Last month (happy November!) I talked about how 64-bit PCI and PCI-X were, in fact, different standards. This was useful information, because a Power Mac G3 was about to enter my posession again, and I wanted to subvert its known troublesome IDE controller with something decently performant.

Enter the Adaptec AHA-3950U2B (geshunteit) Ultra-2 SCSI controller! Note the extra row of pins to the right of the standard 32-bit PCI pins we all know and love. The sticker also denotes that it’s the Mac firmware model, which is important if you want to be booting a Power Mac G3 with it.

This is my first 64-bit PCI card. Actually, I don’t think I ever owned a PCI-X card either, save for the graphics card in a Power Mac G5 back in the day. Or would that have been AGP? Not sure. I’m so used to seeing standard PCI slots that this card looks deeply unusual.

This came from FeeBay, all the way from a gent in New Jersey in the States. His address was not that far down the road from a close friend, who one day I hope to meet again. Maybe I can convince him to come up to Toronto when I finally make it to a BSDCan :’).

The plan is to use this controller with a ZuluSCSI device to boot Mac OS 8.6 and another OS you all know I’ll try running, and leave the secondary IDE channel for the internal optical drive. Or maybe I might use the ZuluSCSI Blaster’s new Red Book emulation for audio too, that might be fun.