Who could’ve predicted that certain technical iterations would stick around for much longer than expected? Back in the 80s and 90s, external and internal ports would seemingly iterate more frequently as years go by, with the computer industry being less developed then. It’s been two decades since the first Mac shipped with a SATA drive, you can still buy compatible drives brand new off the shelf that can plug and play for those Macs, and probably so for the foreseeable future.

The very first Mac to ship with any sort of Serial-ATA (SATA) drive was the Power Mac G5, in 2003. For a little while between then and the introduction of Mac OS X Snow Leopard, quite a few Macs carried both an IDE/ATA bus and a SATA bus. Earlier 20/24″ Aluminum iMacs, for example, still hung onto IDE for their optical drives through 2008. SATA was not only a new connector interface standard for internal computer storage 20 years ago, but also a transport/command protocol that defines how data is transferred. PowerPC Macs can take advantage of modern mass storage as a result of extended backward compatibility on drives made to this day. While M.2 is out along with mSata and other interface standards, the market isn’t phasing out SATA – so upgrading the storage in your PowerPC Mac should be cost effective for the foreseeable future.

• See: SATA Wikipedia page

What kind of card should I look for?

It is strongly recommended you buy a “regular” PCI SATA card if looking for functionaliry, as the Mac aftermarket upgrades are abysmally expensive these days. Sonnet and other sought after upgrades have appreciated to being expensive collector’s items in Early 2025, to the point where it seemingly only makes sense if you’re collecting or want “that specific thing”.

If flashing: Look for a Silicon Image Seritek card with an SIL3112ACT144, they’re cheap and abundant on both Amazon and eBay as of early 2025. Some anecdotes seem to show plug-n’-play compatibility, but most of the time you need to flash a card like one below.

• See: Action Retro adding a Sata PCI card to a Beige G3 (Can a 1997 G3 Power Mac take a modern SATA controller with SSDs? The Beige Beast, Part 3!)
• See DosDude1’s video: How to Flash an Sil3112 SATA PCI Card for Mac
• See on 68k forums: Silicon Image SIL3112 Flashing: Easier Way Using flashrom
  • This forum has many posts with troubleshooting involved and may have helpful information if you’re having trouble.

(Above: Action Retro “Can a 1997 G3 Power Mac take a modern SATA controller with SSDs…”)

(Above: Action Retro “Can a 1997 G3 Power Mac take a modern SATA controller with SSDs…”)

(Above: Action Retro “Can a 1997 G3 Power Mac take a modern SATA controller with SSDs…”)

Card flashing (Steps by Dosdude1):

• 1. No need to replace Flash ROM on card in most cases, though some really cheap Chinese ones these days seem to be coming with AM28F010, which needs 12V for erasing and programming, so CANNOT be programmed on-board. This EEPROM will work just fine with my patched SeriTek ROM, but must be removed from the board and programmed externally with an EEPROM programmer. You can replace this ROM with a 29 or 39 series EEPROM to restore on-board programming capability if desired.
  .
• 2. The 24C02 EEPROM is only present in the Adaptec cards, and needs to be removed to restore correct Sil3112 device IDs needed for SeriTek ROM to execute. This will not be the case with any other card.
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• 3. Most, if not all, cheap Chinese Sil3112 cards need to have this regulator replaced to fix sleep issues on Quicksilver. As stock it will still work, but cause sleep issues.
  • Editor’s Note: On a Power Mac G4 Quicksilver, if you put the computer to sleep as stock, the computer will wake up enough to keep the fan running however the screen remains off and unresponsive. Only solution is a reboot.
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• 4. Any Sil3112 card will work, as long as the above is noted.
• 5. Requires Mac OS 9.

Download: (1S2-patched-compressed.ROM) – (SeriTek1S2Flasher_5.1.3.sit.hqx) – (lzss-fcode-new.4th)

(Above: Seritek Firmware Flash tool for Mac OS 9)

How to get voltage regulator working in Quicksilver

Credit goes to bigmessowires from the 68k forum for this process: “For anybody reading this in the future, I recommend using the Diodes Incorporated AP7361C-33E voltage regulator, and not the MIC29150 that was suggested earlier. The MIC29150 will work, but it’s the wrong size and the wrong package. The AP7361C-33E is an exact drop-in replacement, and it’s readily available at electronics suppliers for 60 cents. (Link to original post)

For making the Quicksilver sleep function work reliably, the important spec is the regulator’s dropout voltage. It should be as low as possible. The MIC29150 has a 0.6V dropout voltage, and the AP7361C-33E has a 0.36V dropout voltage. The original regulator was a LD1117 with a substantially higher 1.3V dropout voltage, which is why it caused problems with Quicksilver sleep.

To summarize, here are all the steps required to get a SATA card in your PCI Mac:

• 1. Buy an Adaptec 1210SA PCI SATA card for about $20 on eBay. The generic black PCI SATA cards probably work too, and are even cheaper.
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• 2. Disable the 24WC02 EEPROM chip on the card by lifting its pin 8 off the PCB, or just remove the whole EEPROM chip.
  .
• 3. Remove the LD1117 3.3V voltage regulator from the card (mine was stamped “LD33”) and replace it with an AP7361C-33E. This is only needed for the G4 Quicksilver, you can skip this step if you have another type of PCI PowerMac or if you don’t care about sleep functionality.
  .
• 4. Install the SATA card in your Mac.
  .
• 5. Download the flashing utility and run it under Mac OS 9.

Works but doesn’t give you a boot drive

There are PCI-X cards out there which are few and far between, giving you even more bandwidth and speed than any PCI card could off the PCI non-X interface alone. The Rocketraid 2220 is such an example – a Sata II PCI-X card which shows up in Mac OS X and can be used for storage, however, the person who used this card said they weren’t able to boot off it.

(Click to enlarge above)

What’s been working for me

I’ve had my very own SATA PCI card which I bought from DosDude1 back in 2018, and to this day it works great! Initially it was used in a 2x SATA SSD RAID0, upgrading to 4x in 2020 – 2x on the card, 2 using onboard SATA I. Essentially for the last 5 years I’ve been running a ~1 TB 4x SATA SSD RAID0 Array in my 2003 Power Mac G5, being split evenly across the PCI card and internal SATA bus. To this day there haven’t been any issues running Leopard! The performance results speak for themselves.

• See article: “Maximizing the AGP Power Mac G5 into space.. and beyond!”

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In Conclusion

This day and age, PowerPC Macs are supported by an avid online community and can take advantage of some of the still manufactured standard computer components sold in stores. As this platform has long since seen its twilight era of software support, using PowerPC for production or practical purposes will depend on you. Now that it only costs ~$25 to get a SATA PCI card, and another ~$25 for an SSD, why not take advantage of newer tech instead of hunting for that slow, original hard drive?