Need a new old MacPro

[dix]

[quote="HCMarkus"
I could be wrong, but the key is the ASM1061... sellers do not mention Mac, but this chipset, which is the heart of the card, is compatible. No big deal, as long as you spent only a little more.

Well, I bought that card and the Read Me said "not Mac compatible" I tried it too. It's a no-go (tried both jumper settings). The one I ordered is $26 but it has 4 ports. The externals are USB 3.0 which might come in handy at some point. ..got a good deal on the SSD. $340 for 1tb on ebay so I don't mind the extra $

Sounds like a cool setup jlaudon! I'm using a PCI-e based 2408mk3 as an i/o so it's not really an option for me, but thanks.

[HCMarkus]

[quote="HCMarkus"
I could be wrong, but the key is the ASM1061... sellers do not mention Mac, but this chipset, which is the heart of the card, is compatible. No big deal, as long as you spent only a little more.

Well, I bought that card and the Read Me said "not Mac compatible" I tried it too. It's a no-go (tried both jumper settings). The one I ordered is $26 but it has 4 ports. The externals are USB 3.0 which might come in handy at some point. ..got a good deal on the SSD. $340 for 1tb on ebay so I don't mind the extra $.

Cool. Sorry if I gave you a bum steer.

[dix]

It's my brain not your steer that's bum! I forgot about the power! D'oh! The card is probably fine.

Sooo, I went to the local geek store and got the previously recommended power splitter and sata extension (for the ssd I want to keep on the sata 2 bus). They both plug into an ssd fine, but neither fit into the Mac's power/sata combo cable that's available (whatever it's called). The store is mainly a PC resource so I guess I need to find those same cords for Mac. The internet seems to confirm this.

[HCMarkus]

It's my brain not your steer that's bum! I forgot about the power! D'oh! The card is probably fine.

Sooo, I went to the local geek store and got the previously recommended power splitter and sata extension (for the ssd I want to keep on the sata 2 bus). They both plug into an ssd fine, but neither fit into the Mac's power/sata combo cable that's available (whatever it's called). The store is mainly a PC resource so I guess I need to find those same cords for Mac. The internet seems to confirm this.

I was able to cut the tabs off on either side of the power splitter and fit into the Mac Pro combo cable just fine. If you need the SATA port (it will be blocked), you can access it on the backplane board under the optical bay.

[dix]

Yes, that worked for the power splitter!

So, yeah the card works fine once the drives have power . You can even have your boot drive on the card to boot! One of the sata3 slots on the card doesn't work for some reason (I get error -50 when I try to write to it), but I'm good for now with just one. I routed the sata 2 from the under the optical bay as you suggested. ...it's ugly, i have to figure out a way to route the cords better. at the moment they're on the outside of the drives and crammed through the crack going into the back of the optical bay.

The other card I ordered came today and it isn't even seen in the system profile! So it goes back and the one you recommended is the keeper.

Thanks again! You're the best HC.

[dix]

If I moved most of what's on the FW drives to an internal SATA would I see better performance than having the samples on multiple FW drives. I'm certain load times would be faster, but I'm not sure about playback from multiple libraries all streaming from one drive.

In case anyone is interested: Turns out this was wrong. I'm currently working on a large project with several VIs. My load times weren't helped when I moved all the libraries used to the SSD on my SATA3 bus. The performance, once the VIs are loaded, seems fine, but the load times are faster if I spread the libraries around to the other hard drives on the FW and SATA2 buses.

[dix]

Bought another SSD so here's some further observations: Putting the libraries on two SSDs (one sata2 one sata3) also doesn't seem to improve load times much on the largeish project I'm working on. However, moving said project to the SSD and keeping some of the libraries on the Velociraptor HD speeds up the load time 25% and also speeds up other operations. So for now I'll keep things configured as such until I can afford SSDs all the way around.

[HCMarkus]

Bought another SSD

Addict.

Good stuff dix.

[dix]

I've got an ebay alert set for the first buy-it-now new 1tb ssd under $200, so yes I am an addict! That'd make you an enabler HC!