On 27 Jan 2011 16:15, "Flavio Donadio" <flavio%donadio.com.br@localhost> wrote:
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> I have been searching Google for the answer, but maybe I am not using the right keywords...
>
> I am planning on buying an Adaptec AAR-2610SA (HP OEM RAID card for ML G2 series servers) and install it on a blue and white Power Mac G3/400. The card is cheap and good enough to make me want to try it. From some Googling, I've found that it works in both 3.3 and 5 volt, 32- or 64-bit wide, 33 or 66MHz PCI slots.
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> Since the G3 has 3.3 volt, 64-bit, 33MHz PCI slots, and NetBSD has drivers for this card, I think I can make it work.
>
> But then, how can I configure it? On a PC (x86), I think it's configured through the BIOS setup, right? Will I have to plug it in a PC (along with the disks), configure it and then transfer everything to the Mac?
"Probably", unless there are tools you can compile to configure from userland (some raids have them).
Its possible the driver may not be in the macppc generic (easy to fix), and its also possible there may be an endian or other issue if its never run big endian (less easy, but I would expect you could find someone willing to help on the list if so :)
> I don't need to boot through the RAID, since I'll have a dedicated boot disk (a 1GB Compact Flash card with a CF-IDE adapter). The system will run swapless, or maybe i'll just create a swap partition on the RAID. I think I can do this, since the swap partition is used some time after the RAID is up, right?
The raid should appear as an ld0 or similar disk device, so once the kernel boots should be usable for anything, including the root filesystem (if desired)
Good luck - let us know how it goes :)