kaye
12-15-2003, 12:29 PM
With Rick's and MacGurus' blessing and at TZ's suggestion, I am making an offer to Audiophiles and/or Videophiles. The creed of MacGurus is to sell stuff, where possible, that we have tested and that we know works. Rick, TZ, and I have been discussing what to do.
That has become nearly impossible for those with finicky audio or video PCI cards as well as software whether late model or vintage Macs such as:
G4 or later
9500, 9600, PTP, 6-slot machines or whatever.
In addition, we are looking for those who have, but not limited to:
Audio - Pro Tools, AudioMedia, MOTU, Logic, Steinberg - Cubase, WAVES, Korg, M Audio, etc.
Video - FCP, DVD Studio Pro, Avid Xpress DV, Matrox RTMac, etc.
I know nothing about any of this stuff. You need to be thoroughly familiar with your hardware configuration and the software.
I will ship a loaner, at my expense, a SeriTek/1S2, 2x WD 36GB SATA Raptors, 2x 1-meter SATA data cables, and a long 4-pin Molex extender with splitter for powering the Raptors externally. The data and power cables would go thru, for instance, the unused and open backplane of a PCI slot and you would not need to mess with your drive bays. Some computers you can leave the case off as long as you have a table fan blowing inside, others such as the MDD, you gotta close the side-opening door.
Whatever you have, you can test either with one drive as boot and one drive as scratch or RAID them together for scratch. I only have these 36GB Raptors but obviously larger capacity SATA drives would be necessary for big jobs.
If you live in the SFO Bay Area and you have a G5 with PCI-X slots, then I can offer a loaner 4-bay Burly enclosure with 4x Raptors and 2x SeriTek/1S2 cards for scratch but I'm looking for something exotic in PCI cards such as one of the DeckLink line of PCI cards. But any audio/video PCI cards will also do.
We are most interested in whether the SeriTek and two drives will do the job, are "suitable", and coexist with your PCI cards and/or software. But I will also send along a couple of test utilities for 9 and X for testing thruput with your gear. We want to post results and thruput will help tell us where problems may exist. Also, if you have an existing SCSI or PATA RAID, how do they compare with SATA.
SeriTek/1S2 Operating Systems Supported
* Mac OS 8.xx to Mac OS 9.xx
* Mac OS X version 10.2 or later
I am awaiting the return of this SATA gear from SoftRAID by the end of the year and would hope to start shipping in January. As TZ sez, "If there is ONE FAQ WE NEED it is in audio-video especially. An area I don't have any on-hand experience." None of us do.
If interested, email me at kaye@macgurus.com. I get over 300 emails a day and batch delete a lot so I need for you to put something in the subject line that will catch my eye, how about "SATA Project Test Offer"?
Tell me:
1. Computer and CPU upgrades
2. PCI cards. and which slot installed (vintage) and whether necessary for that slot
4. Applicable software for audio or video
3. OS or OSes
4. RAM
5. Whatever else you think I should know such as level of expertise with your equipment and with hands-on inside the computer.
6. Name, address, phone, email address.
k
That has become nearly impossible for those with finicky audio or video PCI cards as well as software whether late model or vintage Macs such as:
G4 or later
9500, 9600, PTP, 6-slot machines or whatever.
In addition, we are looking for those who have, but not limited to:
Audio - Pro Tools, AudioMedia, MOTU, Logic, Steinberg - Cubase, WAVES, Korg, M Audio, etc.
Video - FCP, DVD Studio Pro, Avid Xpress DV, Matrox RTMac, etc.
I know nothing about any of this stuff. You need to be thoroughly familiar with your hardware configuration and the software.
I will ship a loaner, at my expense, a SeriTek/1S2, 2x WD 36GB SATA Raptors, 2x 1-meter SATA data cables, and a long 4-pin Molex extender with splitter for powering the Raptors externally. The data and power cables would go thru, for instance, the unused and open backplane of a PCI slot and you would not need to mess with your drive bays. Some computers you can leave the case off as long as you have a table fan blowing inside, others such as the MDD, you gotta close the side-opening door.
Whatever you have, you can test either with one drive as boot and one drive as scratch or RAID them together for scratch. I only have these 36GB Raptors but obviously larger capacity SATA drives would be necessary for big jobs.
If you live in the SFO Bay Area and you have a G5 with PCI-X slots, then I can offer a loaner 4-bay Burly enclosure with 4x Raptors and 2x SeriTek/1S2 cards for scratch but I'm looking for something exotic in PCI cards such as one of the DeckLink line of PCI cards. But any audio/video PCI cards will also do.
We are most interested in whether the SeriTek and two drives will do the job, are "suitable", and coexist with your PCI cards and/or software. But I will also send along a couple of test utilities for 9 and X for testing thruput with your gear. We want to post results and thruput will help tell us where problems may exist. Also, if you have an existing SCSI or PATA RAID, how do they compare with SATA.
SeriTek/1S2 Operating Systems Supported
* Mac OS 8.xx to Mac OS 9.xx
* Mac OS X version 10.2 or later
I am awaiting the return of this SATA gear from SoftRAID by the end of the year and would hope to start shipping in January. As TZ sez, "If there is ONE FAQ WE NEED it is in audio-video especially. An area I don't have any on-hand experience." None of us do.
If interested, email me at kaye@macgurus.com. I get over 300 emails a day and batch delete a lot so I need for you to put something in the subject line that will catch my eye, how about "SATA Project Test Offer"?
Tell me:
1. Computer and CPU upgrades
2. PCI cards. and which slot installed (vintage) and whether necessary for that slot
4. Applicable software for audio or video
3. OS or OSes
4. RAM
5. Whatever else you think I should know such as level of expertise with your equipment and with hands-on inside the computer.
6. Name, address, phone, email address.
k