upgrading the imac hardware

[hewo]

Does anyone out there know if you can just stick a bigger and better ATA drive in and initialize it with the imac OS cd?

The factory ATA is not big enough and an external scsi jaz drive to unload data from the factory drive would require more expense (scsi card installation + jaz hardware + jaz diskettes)

Memory upgrades make a big difference too in the imac performance.

Thanks

[Jacob Stetser]

hi hewo http://www.aota.net/ubb/smile.gif

Yes, you can stick another IDE drive in there, but I went looking for another one the other day and there are all these steeenkin acronyms.. ATA, Ultra ATA/33/66. UDMA, and others that I know nothing about.

So far the iMac hard drive has been big enough for me, but I'm upgrading to Mac OS X Server and need more room if I want both Mac OS and Mac OS X Server on this machine.

If you can find any more specific information about what type of hard drive can be used to replace it, I'd be grateful!

Jake

[hewo]

Hi everybody

Currently the rev A imac is plain ole eide, or ATA-3, ultra ATA.

The rev.B/C imacs and the blue/white DT's support the ultra dma stuffs, ATA-4

I need to post a question to apple whether the rev. A imac has a flashrom ide controller chip which could be updated with ATA-4 firmware to allow supporting ATA-4 drives.

If successful, then an ATA-4 drive could be utilized to its fullest performance in the ATA-4 firmware updated rev.A imac.

If not, you could still stick an ATA-4 drive in and it would revert backwards compatibility to ATA-3. But you'd be wasting money, I think, because the ATA-4 may cost more, for the same size.

I checked the price of the factory installed drive, it's $100 today. I think for $150, the size quadruples to 12gigs, ATA-3. The OS will recognize very large drives beyond what is available today. The big question is whether the Mac OS initialization program can initialize a particular drive. If it can't, there are other programs, but you'd need to execute them from a bootable cd housing the program or have a zip connected housing it. And this complicates the mission.

[Jacob Stetser]

Hey, where did you find that 12 gigs for $150 price? http://www.aota.net/ubb/smile.gif

[hewo]

hello everybody

lowest prices (but check shipping/handling too) are obtained via www.{pricepulse, pricescan, and pricewatch}.com

status does fluctuate so just like the stock market you can be a winner or a remorseful soul

golly, i wish i was affluent and did not have to resort to the internet to buy stuff; just send the butler to get the darn thing from the neighborhood store ):

[Jacob Stetser]

Hmm. This is sooo confusing. I've found some good prices for 17-20gig drives for around $250, but they're UDMA or ATA-66.

I know you say they're backwards compatible, but what about the connectors.. If I have an machine such as the iMac that connects to an ATA-33 EIDE drive, are the UDMA or ATA/66 connectors compatible with that? I just don't want to buy something, go to upgrade, and then not be able to use it. That's a lot of money.

I'm going to post to other forums about this.. I'd really like to upgrade but need to look around!

As for reformatting, I've heard that it should work fine.

[hewo]

yes! the connections are in fact different between ATA-3 and ATA-4 which means if you don't have ATA-4 supporting hardware you would not be able to connect the ATA-4 drive. i wonder if there exists connector adapters that would allow it? or does this mean the ATA-4 is absolutely not backwards compatible?

gee, I wonder what Apple is going to say about my posting regarding the iMac support an ATA-4 drive?

there is currently an Apple notice that drive setup 1.7 contains the udma driver but is only available on new purchased blue/whites and those lifesaver colored iMacs. The driver is for these puters. this means the drives are udma.

rats, Apple took away the mezzanine, the infrared and gave back a 266Mhz processor, ultraDMA, 6gigs of it, a better graphics accelerator and memory for it, and the latest OS8.5.1! hehe
it must have been profitable to do so!

but you should see some of the weird problems that are evolving, some which appear very unpleasant and frustrating.

[Jacob Stetser]

Well..

"4. Ultra DMA high-speed 33.3 MB/s data transfer rate.
Ultra DMA is a high-speed data transfer feature that allows DMA commands to
transfer data at 33.3 MB/s—double the current burst DMA transfer rate of 16.6
MB/s while using the standard 40-pin IDE interface cable."

That's from ebay quoted from Western Digital, and on Western Digital's site they talk about how UDMA/ATA-4 is backwards compatible with ATA-3 host systems. Sounds as if the connector is the same, although if you have true ATA-4, there are 80 cables instead of 40 in the ribbon.

Sigh. This is too much information for my little brain. I think I'll go to bed. But not before I zip off an email to FQ support to see what Terra thinks.

Jake

[hewo]

Thanks Jake

The most important knowledge gained through our conversation was stated by you:

.....that's quite a bit of money to spend and later realize it is not the appropriate type of interface.....

did you get a chance to see how prices fluctuate so drastically using those price search engines. i thought that prices always decline with the clock because of obsolescence. but some really junky stuff goes up! and some really good stuff goes down! the example here is the usb zipdrive and the usb superdiskdrive. the throughput of the zip is far superior! even worse, the scsi version of the zipdrive is even cheaper than the usb! the scsi zipdrive is about a hundred times faster with throughput! but to utilize scsi in an imac, u must invest $95 for the scsi card, $38 for the cable/gender, and $80 shipping from germany. do u think it is worth it? or would that be regression?

[hewo]

Hi Jake

Did you find any further clarification regarding:

Sigh. This is too much information for my little brain. I think I'll go to bed. But not before I zip off an email to FQ support to see what Terra thinks.
Jake


Let me know, I believe the ATA-3 works and some ATA-4's also too. The 80 pin stuff is owed to 40 extra grounding ties, per tech specs at www.wdc.com in regards to 80pin ATA-4