Boot from SIIG ATA/133 |
October, 02, 2003 8:50 PM |
ggorbet |
My S900 has a SIIG Ultra ATA/133 with a Maxtor 40 gig attached. It's been partitioned into two equally sized volumes with OS 10.2.6 on both, Classic on the second. It showed up immediately and initialized/partitioned with no problem. My problem is that I can only boot into X from OS 9 or another X by using XPF 3 and designating a helper disk. When I try XPF 2.2.5 or XPF 3 with no helper, the boot keeps flashing "no bootable HFS partition" and eventually boots back into 9. I've tried the ATA card in both slots 2 and 3. It is currently back in slot 3. I thought that the Acard's had no slot or first-8-gigs issues. As I say, I am successfully running OS X on this machine. My concern is that I am now dependent on a second drive (a 2 gigger on the internal narrow SCSI) and would be unable to boot should anything happen to that drive. Since it now appears that this card does have the "first 8 gig" restriction, can I build an X on the first 8 gigs, then another X on the remainder, and use the first volume as my helper? |
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RE: Boot from SIIG ATA/133 |
October, 06, 2003 8:34 PM |
ggorbet |
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I had originally used OS X Disk Utility and had checked the box to install OS 9 drivers. With that setup I was unable to boot using XPF without specifying a helper disk. Perhaps the erase disk thing would have worked. At any rate, it seems to me that using OS 9 Drive Setup would be the safest course for anyone installing this card and an ATA HD. |
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RE: Boot from SIIG ATA/133 |
October, 04, 2003 5:21 PM |
joevt |
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Using the OS X Disk Utility and selecting the OS 9 drivers option will install OS 9 drivers for all of ATA, SCSI, and FireWire interfaces. The OS 9 Drive Setup will only install the OS 9 driver for the current interface that the drive is connected to so you can't move it to a different interface without having to reformat again. I think XPostFacto should work with an OS X Disk Utility formatted hard drive but you might need to use Erase Disk in the OS 9 Finder after the disk is formatted and before you use XPostFacto on it. |
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RE: Boot from SIIG ATA/133 |
October, 04, 2003 9:59 AM |
ggorbet |
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Using Drive Setup from OS 9.1 did the trick! I can now boot into either of my equally sized OS X's with XPF 3 and no helper disk. I can also boot from one to the other using XPF. Thanks, Ed and rsouder4. It took a long, long, long time to get this done. I had made recent backups, but some earlier experiences made me mistrust them, so I did full backups of both partitions; booted (using XPF with helper) onto a FW disk; restored them both; and ran Disk Utility to fix permissions and Disk Warrior. But all's well that end's well. For a Umax S900 - and likely many Old World Macs - it can be said that the SIIG ATA/ 133 has no PCI slot issues or 8 gig rule, *if* you initialize with OS 9 Drive Setup. |
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RE: Boot from SIIG ATA/133 |
October, 03, 2003 9:21 AM |
egonzales21 |
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When using XPF, it is always best to use Apple's Drive Setup from OS 9.1 to format your hard drive. Of course format it using HFS+. For me using any other software has caused problems. I have used the SIIG ATA/133 card as well in the past. There is no 8G rule because the drives are seen as SCSI. My only problems during the 30 days I owned it was also the audio issue. I returned it in favor of the Tempo 133 and have no audio issues but had to get around the 8G issue. Good Luck Ed |
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RE: Boot from SIIG ATA/133 |
October, 03, 2003 6:21 AM |
ggorbet |
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I did erase and partition using Apple Disk Utility under OS X. Does this constitute "formatting" a drive, or is there some other lower level formatting required? |
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RE: Boot from SIIG ATA/133 |
October, 02, 2003 10:13 PM |
rsouder4 |
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I have been using that card in my 7500 for over a year now. My boot drive is a 60 GB maxtor. I have experienced none of the issues that you are talking about. (my boot disk contains one partition so there's no 8GB rule). The 8 GB rule generally applies to "true ide" cards. The SIIG card actually fools your mac into thinking that the ATA drives are SCSI. You can verify this by running the system profiler. The only problem I've ever had with the card is broken up or dead audio output. Did you format the drive with the apple disk utility? If not, that could be your problem. |