PCI-X SATA Card + Server Recommendation

[Louis Mamakos]

On Oct 26, 2008, at 4:49 PM, Jeremy Chadwick wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 03:30:11PM -0400, Charles Sprickman wrote:
>> On Sun, 26 Oct 2008, Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
>>
>> Ouch.  I was thinking more along the lines of a dead-simple SATA  
>> card in
>> the under $50 range.  I'm not up at all on PCI-X stuff, but I  
>> assume I
>> can go with a normal PCI card, right?  Or 64-bit PCI (or is that  
>> PCI-X)?
>> What kind of performance hit would I have going from a PCI-X card to
>> something else, and if I remove the PCI-X restriction, is there  
>> another
>> recommended card?
>
> Any PCI 2.x or 3.x revision card should work fine in a PCI-X slot.  Of
> course, the card will only run at 33MHz 32-bit (vs. 133MHz 64-bit,  
> which is
> what native PCI-X is), but it'll still work.  Most PCI cards are 32- 
> bit
> 33MHz, but a 64-bit 33MHz PCI card should also work.
>
> The only PCI 1.x cards will probably fry your motherboard; they use  
> a 5V
> bus, not a 3.3V bus.  :-)


This has been a concern of mine.  I just bought a Dell Poweredge 2650
off of eBay, and was going to outfit it with a USB2/Firewire PCI card
so I can attach some cheap bulk storage to it for backup purposes.  The
Dell has PCI-X slots; backwards compatible with PCI, right?  Try to
find a USB PCI board that doesn't require a 5V capable PCI slot..

I haven't been able to; of course it's pretty obvious in that the USB
host is supposed to supply 5V power to the peripherals.. D'oh!  Oh well.

You'll have to try extra hard to fry your machine with the wrong flavor
card as the PC card connectors are keyed differently, and unless you
try Really Hard or try to plug it in backwards, it just won't fit.

louie