Power Mac G5 & Digidesign PCI Cards

[MidnightFlyer]

Doc, if you can come up with a foolproof way of allowing the 001 to work with a G5, you'll have at least 1 customer.

[Mety]

Me Too!

[rgriff]

Me 2
R A Y

[KamaSutra77]

I would guess that whatever "bridge board/powersupply/transformer" you came up with, wouldnt fit in the case. So you'd have to run a ribbon cabble through an open PCI slot out the back of the machine to a chassis. I have to wonder if there are other more involved buffering/filtering/amperage/grounding/shielding/resistance/capacitance issues. I'd find out how many mac users there are amoung the user base first. then estimate how many would require such an upgrade. As I elluded to before, it is unlikley that anyone with the dough for a G5 is too strapped for cash to simply upgrade the interface as well. A limited hand built production run might be a wash if the numbers arn't there for sales. It's possible perhaps. But is it a "good" idea?

better idea, petition Digi to allow software to run wihtout hardware. The G5 can make up for those old Motorollas.
A plan:
Digi developes a patch that enables 6.1 software to run nativly on the G5 ( G5 only, thats the incentive)
Digi collects dough for said patch
The patch would also be ineresting to anyone with a G4/Digi001. Think of it as PTfree with hardware on/off switch.

I would pay $85 for this feature.

[cranque]

Originally posted by s2n:
<snip>Does MOTU offer an exchange program? No. Be gratefull that Digi does.

They do now. From the "G5 compatibility" link on the motu home page: Existing PCI-424 owners can trade in their PCI-424 card for a new PCI-424/G5 card for $69, plus shipping.

[Doc]

I would guess that whatever "bridge board/powersupply/transformer" you came up with, wouldnt fit in the case.....

Actually, I believe that would be the easiest part. Modern switch mode power supplies are quite small for their power output and would easily fit inside a desktop case. Most of them are very well regulated and filtered too. Even a simple series regulator running from the 12 volt (or 5 volt) rail of the Mac supply would be more than up to the task and also quite small.
I suspect the "bridge board" will be no more than a simple mod to the 001 card. If this is just a case of cutting a keyway in the card, it could be possible to mod it and retain backwards compatability with older PCI slots.
The only hold up would be finding somebody with a G5 and 001 willing to let me loose. I think this will be the most difficult part (If I had the $$ to buy a G5, I'd work it out on my system).

[nuke]

The difference between 3.3v PCI and 5V pci is in the signalling levels present on the bus. The PCI standard is moving towards lower voltages for many valid technical reasons.

PCI cards are notched and the PCI sockets have keys which prevent the insertion of incompatible cards into slots they won't work in. That's why they won't fit.

None of this stuff is new. It has been part of the PCI standard for a number of years.

Some cards are happy in either place. Some cards must be in 5v slots, some cards must be in 3v slots. The two shall never meet. If you somehow wedged a 5v card into a 3v bus, you risk damage to every card on the PCI bus and the MLB at the same time.

Hence, the cards are notched to prevent you doing this. Clever huh? Smoke prevention is a good thing.

The only way you could get any 5v only card to work with a G5 is with some sort of PCI-to-PCI bridge and external card cage.

That's really all there is to it.

[WorldOfWiz]

[QUOTE]
[Well lets see what you guys think when all of a sudden 2 yrs from now your 002 rack or 002 will be obsolete cause fire wire is dead. All of a sudden usb 3 is better and faster and the standard. ( I know mac developed fire wire but think hypothetically).
/quote]

Ok now thats freally funny usb3 better than firewire?? I almost fell out of my chair laughing at that one. usb3 will only in theroy be as fast as FW2 and by the time that happens FW3 will be out and usb will be tapped out. and will still suck for video.

Wiz

[Doc]

The difference between 3.3v PCI and 5V pci is in the signalling levels present on the bus. The PCI standard is moving towards lower voltages for many valid technical reasons.....

Hmmmm..... Kind of like TTL vs CMOS? Bugger
I was hoping this was just a supply rail issue but I guess that wouldn't really make sense with CPU's and mobo's using 3.3v for everything.

Dannii's thoughts (AKA Jerry Springer ):

Some 3.3v cards will fit and work in 5v slots (eg HD) so they must have a certain tolerance margain designed into the card. That being the case, if there is risk of damage from using a 5v card in a 3.3v slot (assuming the key was modded to suit) then surely that is a because some of the new PCI chipsets do not have this tolerance margain built in. I guess there's a trade off between tolerance margains and things like slew rate and bus speed so I suppose it wouldn't make sense to design a higher performance standard and cripple it with backwards compatability.
Oh well....
Hopefully the introduction of the G5 causes a significant reduction in the price of Mac processor upgrades which are still quite expensive in Aus.