RFC: Mac PCI IDE Adapters

[skroo]

In the middle of a spate of 'justify-its-existence-or-pitch-it' for my hardware collection, I decided to use an otherwise idle Mac 7200/200 (upgraded to a G3/400) as a PVR running MythTV (http://www.mythtv.org/). I'm grabbing the Mandrake-PPC ISOs right now to do the install.

Here's the problem: the 7300 had no onboard IDE; it was one of a few PCI-bus Macs that were SCSI-only by default. I'd like to install the 40GB IDE drive I happen to have laying around into it, but have never run a PCI IDE adapter on a Mac under Linux before. FWIW, I don't intend to boot from the IDE drive, ever - I just want somewhere nice and large to spool video out to.

Do any of the Mac people have recommendations on what to use or what to avoid? Cheaper is better in my book right now since I'm poor and don't got no ice cream.

[macuber]

You have two problems

1. Will Open Firmware recognize the IDE drive attached via PCI->IDE adapter
2. Will the OS you are installing has an appropriate driver or not.

1. I believe your 7300 has New generation ROMS installed. So basics of Open firmware would apply. Apple Open firmware and Sun OpenBoot (what they call open firmware) are essentially the same.

look at this page on the Apple Dev Site:
http://developer.apple.com/cgi-bin/s...lang_en&simp=1
fir

This url is a little wrapped so you can just go to http://developer.apple.com and search for "Open firmware" from there.
You want to peek at "The Fundamentals of Open firmware parts I-III

First with the drive attached you want to boot up the mac holding down the O F option and command key (one with the pretzel).

You will come to Open firmware boot prompt of:
0>

I believe you can then view the devices on the hardware tree with command of:
0 > dev / ls

2. Now as far as the OS is concerned, you might also take a look at "Yellow Dog Linux" if your present distro dosn't work, but it should at least have a driver for the PCI slot I'm thinkin.

Hope this helps!

[skroo]

1. Will Open Firmware recognize the IDE drive attached via PCI->IDE adapter

7300/200s are Old World.

[macuber]

ahh

sorry then
couldn't quite remember off hand
I'd say if you can boot macos off the PCI->IDE drive then you could try Linux
or one of the BSDs.

[skroo]

sorry then
couldn't quite remember off hand
I'd say if you can boot macos off the PCI->IDE drive then you could try Linux
or one of the BSDs.

You might want to re-read what I wrote initially. I have no intention of booting off of this drive.