Power Mac G5 & Digidesign PCI Cards

[Avid]

Some Digidesign PCI cards will not work in the upcoming Power Mac G5 (all G5 models).

Included among cards that will not be compatible are d24, DSP Farm, Digi 001 and Audiomedia III PCI cards.

Additional details, including a list of all incompatible Digidesign PCI cards can be found on the following web page in the Digidesign Compatibility Documents:

http://www.digidesign.com/compato/osx/g5

[citi]

This is good news, and bad news. Since I am buying a G5 this is great that you are offereing the upgrade path. Will this be a OS wide upgrade? In other words, will PC users be able to upgrade also?

[spookster]

What a joke! So if the thousands of people that have 001's want to get a G5, it means they have to buy more DIGI hardware. Sounds like a ploy to get us to spend money DIGI. That really sucks. It doesn't affect me, because I would never buy a G5. Who can afford one? And I don't have an 001. But I was thinking about getting an 001 to run on a PC platform.

All you 001 owners that were excited about the G5 are getting bent over and done dry! Ouch!!! That's gotta hurt. [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[citi]

this is NOT Digi's fault...it's apples. The system PTLE works fine with what they have. If you are getting a g5 all they are saying is that you can upgrade....probably get more for your 001 than you will on ebay and get into something new.

Don't open your mouth if you have nothing intelligent to say. If you were going to buy a 001, you still can. You just can't use it in a G5 and if you CANT AFFORD A G5. THAN THIS SHOULD NOT MATTER TO YOU.

[jeronimo]

You know what? That SUX real bad!
I was hoping I could stay w/ my 001 and go for a G5...
Now, if we want to upgrade our computers... we have to upgrade to a new interface (FW) or to a HD rig... uhhh...
screw digi and apple...

[WorldOfWiz]

spookster:

As a 001 owner. I'm not mad at Digi or Apple at all. It's called progress.

Wiz

[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.

[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.