oldschooldaw.com
Operating Systems => PowerPC Macintosh 32bit => Mac OS 9 (Oct 1999) => Topic started by: chrisNova777 on May 28, 2019, 11:05:06 AM
-
some of these cards, similar to the turbomax/33's seem to have SOCKETED EEPROMS
(https://eshop.macsales.com/Reviews/Hard_Drives/vstultratek/ultratek.jpg)https://eshop.macsales.com/Reviews/Framework.cfm?page=/Hard_Drives/vstultratek/VSTUltra.html
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/comp.sys.mac.system/ultratek$20promise|sort:date/comp.sys.mac.system/wao9LDfMDRg/NDG1vzI_PH0J (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/comp.sys.mac.system/ultratek$20promise|sort:date/comp.sys.mac.system/wao9LDfMDRg/NDG1vzI_PH0J)
https://www.macgurus.com/forums/showthread.php?11983-Promise-UltraTek-ATA-66
https://www.macgurus.com/forums/showthread.php?11983-Promise-UltraTek-ATA-66&p=42168#post42168
https://web.archive.org/web/20020210043145/http://www.vsttech.com/Downloads/Software/UltraTek_FW_Readme.asp
https://web.archive.org/web/20020204141223/http://www.smartdisk.com/Downloads.asp
https://www.macgurus.com/forums/showthread.php?11983-Promise-UltraTek-ATA-66&s=221b3c8ba9f9834ebf8e7dc9e9de5f66&p=42168#post42168
04-23-2002, 10:52 PM #4
trag
trag is offline Guru Moderator
ForwardSlash, I imagine you are trying to convert the Promise card into a VST UltraTech/66. It is doable, but not as simple as you may be hoping. There are several resistors that must be move, the 66 MHz metal can oscillator on the Promise needs to come off and getting the VST firmware into the Promise Flash chip is non-trivial.
The VST flasher checks for a previous version of the VST firmware before it agrees to flash the card. It will not flash a card with the Promise firmware installed, nor will it flash a card with a blank flash chip.
There was some discussion of this a few years ago on the Mac news groups. I'd try a google/dejanews search in comp.sys.mac.hardware.* on likely keywords. I think a fellow named Peter had the most to say on the topic. It may also have been in comp.sys.mac.misc or comp.sys.mac.system.
Also note that OWC is working with the folks who wrote the original firmware for VST (FirmTek) and they're rather vigorous about complaining if you violate their copyright. Personally, it's no skin off my nose as the FirmTek person (not George, Geoge is cool) adamantly refuses to admit that there are either firmware bugs or incompatibilities in the card that I've amply demonstrated. They rarely manifest but they are existant.
The easiest way to accomplish your goal is to get a VST card and do a side by side comparison with a Promise card. Of course, at that point you would already own a VST card and probably the bundled copy of SoftRAID as well (SoftRAID rocks and is worth much more than the cost of the VST card) so why would you need to do the conversion except for fun?
You'd still need to figure out a way around the firmware flasher, though. I'll give you a hint. It involves a DIP socket, two Flash chips and a willingness to switch the chip with the power on.
-
I removed the rom image from the flasher, along with images from a few other flashers. Here they are.
-
right on!!!! ;D