Decklink HD and SATA card – Slot problem??

[Bob Zelin]

your slot placement is CORRECT – so yank out the Lacie card (you don’t need it to see if your system passes video and audio), and test again with the BMD card, and NO storage card.

bob Zelin

[Portland Animator]

OK, So it works, as I said, but so if I want to use the SATA card I have to relocate the BMD card?

Ed Anderson
Animator
ed@animationpdx.com

[Bob Zelin]

you probably have a problem with the SATA host card. I use Firmtek and Sonnet SATA hosts in slots 2 and 3 all the time with no issues.

Bob Zelin

[Portland Animator]

Yes, I am trying to use the SATA card that shipped with the Lacie SATA ext. drives.
Figures, the cheap solution never works out.

Ed Anderson
Animator
ed@animationpdx.com

[David Mallin]

Bob,

I wouldn’t say the cards have no problem.. I have a Sonnet Tempo-X eSata8 card in my G5, and ever since I installed it, the computer crashes and requires a hard power-down if I accidentally let it fall asleep. Sonnet acknowledges the bug, but it’s been 5 months since they updated the firmware for the card. Every card seems to have some issue.

Ed – what Sata card is Lacie including? I bought a G-SATA that came with a cheap FirmTek card. LaCie might be doing something similar.

David

_______________
David Mallin
Cloudchaser Films LLC
Santa Monica / San Francisco

[Portland Animator]

I don’t know the brand, can’t tell, its got onboard power for both cards, which is nice, but I don’t like having to use the 100mhz slot to use it.
As for crashing during sleep, I have noticed that lately as well, it started after I installed my SATA card as well. It has happened three times.

I ordered a Firmtek card, the FT1005 – Seritek/1VE4. I hope that will work with the Decklink HD card in Slot 4, if it doesn’t, Im going to chuck it, and chuck the External SATA drives along with it, I haven’t been impressed with the speed of those drives anyway.

faster storage solutions that don’t break the bank are not easy to find.

Ed Anderson
Animator
ed@animationpdx.com

[Bob Zelin]

Hi Ed –
For great performance with SATA drives, you should be using TWO SATA drives stripped together in a RAID 0 configuration (simply using Apple Disk Utility to do this). I use the 2 port and 4 port Firmtek Seritek cards ALL THE TIME, and have ZERO problems with them. If you are using the Sonnet Tempo X, make SURE to download the V1.2 firmware to have no issues. The Firmtek card works great in Slot 2 or slot 3 with the Blackmagic in Slot 4.

I use 4 SATA drives stripped togeher in AVID Adreanline systems to get 1:1 with no problem as well. I am surprised that you are getting poor performance.

Bob Zelin

[Portland Animator]

Well, don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t say “poor” I really am pleased with the performance – for the price, ($1 a Gig, can’t beat that for this kind of speed). I have a config exactly like you described, two drives, striped 0, and am using a Firmtek Seritek 1VE4 Card with 4 ports (I plan to add two more SATA Drives in Spring), and they really are more than sufficient for DV, but I am concerned about my upcoming film project, which will be 8 bit RGB 1080. (See my speed test)

So how do I know if the data rate on these drives is fast enough for RGB 8bit? Speed Test tells me fps, but not data rate.

Ed Anderson
Animator
ed@animationpdx.com