I have is, why grab an ATA card for an old machine when you can use FW? I can grab a 60GB FW drive for 200$, and switching to a new machine, I would be better off getting an external that I can use more easily, even if I get a laptop. That saves a slot, and takes the price to get USB/FW down to 50$ (20$ USB card, 30$ FW card). I wouldn't dare upgrade the CPU, since the bus can't handle it. Better save the money for a new machine.
Re:MPEG 4 (Score:2)
Games driving the market? Nearly 100%
Re:MPEG 4 (Score:1)
Re:MPEG 4 (Score:2)
Generally Platter size tends to be incremental. The WD1200BB has 40GB platters and it's predecessor had 30GB platters. The density difference was worth about 10MB/s at 7200rpm. 10000rpm at the same platter size will add about 10% and the 20% for the next platter size. I can guess that drives will hit 60+ MB/s by the end of this year. The rock bottom model will be 60Gb and the top end could be as high as 240Gb on a single drive.
This makes a great reason to finalize the ATA133 spec because Intel is not going to finish serial ATA anytime soon.
Sounds like we can have pure DVD disk images of every movie we rent on our desktops. Even now a Terrabyte of storage is within the grasp of power users. For under $2000. The cost of my first 2mb hardrive. For my apple 2. I can't wait to see what happens in the next twenty years.
Re:MPEG 4 (Score:2)
Much like the real topic, The latest iMac with no shot of getting a pci solution, stuck with a max hardrive size that will be obsolete in a year and not even made in two. Current ATA drives already exceed the firewire specs 50 Megabytes per second (400 Megabits) Meaning the new iMac is in an upgrade dead end before it even starts. Compare to the Original Bondi: Same max hardrive size and uses a memory spec that will continue to be used for at least 2 years. That is 6 solid years of platform life for the Bondi compared to the new iMac with 2 years of platform life and a flatscreen with maybe 2 years of life if used in a school enviroment (the iMacs traditional forte).
Not to mention they raised the Apple barrier to entry 500 dollars. They have certainly shown they know how to shoot themselves in the foot as far as hardware is concerned to the same level that Microsoft does on security, Linux does on usability, sun does on getting platform support, and IBM fails to capitalize on their intellectual property, Intel trips trying to keep up with AMD and AMD cannot market their superior products.
All companies drop the ball. The only difference is, with the image they are cultivating, and their position in the market (declining), they absolutly cannot afford to.
My objective is not to flame apple but to provide apple a wake up call. They have made mistakes but they have also had some AMAZING successes. I want to see them continue to make the ferraris of the computer world but ATA66, 100Mhz Front side buses and computers with no upgrade path without flat out buying new hardware ARE NOT FERRARIS
Re:MPEG 4 (Score:2)
Apple didn't "foist" off anything with that RAM. Apple was simply the first consumer manufacturer to go to the DIMM form factor, before SDRAM became widely used. At that point in time, it wasn't even certain what the next memory technology standard would be, so sticking with 5V FPM wasn't such a bad idea. By the time the PC cloners moved to DIMM memory, 3.3V SDRAM had become the standard.
And those DIMMs are pretty cheap on ebay these days. Even last year I was able to get a pair of 128M for $90 each. My old Power Tower Pro (and the Power Wave I found cheap recently) has eight sockets, for a total of 1 gigabyte max. The last time I checked, they were down to $50-$60 each on ebay.
Re:MPEG 4 (Score:2)
Do you have any idea how absurd you sound?
$720 for a gig of crap ram? Your position is indefenceable.
check ebay Item:
# 2002994436
# 2002609802
# 2002659737
You are going to pay that much for crap ram on ebay, you might as well get a G4-400 with 512 mb of ram included.
The deapth of your ignorance astounds me.
pathetic troll.
Re:MPEG 4 (Score:2)
I kept looking because the best price I could find seemed so absurd. This somewhat discounts my rant at you -but- you were the one that paid $180 for $60 dollars worth of ram
Re:Two years of stagnation (Score:1, Funny)