SATA? In an old world PCI Power Mac?! IMPOSSIBRU! (2025 Edition)

[XodiumLabs]

First off, why even do this? (2025 Edition)​

Before I explain, if you want it quick and to the point...if you came to me asking me "hey xodium, would SATA be a good idea for my Mac? Should I seek out one of these cards?", my advice would be as follows:

• Beige PCI Power Mac (not including the G3): Just buy a BlueSCSI v2 if you can live with 10MB/s drive speed and don't need a working optical drive. If you absolutely must, MUST have an optical drive in your system, maybe consider a SATA card?
• G3 Power Macs (including the Blue and White): SATA's probably not a bad idea, the IDE buses on these machines can be...something, especially first rev Blue and Whites. The beige G3s also have half-speed SCSI (5MB/s).
• G4 Power Macs: For the first few revisions? Sure, SATA's great. Digital Audio G4s and newer? It's a mixed bag and if you want utmost reliability here, stick to IDE to SATA bridges. These SATA cards are notoriously picky on Digital Audio/Quicksilver models. MDDs might be okayish. I have heard of people modding the voltage regulation to get these cards working better on these later systems, but that's not a topic I know much about.

Some discourse in the Discord reminded me that hey, it's 2025, maybe time to revisit this as the landscape has changed significantly: When I wrote this post, the only game in town for fast storage for PCI Power Macs was to either find a SCSI HDD that hadn't failed yet (good luck), use ultrawide SCSI (awesome but impractical), or part with a limb or two for a ZuluSCSI 1.1 or SCSI2SD v6 (the former costing $90ish with CA tax and shipping at the time). Given I am not made of money, I set out to find another way to go about this for hopefully far cheaper, and this post is the result of that journey.

But now, we have more options! BlueSCSI v2 exists, and the ZuluSCSI RP2040 on which it is based is no longer close to $100, and both will gladly saturate the 10MB/s SCSI bus in later beige Power Macs (G3 notwithstanding). SATA is still pretty cool, but it's no longer a requirement to get these systems up and running (without spending your life savings). Which is why for most people who just want their systems to work, a SCSI emulator is probably going to be the most foolproof and easy-to-use solution.

And part of that reasoning is that newer Sil3112 clone cards use EEPROMs that require you to have soldering experience, as they use EEPROMs that cannot be flashed in a computer. So if you're coming into this fresh, BE WARNED: You will need to be comfortable with a hot air station AND have a EEPROM programmer that can reprogram PLCC32 flash chips.

(Also for my US-based readers, there's also the problem of tariffs causing these cards to no longer be as cheap as they once were. AliExpress seems to have pulled all the listings if you're searching from the US, and eBay's pricing for these cards can be all over the place.)

If none of that deters you and you want to experience SATA in a place where it clearly shouldn't be, read on:

What works?​

• Most SSDs (some newer ones may have trouble, though)
• Hard drives of various sorts! (Though with bigger ones, you will probably want to partition them. I've heard of people having issues with 2TB drives.)
• Optical drives! (At least CDs. I have yet to have a DVD read, but I also haven't pursued this much, yet.)

What doesn't?​

• Burning with said optical drive. I haven't tried it yet, but thus far there's no indication that burning software can "see" the burning capabilities of the drive.
• Super high capacity hard drives. If you're going over 2TB, you might have trouble if you don't opt to partition your drives.

Machines that might be problematic​

• Digital Audio G4
• Quicksilver G4

Both these machines seem to have an issue with voltage regulation on the card, at least from what I've heard. If anyone has any experience with this, please let me know. Or post it in the thread. Thanks!

Machines known to work​

• Power Macintosh 4400
• Power Macintosh 8500
• Power Macintosh 8600
• Power Macintosh 9600 (both Tsunami and Kansas)
• Power Macintosh G3 Beige
• Power Macintosh G3 Blue and White
• Power Macintosh G4 MDD

What can I expect?​

It really doesn't matter which route you go here; SATA drives of any sort of a recent vintage are going to saturate the PCI bus all the same, the only thing you can gain on by using an SSD is access/seek times. But given these drives are still going to be leagues faster than anything that would have shipped stock in these machines...you're probably not going to see much improvement. Throw in whatever you wish for, be it SSD or HDD.

Optical drives should "just work" much like native IDE/SCSI drives. You can hold the C key to boot from them all the same. The only thing you lose out by going with a SATA optical drive is CD audio support, so if you want to listen to an audio CD with a SATA optical drive you're going to need something like iTunes or Audion (that reads the audio data over the data bus vs. using the CD audio connector.)

As said earlier, these cards "just work" and are picked up as a SCSI bus by the system. These should work in all manner of Macs, from the old world PCI ones, all the way into the New World Macs. These will work as far back as 7.5, and all the way up to 10.4 and maybe even 10.5.

What Sil3112 Card? There's so many!​

First, you're going to need an Sil3112-based SATA card. You can find this in a few different ways. Action Retro showed off this strange combo card with an SIL3112 onboard, and that worked fine. You can also just buy one off AliExpress or eBay, they come on generic boards with a cheapo ROM slapped on. These cards will do, but they can be a bit finicky as they're not exactly built to the best standards. The best luck I've had all around is getting a Startech branded Sil3112 card, but those aren't exactly the most common, either.

At least until the tariff situation in the US resolves, your best bet is eBay for the generic cards.

Once you have a card in hand, though, you're pretty much golden (unless the vendors who make these cards begin seriously cheaping out and putting 64K EEPROMs on them for some reason). dosdude1 has broken the original ROM wide open (so it'll now work on any EEPROM, not just the ones it was coded to look for) and also compressed it so it'll work on 128K EEPROMs. As of now all of these cards have 128K EEPROMs, so as long as you have a means to program the card (hot air and a programmer) you're good to go; you won't need to purchase any additional parts for this.

If you managed to luck out and get one of these cards that has a lower voltage EEPROM already installed, you're in for a treat: Attached to this post is a SeriTek flasher program that'll work in Mac OS 8/9, and that can just flash the card for you without every needing to touch soldering equipment. Cool, huh? Unfortunately chances of getting a card that can do this off an eBay seller thee days is slim. We never knew how good we had it.

How lucky you are determines the path you're going to take: The first two options will only work if the EEPROM on your card supports low-voltage write/erase operations. If you want to check, you can peel off the SATA RAID sticker and punch the EEPROM model number into Google and see what you get, usually a data sheet that'll tell you. If it says 12 volts for write/erase, sorry to break it to you but you'll need to skip to the hard way.

5 or 3.3 volts should be okay to use the software flashers, but YMMV.

Easy Mode: The Mac OS SeriTek/FirmTek flasher​

DEFINITELY TRY THIS FIRST. Unless you like a challenge. Or something. I ain't the boss of you. But if things go well, this is so ridiculously easy I was questioning if it really worked. If you bought your card more recently via the AliExpress link up top, this method probably won't work. Still worth a try though, because it's infinitely easier than the other two methods.

Requirements:​

• a Mac with a PCI slot
• said Mac being capable of running Classic Mac OS (so, 9.x, I've not tried this on 8.5 or 8.6 yet)

Step 1: Grab the 128K ROM.zip (it's attached to this post, at the bottom)​

I'd decompress this on a modern-ish machine just in case Stuffit whines about it on classic Mac OS. I've had mixed luck with .zip files and Stuffit, sadly. Once that's done, though, copy the .ROM file over to the Mac you're going to do the flashing on.

Note: I am assuming you're taking a straight-from-aliexpress card and trying to flash it, and most if not all of these have 128K EEPROMs. If you have a 512K EEPROM you can substitute the 3112-512-patched-ROM.zip.

Step 2: Grab the SeriTek1S2Flasher.hqx file (attached to this post, too)​

Unlike with the ROM.zip file, you do not need to decompress this on a modern machine. This should decompress just fine in Stuffit Expander. Copy the Flasher.hqx file to your Mac, decompress it and you should have the Flasher application ready to go.

Make sure the 1S2-patched-compressed.ROM file and the Flasher application are in the same folder. Start the Flasher app.

Step 3: Read the scary warnings and click a bunch of buttons​

Note: Pay close attention to which card you're flashing if you have multiple SATA cards in your Mac. The flasher will allow you to select which one to flash.

Anyway, when you start the Flasher, you'll get a scary legalese warning. Click Accept and move on.

Next you'll get a screen telling you what this flasher is going to do. Click Continue.

The next screen will allow you to select which card you want to flash. If you only have the one card installed, it should default to that. If you're using an already-flashed SATA card and are flashing another one, pay close attention. Flashed cards will end in .1S2 for their firmware revision.

Once the right card is selected, click "Update Firmware".

...and now it should erase the EEPROM on the card, and begin flashing it.

Once it's finished, it should pop a message saying as such. If so, restart your Mac, and open Apple System Profiler. Or just connect a HFS-formatted SATA drive to your card, either/or. You should see pretty quickly if it worked. If you're going to ASP, you'll want to look for this under Devices and Volumes:

(It's supposed to come up as a SCSI bus.)

If you see this, your card should be ready to go! Connect your drives and enjoy the ludicrous speed! But if for some reason it didn't work, you'll likely need to take the violent route, which involves programmers, hot air rework, and pain.

Medium Mode: Using flashrom on a PC​

Requirements​

• a PC that can boot DOS (pretty much anything should be able to)
• said PC having a PCI slot (NOT PCI-E)
• the SATA card itself (it cannot have a blank ROM on it)

I wrote these instructions using a Win98 PC, for the record. You can use whatever you want so long as you can get into DOS and the device the files are stored on can be recognized by DOS.

Repeating this for posterity: the card cannot have a blank ROM on it. If you're opting to swap the EEPROM with a bigger one for whatever reason, you'll want to program the replacement EEPROM first with the instructions under Hurt Me Plenty. Flashrom will just stare at you blank-faced if you try to tell it to flash onto a card with a blank ROM on it.

Step 0: Prepare a DOS boot drive, if needed​

I did this by just telling Windows 98 to copy system files to a floppy disk within the formatting dialog. There are many ways to get DOS onto a boot disk, you can do this up to XP, I believe (having the FDD formatter just copy DOS files to the disk). You can also use FreeDOS. I'm going to let you write your own destiny here, as there are so many ways you can go about this.

Step 1: Copying the files to the DOS drive​

Download the 128K ROM.zip and 3112_Flashing.zip files. Extract them somewhere memorable. You can throw away the 1S2_ROM file in the 3112_Flashing.zip archive, we won't be needing it.

Copy flashrom.exe and 1S2-patched-compressed.ROM to either your DOS boot disk or whatever drive you plan on using within DOS. I highly recommend putting them on the root of whatever disk you're using to boot DOS to make the whole process WAY easier.

Step 2: Booting DOS and using flashrom​

At this point, reboot your PC into whatever flavor of DOS you chose to use. I can't give specific instructions here because there are so many variables, but I assume you know how to get whatever PC it is you're using to boot from a certain drive.

Once you're in DOS you should be sitting at an A: (or C prompt. If you didn't put the files on the root of your DOS boot disk you'll need to navigate to where they are.

You can use the dir command to verify everything is in place.

Once everything looks good, you can type this command (flashrom and the ROM file need to be in the same folder/directory)

flashrom --programmer satasii -w 1S2-patched-compressed.ROM

A whole bunch of text should scroll by. You might get some scary-sounding messages like:

Warning: flash seems unconnected.
This flash part has status UNTESTED for operations:

Don't worry, press on. It should be fine. Eventually it'll get down to:

Reading old flash chip contents... Done.
Erasing and writing flash chip... Erase/write done.

What you'll want to see is this at the end, with it dumping you back out to the DOS prompt:

Verifying flash... VERIFIED.

You should now be able to shut down the PC, pull the card, and it should be able to be used in a Mac, now!

Hard Mode: Desoldering the EEPROM and using a programmer​

Note: If you're going to go this route, I do recommend looking into getting a lower programming voltage EEPROM so you never have to do this again. That way you can use flashrom/the Mac OS flasher to switch back and forth if you decide you want to stick this card in a retro PC, or something.

Requirements:​

• Some level of soldering experience
• A hot-air rework station (I used a cheapo one for this)
• A soldering iron (preferably a decent one)
• A programmer (I used a TL866II+ but anything that can write a PLCC32 EEPROM and has compatibility with whatever chip you use SHOULD work)

What programmer do you like?​

I personally use Xgecu's stuff, as of this writing I use a T46. I wrote this guide using a TL866II+ and found it to be great, too. But any programmer that can talk to PLCC32 flash chips and reprogram them (at up to 12v) should be fine here.

The process​

This guide is written using a TL866II+ and XGecu's XGpro software. If you opt to use your own solution, hopefully the directions translate somewhat well to whatever software/programmer you use.

First, you're going to want to put the chip in the DIP32 adapter, making sure the dot in the chip is oriented toward the top of the adapter and programmer, like so:

Make sure the handle is locked in the downward position. (Also, I know this is the wrong chip, I'm using it for demonstration purposes.)

Open up Xgpro. It might prompt you to update the firmware on your TL866 if you're using one, follow the directions to do that and come back when you're done. Should be quick.

Go up to the Select menu and pick Search And Select.

A window should pop up:

This is where we tell Xgpro (and the programmer) what chip we're working with. In the upper left, type out whatever chip you have. In this case, you see that I've typed "PM39LV040". Usually it'll autoselect the right one, but sometimes there are multiple form factors. Like in this case there's a TSOP32 version. Make sure you've selected the PLCC32 version and you're good to go.

At this point you can do a quick sanity check and click the READ button and see if the chip will read (even though it's empty). You should see this (pay no mind to the chip ID being different, again, this is a scrap chip I'm using for demo purposes.)

(NOTE: You MIGHT get pin errors on this step. If you do, try and reorient the adapter a little bit. Sometimes it can actually help to pry up on one corner of the EEPROM so it sits in the socket kind of askew. If this was a chip pulled from another card, you might need to check the pins for residual solder.)

If all checks out, now what you want to do is load in the Seritek ROM. Dip into the 3112_Flashing zip attached to this post and you should see a file called 1S2_512.rom. Put it somewhere memorable, this is the file we want.

Back in Xgpro, click the LOAD button:

And point to where you stashed the ROM. The file load window should look like this:

You should not need to mess with any of the options, leave them at their defaults. Click OK. At this point you should start to see some resemblance of data in the main Xgpro window:

Now that we have this loaded into Xgpro, it's time to flash it. Go up to the top of the window and click the PROG button:

A similar window to when we were reading the chip will appear. If all looks good and the chip ID is still correct, go ahead and click "Program". If it was successful, it'll look like this (though hopefully without pin errors like I had here!)

At this point, you're done with the programmer. Hopefully. Get the chip out, it's time to stick it on the card.

Putting the chip on the card​

I prefer hot air for this, for both removing and installation. I got out my iron and wet the joints with some fresh leaded solder to lower the melting point, then set my crappy 858D clone to 360c on full speed and got to work, and after about 45 seconds or so the chip came right off the board.

After which I took my iron back out, wicked up all the solder, then fluxed and tinned the pads back up.

I put some more flux down, aligned the chip with the tinned pads, and used the hot air once again to install the chip, giving it about a solid minute at the same temp as before. This was enough to make a solid connection for me, but YMMV.

After a quick douse with some electronics cleaner and 91% IPA, I had a clean, flashed SATA card.

Moment of truth...​

The only thing left now is to slap the card into a Power Mac and see if anything happens. Thankfully for me it worked first shot; my FAT32-formatted SSD popped up on the desktop of my 9600 immediately. Better yet, Drive Setup just works with this card. I didn't need Patched Drive Setup for any of this. It appears as another SCSI bus to the Mac. Sweet.

And because it's a "SCSI" device, that means we can bench it with SCSI Director 4, and my oh MY these numbers.

And that, folks, is how I at least made my 9600 do some ludicrous drive speed.

PSA for AliExpress cards, if you have trouble/weirdness​

If you buy one of these and it ends up either not working or working partially (in my case, the card only worked in a New World Mac, not my beige G3 or 9600), check the soldering on the card. Whoever or whatever assembles these cards does NOT do a good job, and in my case, both AliExpress cards I had suffered from cold joints, and in the case of one of them even had a pad completely missing from one of the capacitor locations. Bodged it all up and it works great now, even on the 9600.

Wick up the solder and reapply some new stuff with some flux and generally you'll be good to go. I wouldn't be surprised if some of these cards end up shipping with bum capacitors, either. But thus far, haven't heard of any.

Also, unfortunately, these cheapo cards have some...not good voltage regulation. It's enough to pass muster in something like a Power Mac 9600, G3s of varying vintage, and some G4s, but some machines really sensitive to this may not work with these cards. In my case, none of the three cards I have work in my Digital Audio G4. But my Startech-branded one works perfectly fine.

I've heard of people bodging in better voltage regulation to get the cards to work on these more sensitive systems, but I've not looked too deep into that, only known that people HAVE done it.

 

[jdmcs]

Dude, I know you've struggled to get to this point, but finally, your 9600 can score some impressive benchmark numbers! Congrats!

 

[bakkus]

Having followed your trials and tribulations on Discord, I can only say: Bravo, ol' chap! Well done!
The sort of tinkering I wish I had the space for.
Tell me more about your plans for an already quite insane PM9600?

 

[Kai Robinson]

Excellent guide, stickying this.

 

[skate323k137]

WOW!

I may have to try this. I presume this might work in a 7500?

 

[Kai Robinson]

WOW!

I may have to try this. I presume this might work in a 7500?

Should work for any PCI PowerMac

 

[XodiumLabs]

Having followed your trials and tribulations on Discord, I can only say: Bravo, ol' chap! Well done!
The sort of tinkering I wish I had the space for.
Tell me more about your plans for an already quite insane PM9600?

It's a pipe dream, but I'd love to absolutely load this thing with RAM as I've only got 128MB in it at the moment, I have more RAM coming, but not the maximum this machine can take. Which hey, that's totally fine.

I know I also need to put a better video card in it too, I swapped the stock IMX Twin Turbo with a Rage 128 out of a B/W G3 and that's been a massive improvement. I have a Radeon 7000 in the cards and it's gonna be fun to see that go too.

The ultimate goal is to see if dosdude1 can toss a G4 onto whatever becomes the final daughtercard for this machine. I'm currently loaning a MAXpowr G3/400 from an awesome person (Garth Beagle, shouts to him for all the massive help with this) and that card has been awesome, but the more permanent card is going to probably be an InterWare Vpower/366. Hoping it works as well as the MAXpowr does.

(Another "nice to have but not required at all" thing would be to get a Kansas board for this since it's a Tsunami 9600, but I mean...it runs perfect as is. So.)

 

[Garth Beagle]

So great you got it all working, and the reward of that speed!

 

[XodiumLabs]

An update to this: I managed to snag a SIL3114 and 3512 at my friend's shop, both cards destined for the bin.

There are suggestions 'round the net that the 3512 can MAYBE take the SeriTek firmware and work as if it were a 3112. I plan on trying this once I get compatible chips again. (I'm going to be building a card for someone else it seems and they're ordering extra chips, so I might ask permission to use one to test.)

If not that, it is known for sure that it'll take the Wiebetech firmware, though that's for OS X machines. Which is still cool, I s'pose.

I've also heard rumblings that the SIL3114 is just an SIL3112 with extra ports so it'll be interesting to see if that might just work, too.

 

[speakers]

I could have used your write-up a few month ago … I too have recently been down this path. In my case, it was for a Beige G3 DT.

There’s several of threads available online as guides -- in particular: https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/sil3112-flashing-sata.21640/. But I’ve also explored some other methods which other folk may find useful too…

Generic chinese-made 2-port Sil3112 SATA RAID PCI cards typically come with a 1Mb EEPROM which you can flash with WeibeTech firmware for use with OSX. The flashing can be done on card without removing the EEPROM. The WeibeTech kit includes a flash utility that runs under OSX. But you can also extract the image and flash with other tools. Since I don’t have a PC, the most convenient means for me is to use the open-source flashrom project (https://github.com/flashrom) under Linux. It’s also supposedly ports to OSX but I haven’t tried this. I run Debian on my G3s. WeibeTech is also bootable for OSX.

The real goal though. as xodium discusses, it to flash the FirmTek SeriTek1S2 firmware. This includes open firmware and driver support for Classic MacOS as well as an OSX driver. The first snag is that this firmware is larger the 128kB (i.e. 1Mbit). So you have to replace the EEPROM. The second snag is that FirmTek only supports the three 4Mb parts lists. I first thought that this was a restriction imposed the the flasher tool, but it turns out that the driver code also checks and aborts if it doesn’t see the right rom id. At first, I tried an unsopported EEPROM and I managed to find a way to patch the OSX driver to work .. but it’s *really* painstaking and I never found a general way to do this.

So using an acceptable EPPROM is vital. All three are 3.3v parts but the card probably comes with a 5v part installed. This aspect wasn’t mentioned by xodium. Fortunately, most cards can be configured to supply either level to the EEPROM .. you simply need to adjust a shorting link (or 0-ohm resistor). See 68kmla link above.

I used a generic Chinese 2-port Sil3112 SATA PCI card from eBay. It cost about $18 including shipping and was delivered in about 3 weeks. I wound up installing a socket to futz with various EEPROMs. But that was fairly tricky since there wasn’t really enough space. I used AM29LV040B chips from Utsource.

I used my TL866II+ programmer but I avoided using Xgpro under Windows (remember: I don’t have a PC and running a VM is a pain). Turns out there’s an open-source minipro project to do the job. You can build it for current MacOSes or, even more conveniently, install it using Homebrew. Minipro doesn’t have a fancy GUI but it’s a command-line interface is more my style.

I also have a 4-port Sil3114 card. Originally, I flashed it using the SIIG-3114-R1 flasher under OSX. This provides OSX support and is bootable .. but like WeibeTech, there’s no classic MacOS support. So, I stuck a socket and a 4Mb EEPROM on that too. FirmTek have 4-port firmware but I’ve not had any success with this firmware and card.

Finally, note that *BSD and Linux systems support these satalink cards without special EEPROM requirements. I run NetBSD 9 and Debian 8 on PPC Macs.

 

[XodiumLabs]

-cut for length-

Part of the motivation to do this write up is to document what worked for me and have all the relevant info in the right place. I had been deep diving into this for hours, questioning myself the entire way and having a difficult time because it felt like each piece of critical information was stuck in like a million different 68kMLA threads, some of which were incomplete due to the data loss that happened. Or things were kinda cryptic without a lot of explanation.

For the EEPROM things, I kinda knew about the 3.3v/5v things, but thus far every SIL card I've encountered has had a 3.3v part. My SIL3112, and the SIL3215 and two SIL3114s I also have here. That said I've never actually used one of the generic cards available on eBay, but you present a good point here that I'll add to the guide: Check the chip already installed to get a confirmation on voltage before swapping the chip, just in case. I know I plan to do up a card for someone else and they're getting the generic cards, so it'll be interesting to see what chip comes on that card.

As far as the "DRM" that the SeriTek firmware imposes, from what I understand, the check is in NDRV. I was talking to dosdude1 about it and he mentioned trying to take a look at it to see if things can be changed, which would be ideal. Because AFAIK, the three EEPROMs approved by the SeriTek firmware are considered "obsolete" (at least on Digi-Key and Mouser?) and may not be available forever. Being able to keep a steady supply of chips into the future will be critical for people wanting to perform this mod in the future.

Also, I see you ran into the issue I was going to have with the EEPROM sockets, ha. I wanted to socket my cards but trying to get it soldered on without melting some plastic seemed like an nightmare. I've just become decent enough with the hot air station that I just go it that way rather than trying to get that damn socket on.

I didn't know that there was a 3114 flasher for OS X, though. I'm going to have to seek that out. I'd love to get my 3114s working in OS X systems.

 

[speakers]

Part of the motivation to do this write up is to document what worked for me and have all the relevant info in the right place. I had been deep diving into this for hours, questioning myself the entire way and having a difficult time because it felt like each piece of critical information was stuck in like a million different 68kMLA threads, some of which were incomplete due to the data loss that happened. Or things were kinda cryptic without a lot of explanation.

The information out there is indeed fragmented, out of date, and not entirely reliable.

As far as the "DRM" that the SeriTek firmware imposes, from what I understand, the check is in NDRV. ...

There also must be checks in the Classic Mac driver code and probably in the OFW FCODE too. After patching the NDRV section of the rom for OSX to accept my different EEPROM part, OS9 failed to recognize the card. I could decipher the NDRV section zip-encoded inside the FCODE that initializes device properties but I hadn't the stomach to puzzle out the Classic code.

Also, I see you ran into the issue I was going to have with the EEPROM sockets, ha. ...

Er, yes ... Here's my first attampt with the 3112:

I had to dremel away part of the underside of the socket to fit over SMD components. And I needed a bodge wire for the highest address line because the trace either failed to connect properly or was never there (perhaps they never intended EEPROMs bigger than 2Mb). It was a nightmare without a microscope but it works fine!
On my second attempt with the 3114, there was slightly more space and my technique had improved. And no bodge wire was required.

 

[eric]

Just did this mod and worked great! The Three issues I ran into were - I lifted a pad when I removed the chip, dont put any pressure on the chip when heating, just let it start to flow then pick it up. Second was the sockets melt before the solder - so if you dont have a heat plate dont bother. Last was you can not boot off a 2tb volume, it just restarts after the happy mac (just make a smaller partition and boot off that)

Exact items I purchased
SATA Card ($6.88)

6.88US $ |Pci To 2 Port Sata Raid Controller Card Sil3112 Chipset Sata Pci Serial Ata Host Controller Card - Add On Cards & Controller Panels - AliExpress

Smarter Shopping, Better Living! Aliexpress.com

www.aliexpress.com

Flash Chips ($4.00)

3.76US $ 6% OFF|New Pm39lv040-70jc Plcc32 Pm39lv040 Plcc-32 512 Kbit / 1mbit / 2mbit / 4mbit 3.0 Volt-only Cmos Flash Memory - Phone Sensors - AliExpress

Smarter Shopping, Better Living! Aliexpress.com

www.aliexpress.com

So for under $15 shipped (if you can solder and have a programmer already) you have a really great solution to replace the drives of any PCI based Macintosh with an extremely fast & modern solution

Edit:
Ran a speed test in FWB on my Desktop Beige G3:
SATA: 44MB/Sec read, 46MB/Sec write.
Stock IDE: 8MB/sec read, 7MB/sec write.

A 5.5x speed up in read, 6.5x speed up in write.

 

[speakers]

Here's the FWB test result on my Beige G3 DT. The drive is an OWC 3D SSD:

In comparison, an HYPERDISK SSD on the IDE bus gives:

 

[LastCarbon]

Thanks for this write up xodium. I just finished putting one of these together for my Beige G3 Minitower.

I ended up grabbing a card off of eBay and I bought a MX29LV040CQI-70G from Digikey. So far, the system is booting just fine in OS 9.1 and OS 9.2. However, the OS 10.0 and OS 10.1 install disks don't see the solid-state drive and the OS 10.2 install disk gives me a kernel panic. The system also wouldn't work with my Radeon 7000 installed (OS 9.2 gave me an "error type 11" on boot). I will say this G3 has a tendency to be temperamental on a good day, so some of this could just be related to this computer. I will continue to fiddle with it over the weekend.

Oh, and a big thank you goes to speakers for pointing out the 5V EEPROM variants. The card I bought off of eBay also had a 5V EEPROM. I relocated the 0 Ohm resistor on the card from R25 to R24 which did the job nicely.

 

[speakers]

I ended up grabbing a card off of eBay and I bought a MX29LV040CQI-70G from Digikey. So far, the system is booting just fine in OS 9.1 and OS 9.2. However, the OS 10.0 and OS 10.1 install disks don't see the solid-state drive and the OS 10.2 install disk gives me a kernel panic. The system also wouldn't work with my Radeon 7000 installed (OS 9.2 gave me an "error type 11" on boot). I will say this G3 has a tendency to be temperamental on a good day, so some of this could just be related to this computer. I will continue to fiddle with it over the weekend.

Yup, the G3 is a temperamental beast .. part of its endearment.

You do need to run Tiger. it installs easily with the XPostFacto dance, and I've found 10.4.11 is nicely stable.

 

[LastCarbon]

Yup, the G3 is a temperamental beast .. part of its endearment.

You do need to run Tiger. it installs easily with the XPostFacto dance, and I've found 10.4.11 is nicely stable.

Ah that explains some of it at least. My Quicksilver is already running 10.4 so I was just trying something a bit different.

 

[XodiumLabs]

Speaking of the beige G3 minitower...

Due to the generosity of one Garth Beagle I actually received another one of these cards to mess with. Actually, two. Because he couldn't get his original one to work. And sadly, I think we got a bad batch. Programmed the chips fine and at first one of them came up in OS 9 just fine, but it would randomly drop off the drive connected to it. The other one just wouldn't come up at all. Garth noticed some dodgy soldering work on the cards themselves, wondering if they just weren't well assembled.

I know Joe's Computer Museum and Eric Helgeson have both bought cards (from the same seller, if I recall) and have had great success, so I guess it's really luck of the draw. If you're buying these from AliExpress and can afford it, buy multiple because there's nonzero chance you'll end up with a dud.

Or find the name brand ones stateside. Startech sold an SIL3112-based card and that's the one I originally used and had success with.

Or maybe as LastCarbon said, my G3 is being a fickle beast, as that's the test system I'm using. (Trying not to mess much with the 9600, as it's going to be the star of my VCF West exhibit and I really don't want it breaking down...)

Also, experimenting a bit, someone elsewhere mentioned that the SIL3114 is just a SIL3112 with 4 ports, so I decided to see what would happen if I soldered one of the 3112 EEPROMs to the card with the SeriTek firmware. Ended about as well as you can expect. (Nope, no workie. I want to try this with an SIL3512 next, though, but I am loath to mess with that card as it's ticking along just fine in my MDD...)

 

[LastCarbon]

Spent most of today messing around with the G3. First things first the card did work with 10.4. I did have to enable helpers in XPostFacto on the SATA drive for the system to boot in 10.4.

As for the ATI Radion 7000 issue I tried moving the two cards into different slots in the G3, no change. I tried the card in my Power Macintosh 7500 which worked just fine even with the ATI Radeon 7000 installed.

I also have another SIL3112 card with the Wiebetech firmware loaded. This card worked fine on the G3 in Mac OS 10.2 with the Radeon 7000 installed (no OS 9 support with that firmware this was already mentioned).

(S)ATAman over on the Mac OS 9 Lives forum was working on some new drivers for 3112/3114 cards that was in 2020 though.

 

[XodiumLabs]

So I actually made a very interesting discovery with those cards that Garth gave me to poke around with:

They actually work. But not in any of my OW Macs.

I tried them in my MDD. Both came up fine with no issues, complete with OS 9 support because of the firmware. But if I put them in my beige G3 or 9600, they'll either not be detected or hang the system. I might try them in my B/W G3, but that machine's kinda awaiting parts so it'll be a bit. I know Garth has a second batch coming, hopefully there'll be more luck with those.

I know there's also a FirmTek flasher for OS 9 that should work with these cards (AFTER the firmware has been flashed via EEPROM programmer) so I might give that a go and see where it leads me.