Just converted my Powerbook G4 from a 120gb ide drive to a 1tb toshiba sata drive.
Had to surgically remove some of the cheap plastic/pot metal in the case but all is well. Nice to know amiga works fine with Terabyte drives.



I have video and might post later on youtube.

p.s.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/160804102106?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

the controller i used

Wow, makes me wish I hadn't invested in a 250GB Western Digital ATA drive.

Nice, any speed gain?

Quote:

why would there be some speed gain as he upgraded the drive, not the bus...

[ Edited by SoundSquare 07.04.2013 - 19:14 ]

Cool, i was thinking myself about this Mod. I was wondering if it`s necessery to remove the metal, or if the controler would fit. Please post the video on youtube!

It won't fit in a case without removing some part of it as bash64 pointed out.

Yes, the speed gain is amazing.
You have to remember to make 1tb laptop drives they had to invent bit stacking.
8 bits on top of each other gives a huge speed boost in reading. Also, newer controllers for hard drives provide better performance anyway.
Not much harm to do to the case. Just some removal of cheap breakable plastic.
I will post the pictures, video before going to bed tonight.

I still don't see the point in having 452 QuadrupleBytes in a laptop......

If your in for the speed, get a SSD (they make those in PATA up to 250gig), much faster in real life not prone to break on shock and will even save some battery !!

My iBook (120GB SSD) runs circles around the PBook (320GB WD) despite lacking a whopping 340MHz !

> I still don't see the point in having 452 QuadrupleBytes in a laptop......

Me neither. 1.8 kB storage wasn't even much before laptops were invented ;-)

> get a SSD (they make those in PATA up to 250gig)

Even up to 275 GB.

SoundSquare,
Quote:

Becasuse early ata133 desktop drives runs copying 40MB/s, while the best ata133 desktop drives is around 100MB/s. Same bus...

Anyway Im just corious for the numbers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7CmHMTtcCkhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7CmHMTtcCk

Finally got it to upload.

It is missing the part of how to remove the top lid, but I can make that as a seperate tutorial if you need it.


[ Edited by bash64 08.04.2013 - 06:56 ]

Quote:

I have a PATA optical drive > Sata HDD converter on the way, with the intention of having a small SSD as the system drive, and a larger SATA drive for any extra storage (which will hopefully spin down when not in use).

Quote:

Good to hear.

I've not delved into SSDs previously - any thoughts on pros/cons considering the PATA bottleneck: SSD vs DOM?

[ Edited by boot_wb 16.04.2013 - 13:51 ]

Could somebody (who bought this PATA - SATA controller) check the type of the contrller IC (below the label).
It would be really good to know it.

[ Edited by dekanyz 11.04.2013 - 14:25 ]

Will this also work in a Mac mini? With the same adapter or another (specific) one? What would have to be removed?

It should work, but wether you can get enough space to actually fit it....

In reality it could collide with the fan or the DVD-drive.

Work = work with closed lid, obviously. No one wants to have the parts hanging out of the box not being able to close it as before. A drive with higher capacity but smaller measurements can be found but it looks like the adapter itself is much bigger than it needed to be. It is slim but almost as double as high as necessary.

With adapter linked to by bash64 the SATA-HD will end up higher than the orginal PATA one (it will also move a bit forward, but thats probraly not that much of an issue).

AFAIR there is no room between HD and DVD so you would have to remove that.

Back when I had my 1st Mini I expermineted with adding some cable to the HD, turned out the Mini was as sensetive in that regard as the Efika (read it didn't work).

Was the cable itself the problem? So it only works with direct adapters but not cables? If not: What about chosing a tiny drive, take two short cables and lay down the adapter instead of standing it up? Would that leave enough place for the DVD?

There are other controllers that are flat. Search ebay for them. There are all types.

dekanyz,
Quote:
Still waiting for this info.
I know, it isn't sooo easy to open a PB, but if you just received yours, please check me that for me!

Sorry, do not want to remove 21 scews just to find out.

bash64,
Quote:
Of course not... ;)

@Boot_WB

Quote:

Note on the above:

When first booting after inserting the (optical drive) ATA>SATA adapter, Powerbook stopped at Openfirmware, spewed out some errors and refused to boot. After a reboot everything was OK: probably just updating the stored firmware variables to reflect the change in device.

It appear that the MACIO device controlling the optical drive operates in PIO mode only. Transfers are around ~3MB/s , cpu usage up at ~100%. (NB - this is on Powerbook 5,6 - Other Powerbook/iBooks/Mac-minis _might_ support DMA on MACIO device.)

The GUI (esp mouse) slows down horribly by default, but by changing macio priority in taskmanager this can be avoided.

Drive does not autosleep in accordance with settings>system>laptop>advanced, however can be made to autosleep by adding something like the following to user-startup:
Quote:
(NB - timeout interval is in minutes)

Summary: great for extra storage needs if you can tolerate the slow transfer speeds. Make sure to change macio device priority though if you want to be able to control the mouse

Thanks to ChainQ, Krashan and Bigfoot for support on IRC in helping to troubleshoot.

Next step: change internal drive to SSD

[ Edited by boot_wb 16.04.2013 - 17:06 ]

I have a Powerbook 5,9 and did not have these slow down issues or mouse problems at all.