Apple IDE Cannot Access Beyond 137GB

An anonymous reader writes: "iMacLinux reported on a PenguinPPC story about Apple hardware being unable to address more than 137GB of space on IDE drives. The Apple computers only have ATA-66, which can only address 28 bits, while ATA-100/133 can address 48 bits. Solutions include using a PCI controller, FireWire or SCSI."

Comments

Two years of stagnation

[Perdo]

All gloss and no go!

Marketing is better than leading edge technology.

Time for apple users to pull their heads out of the sand. This may seem like a flame but it is not. I worked on or have had over 260 Macs. No Kidding. Apple has a great OS that falls down in strange places while being great in others. Same with Windows and the *nixs.

But their latest hardware, frankly, is trash.

The 1 Ghz G4 is the first processor to be faster than the 733 G4 w/512k cache introduced over two years ago. While PC hardware has doubled in performance, Apple hardware has been stagnant for two years.

Apple used to use the fastest Drive interface spec available at the time: SCSI. Now they use A drive spec less than 1/3 the speed of the fastest drive spec. Again two years of stagnation.

Apple's PCI bus maxes out at 133Mb/s compared to 533Mb/s available on PC. Again two years of stagnation.

Apple uses PC133 SDRAM at 300Mb/s compared to 1000Mb/s For DDR SDRAM or 1400Mb/s for single channel RDRAM or 2800Mb/s for dual channel RDRAM. Two years of stagnation.

Apple has stereo sound. PC has Dolby 5.1 in almost any new machine. Two years.

I've heard all the "user experience" arguments. Apples user experience is slow and anyone that says otherwise has no frame of reference outside of apple land.

Sorry, I have switched. Apple spent millions on product look and feel when they should have spent millions on hardware engineers. The good old days of paying a premium price for a premium product are long gone. Now we pay a premium price for a sub-standard product that looks fast.

The sad part is, really take a good look at the new imac. It's ugly. It no longer reminds me of a cute VW beetle. It now reminds me of desk lamp. A gray desk lamp. A gray dim desk lamp. A gray dim desk lamp that has firmware issues and is now three weeks late shipping it's first units. A gray dim desk lamp that has firmware issues, is now three weeks late shipping it's first units and has severe overheating issues when running the cd for long enough to install the OS let alone get through an entire DVD movie.

Did you notice that the Imac that Jobs displayed was not on? Shouldn't it have been on? Doesn't the damn thing turn on?

Show me one instance of the iMac being used by a person where you can see activity on the screen while the person is sitting there. Anytime there is activity on the screen they cut away to an imac sitting in a white room with no one operating it AND WITHOUT A KEYBOARD. vaporware.

G4 dual 1000, yes it has DDR memory but at a 5000 fully outfitted price point. Dual p4 2.2 Ghz xeons are not much better on price. Dual AthlonMP are half the cost. Dual Alphas are 4 times the speed same cost. (Alpha included to knock some sense into the Bioinformatics number crunchers).

And all this while the OS asks more from the hardware than ever before. Cold hard truth.

I know this is a stomach punch for apple lovers but if we don't make apple take another path, they will continue to sell us glossy crap for premium price.

Mod as you will... Truth

Re:Two years of stagnation

[Anonymous Coward]

you are an elitist asshole to tell me that I can't use a faster computer. just because you can't use one doesn't mean those of us who *really* use computers don't need ~1000X more speed.

Re:Two years of stagnation

[Perdo]

Athlon XP @ 1826/166fsb is the first computer I have ever owned (including a 733 G4/512k) that can scroll through a PDF with no draw in lag. None. It looks just like scrolling through a simpletext document. You can actually read the PDF without printing it. If speed isn't an issue, why does apple release faster models? Migrateing to commodity PC hardware is like breathing easy after years of suffocation: I didn't even know I was suffocating. Apple coddles users into thinking thay have a high performance machine the way VW coddles new beetle owners. It's fast and sporty and shiny and glossy and will get it's doors blown off by the first old rx-7 that crosses it's path. What is wrong with a cray? Why do you think I water cool? Just surfing? Hardly. I can actually rip a DVD to mpeg4 in real time. Apple cannot even play the divx codec.

I'm not a PC fanboy. I work with Apples for a living. I respect them as far as user experience goes but never will I make the mistake of assuming that an Apple has any speed at all. Quadra 650? Put netBSD on that thing. you might learn what memory management and multitasking are. I'm sure you put a lot of love into some old macs but it is time to move out of the world of education and into a real machine. The world loves an underdog but they are beaten -- often

bits & bytes

[Perdo]

Apple: "All these machines include FireWire ports that operate at up to 400 megabits per second"

my accent

Firewire has 50 Megabytes per second.

ATA 66 has 66 Megabytes per second.
ATA 133 has 133 Megabytes per second.
SCSI 160 has 160 Megabytes per second.
USB 2.0 has 60 Megabytes per second.

firewire drives will not save apple, they are slow too.

Current ATA drives peak at full ATA spec due to their huge caches. Their throughput on an ATA 100 bus is just under 50 megabytes per second meaning current drives outperform the firewire spec.

Can't exactly daisy chain firewire devices when ONE uses the spec's entire bandwidth.

So much for Apple being the DV platform of choice.

Well Put

[elroyjenkins]

the parent is NOT flamebait... its simple facts... it looks like the terrorists have already won...