So far in this “pimp my ride” series, we have looked at upgrading the video subsytem of our Power Macintosh 7300/200 with an ATI Radeon 7000 Mac Edition video card (not much impact) and upgrading the CPU from the stock 200 MHz PowerPC 604e to a 400 MHz PowerPC G3 (BIG impact). In this last installment of our upgrade saga, we will look at upgrading the stock SCSI hard drive to an ATA-66 interfaced IDE drive.
The stock SCSI hard drive that shipped with the Power Macintosh 7300/200 may be many things, but FAST was not one of them. Using the Intech Hard Disk Speed Tools benchmarking program, I was able to measure the maximum transfer rate of the SCSI drive in my 7300 at about 9 MB/s. The graph below tells the tale.
Now, there is nothing wrong with this number. 10 MB/s is the advertised speed for Apple’s “Fast SCSI”, but to put this number in context, today’s SATA hard drives operate in the GB/s transfer range. Even the older IDE technology delivered up to 133 MB/s transfer speeds. 9 MB/s, while absolutely in spec, is simply SLOW!
To overcome this, I purchased on eBay a Sonnet Tempo ATA-66 IDE interface card. This PCI interfaced internal expansion card promised up to 66 MB/s transfer speeds, a worthy jump in performance vs. the existing SCSI drive. I happened to have a Seagate 3120814A 120 GB IDE hard drive in stock, and so I installed that into the second drive bay of the 7300.
Sonnet - SAS internal to external cable. Enter your postal code or Sign in to receive the best value in your area. USB 2.0 to Ultra SCSI adapters can be used with Ultra Wide SCSI Devices. Ratoc offers three SCSI host adapter models: The FR1SX (FW-USCSI-01) FireWire to Ultra SCSI, the U2SCX (USB-USCSI-01) USB to Ultra SCSI, and the U2SCX-LVD (USB-UWSCSI-01) USB to Ultra Wide SCSI. The FR1SX and U2SCX feature a HD-50 connector and are native Ultra SCSI devices.
I then installed the Sonnet Tempo ATA-66 into a spare PCI slot and connected an IDE cable from it to the newly installed Seagate IDE drive. For those that know about such things, I was careful to use the higher speed double conductor type of IDE cable, so as to get maximum speed out of the interface.
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I restarted the machine and went into Drive Setup (the standard Apple utility, usually found in the Utilities folder of the boot drive). It obligingly found the drive and offered to initialize it. I will spare you the gory details of that process, but I partitioned the physical drive into several logical drives (one for use as a general files partition, one for use as a second Mac OS partition, and finally, two for a later Linux install on this machine) and initialized each one. That done, I now had no fewer than 5 logical drives showing up on my Mac OS desktop.
How fast was this new disk? Had I accomplished the 66 MB/s I was hoping for? I reran the Hard Disk Speed Tools benchmark, and got a disappointing 31 MB/s.
This is still more than 3X the speed of the stock SCSI drive, but was only half of what should have been possible. I swapped IDE cables, I swapped out the Tempo ATA-66 for another Tempo and generally tried everything I could think of, but nothing would induce the interface to run any faster. I still haven’t solved this mystery, but 31 MB/s IS still a lot better than 9 MB/s, and so I decided to proceed with the testing based on this slower, but still much faster, hard drive and interface.
Clearly, to do any meaningful testing, I needed to be able to boot from, and run applications from, the IDE drive. The Sonnet Tempo ATA-66 box and documentation was very clear that this interface supported booting of the Macintosh and so I proceeded under that premise.
It was MUCH too much work to install a new version of Mac OS onto this new drive just for the purposes of testing, and so I took a very convenient shortcut. I simply copied my entire SCSI boot volume, folder by folder, to a partition of the IDE disk. I then “blessed” the system folder of this copy of my boot disk (if “blessing” of a system folder is a mystery to you, it is the arcane but simple process of making a Mac OS system folder bootable). Finally, I went into the Startup Disk X control panel and selected the new drive to boot from.
All set and ready to boot! Stop watch in hand, I hit the power button and timed the boot sequence. It clocked in at 1 minute and 40 seconds, or 100 seconds, from power up chime to the appearance of the control strip on the booted desktop. This may sound slow to you when examined through the lens of today, but this was GOOD! Prior to all of the upgrades undertaken as a part of this series, the equivalent boot time was 2 minutes and 57s, or 177 seconds.
However, I must note that after just the CPU upgrade undertaken earlier in this series, the boot time was already down to 2 minute and 5s, or 125s. Compared to the new time of 100 seconds this implies that booting from the 3X faster IDE hard drive hadn’t really bought me anything close to a 3X improvement. How could this be? As we noted in the CPU upgrade part of this series, it seems that booting is both CPU bound and disk bound.
What about other performance metrics? After the machine was booted, I tested a few programs that I had comparative metrics for:
– Photoshop 6.0 Load Time: 12 seconds (vs. 27 seconds from SCSI drive)
– Corel Word Perfect 3.5e Load Time: 2 seconds (vs. 3 seconds from SCSI drive)
The improvement in Photoshop load time was impressive; Word Perfect less so, but still good.
Looking at the above, the net result of this decidedly unscientific examination of the relative speed impact of using a 3X faster IDE hard drive vs. the stock SCSI hard drive is that it had an observable impact. Booting was faster, but not THAT much faster, implying that booting was bound by more than just disk I/O. Some program launches were more than 2X faster, while others were only 50% faster or so.
In summary, I think we can conclude that upgrading the hard drive of your Power Macintosh from SCSI to IDE is a worthy step, and one that will deliver you observable performance gains. Critically, booting is faster and program launching is faster. These two areas factor large in the subjective impression of the “speed” of a machine, and this all by itself makes a SCSI -> IDE upgrade well worth considering.
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That’s it for this installment! Stay tuned for final post in this series, a wrap up of all of the upgrade steps taken to date.
The USB 2.0 to Ultra SCSI Converter opens the world of high performance SCSI devices for systems featuring USB 2.0, but no SCSI ports. Attaching the converter to an Ultra SCSI storage device allows it to behave just like a USB 2.0 device. Unlike many competing converters, the converter is Ultra SCSI rather than SCSI II based, so it offers high performance of up to 20 MBps. The converter interfaces with a wide range of SCSI based drives, scanners, CD-ROM, CD-R/W, Zip and other devices. The unit can be used by itself when used in conjunction with SCSI devices that provide power on the SCSI Termination Power output pin. Otherwise, purchase the optional power adapter in addition to the unit. The device's small size and light weight, makes it an excellent choice for mobile uses. For external SCSI devices only.
| Part Number and Description | Price | Add to Cart |
|---|---|---|
| USB-USCSI-01 Ratoc USB 2.0 to Ultra SCSI Converter Ratoc informed us the main controller chip used to make their SCSI products has been discontinued. We're sorry to announce this device is no longer available. | N/A | EOL |
| Optional Accessories | ||
| PS-5V2A 5VDC 2A External Power Supply/Adapter ST (USB/SCSI) [more info] | $23.00 | |
| SCSI-RCL3005 High Density 50F to Centronics 50M adapter (Ultra to Fast SCSI I/II) [more info] | $34.00 | |
| SCSI-RCL3068 High Density 50F to High Density 68M Adapter (Ultra to Ultra Wide/LVD SCSI) [more info] | $34.00 | |
| SCSI-RCL3025 High Density 50F to D-Sub 25M Adapter (Ultra to Fast SCSI I/II Mac) [more info] | $34.00 | |
Features and Specifications
- Nearly two times faster than SCSI II adapters, and ten times faster than USB 1.1 to SCSI adapters
- Connects directly to High Density 50 equipped SCSI devices without a costly SCSI cable
- Instantly transforms an Ultra SCSI storage device to USB 2.0 device
- Works great with Jaz, ORB and other portable SCSI drives
- Easy installation, Plug and Play
- 1 Year Limited Warranty
- 1 USB 2.0 A (upstream) connector
- 1 Ultra SCSI HD50 connector
- AC Power adapter connector port
- Supports up to 20MB/sec. data transfer
- Supports SBP2 ORB/CDB command set
- Includes active Ultra SCSI terminator
- Support Synchronous transfer, Disconnection/Re-connection
- Works with various SCSI storage devices including: Hard Drives, CD-R/RW, DVD-RAM, MO, Removable Hard Drives
- HD50P connector works with standard Ultra SCSI, SCSI II, and other HD 50P female SCSI-2 connectors
- Firmware (Revision 1) currently does not support following functions: SCSI Printer command set, SCSI Scanner command set, Multiple SCSI ID, Multiple LUN
- USB 1.1 Full: 12Mbps
- USB 2.0 High: 480Mbps
- Ultra SCSI: 20 MB/sec. max (synchronous)
- Fast SCSI: 10 MB/sec. max (synchronous)
- 5 MB/sec. max (asynchronous)
- Ultra SCSI port works with newer SCSI standards including SCSI 160 and LVD, but transfer rates are limited to 20 Megabytes per second maximum and a connection adapter is needed for devices with HD68, etc.
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- PC or Macintosh with USB 2.0 port
- Windows 98/98SE/Millennium Edition/2000/XP/XPx64
- Mac OS X 10.2.7 or later, 10.3.x, 10.4.x
- High-Density 50P female SCSI-2 connector
- Term-Power output capability (will work without term-power when used with optional adapter)
- Single-End interface
- USB 2.0 to Ultra SCSI Converter
- Windows version includes all necessary drivers, media formatting and configuration utility
- Macintosh version includes necessary drivers and configuration utility
- User Guide
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- Dimensions: 51mm x 52mm x 18mm (WDH)
- Weight: 98g
- DC +5VV 300mA (max.) (SCSI termination power out pin voltage is required. Otherwise purchase optional AC adapter)
- Temperature: 0 to 55 ° C
- Relative humidity 20-80% (non-condensing)
Support
Sonnet SCSI & RAID Devices Driver Download For Windows
- FAQ: Considerations for Ratoc's FireWire and USB 2.0 to SCSI Adapters
- Extensive FAQ and important links for Ratoc FireWire and USB 2.0 SCSI products
- Using Ratoc Devices in The Windows Vista
- Compatibility chart, driver data, and information for Ratoc products and the Windows Vista