super-sama
Experienced Member
Just acquired two new-in-box Promise DC5030 IDE controller cards... they have 4 30-pin SIMM slots for cache memory, and supposedly are quite fast for their age and time, plus, Linux has kernel module support since kernel 2.6.9 or so. but that's all the information I have on them, as well as a Stason sheet... and it looks like the board has quite a few plastic-ish chips... makes me wonder if they're real or not for this era, as this was made around the time when fake cache chips were all the rage.
Here's an image:
(larger image can be found here.
You can see where the glossy plastic-looking chips (the darker ones) are compared to the other ones.
My question to the lovely community is, has anyone ever used one of these before? I'd be looking to at least make some sort of use for them in an older machine for a multi-drive setup to make use for the smaller HDDs I have collecting dust. I also have a couple 80GB drives I'd love to try out on one and do some speed tests with.
but before I do, I want to know if it's worth the time and effort.
would also like to know if there's a controller BIOS update for this as well, although not likely due to age, or probably lost with internet age.
Thanks in advance! :D
Here's an image:
(larger image can be found here.
You can see where the glossy plastic-looking chips (the darker ones) are compared to the other ones.
My question to the lovely community is, has anyone ever used one of these before? I'd be looking to at least make some sort of use for them in an older machine for a multi-drive setup to make use for the smaller HDDs I have collecting dust. I also have a couple 80GB drives I'd love to try out on one and do some speed tests with.
but before I do, I want to know if it's worth the time and effort.
would also like to know if there's a controller BIOS update for this as well, although not likely due to age, or probably lost with internet age.
Thanks in advance! :D
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