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Kona 3 board in MacPro?
In addition to upgrading my G5 to a MacPro at home, we’d like to do the same thing here. My work machine (Quad G5) had three cards in it currently:
A Firewire 800 PCI-X card, A SCSI dual channel control card for the two Huge raids, and the Kona 3 card.
All these cards are the PCI-X format. What problems will I have trying to use any of these cards in a MacPro with PCI-e slots?
Is any of this even possible? In my home machine, it’s a matter or replacing a couple of relitively inexpensive Firewire and SATA boards, but in the work machine, it’s going to get very expensive indeed to replace the Kona 3 and the dual SCSI card. Are there options to this madness?
Tom -
9 Replies
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The QuadG5 has PCIe slots.
If in fact you do have a PCI-x Dual g5, then you will have to get all new cards that are PCIe.
Jeremy
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OK, now you have me thinking…it takes a while to get going on Mondays.
I haven’t messed with the innards of wither machine since I set them up. My home G5 is a 2.33DP. It’s going on three years old. The G5 Quad is a little over a year old now. Now that I think it over, I believe that the older machine did indeed have PCI-X slots and the G5 Quad has PCI-e slots. Is there an easy way to verify this? I’m at work so I don’t have access to the home machine. Anywhere to get information on older machines so I can determine just what changes I will need to do when upgrading? It looks like I might be OK on the Kona 3 and the Atto SCSI boards, but pretty much hosed on the SATA, Firewire800 and Firewire 400 PCI-X cards on the older G5. The cost of progress. 🙁
Tom -
http://www.everymac.com has the specs on every mac.
https://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g5/stats/powermac_g5_quad_2.5.html
The Quad has PCIe.
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What also irks me is every new Mac also requires different type RAM. Which is now getting ridiculously expensive!
Ernie Santella
Santella Film/Video Productions
http://www.santellaproductions.com -
[Tom Matthies] “but pretty much hosed on the SATA, Firewire800 and Firewire 400 PCI-X cards on the older G5”
Luckily, those are the cheaper cards.
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I guess you have to ask would you rather them use slower or faster RAM? This nothing new.
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[santellavision] “What also irks me is every new Mac also requires different type RAM. Which is now getting ridiculously expensive! “
If they didn’t you would not get the performance increases you want. The processor is only one part of the speed equation, ram plays into that also.
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Yeah. Fortunatly…but still.
It’s too bad since these SATA enclosures and cards are rock solid on speed and reliability. No more Firewire 800 for this boy.
I talked to support at Firmtek and the cards (PCI-X) are NOT compatible in the MacPro. Currently they only offer a 2-channel eSATA solution for about $100. Looks like the actual SATA cables are different as well. I’d really like to stick with the 4-channel card, but it looks like this (2-channel) is the only solution for now.
Oh well, at least with the new MacPro, there is more room for internal SATA drives and in my older G5 DP. I’ll still be able to run 4 media drives ad two striped pairs right out of the gate.
Guess I’ll be ordering new hardware from Firmtek soon. The evolution continues…but it sure don’t like having to replace everything every few years. Ah, the price of progress, I guess.
tom -
[Tom Matthies] “I’d really like to stick with the 4-channel card, but it looks like this (2-channel) is the only solution for now.”
Sonnet has one:
https://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempo_sata_e4p.html
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