ICH8-M AHCI Macbook Pro 4,1 : Firmware Update ????

The ICH8-M was incompatible with many SATA-PATA bridge chipsets at the 3.0 Gbit/s level. Since the SATA-PATA bridges were needed due to optical drives being PATA, you'll see this on many laptops. On Desktop motherboards where a separate chipset was used to provide IDE channels and on laptops that had no PATA optical drives, the chipset can and does provide 3.0 Gbit/s.

So, this has to do with the chipset powering the optical drives as well? Will we get the 3Gbps speeds if one removed the optical drive then? 🙂

Hello,

since i'm a little tired of the slow responsiveness of my good old MacBook Pro 3,1 i filled the newegg cart with a 256 GB Corsair Performance 3 and all the RAM it can hold. I don't know why I decided to do a little research on the ICH8-M to see whether it could support such advertised speeds and found this thread.

Thanks people for not letting me spend that money, I live abroad so it would been a nigthmare to return the drive.

I'd better think in replacing the whole compu better, don't you think?

i'm in the same situation. macbook late 2007 santa rosa with ich8-m and running a crucial c4 sata3 ssd in sata1 mode. what a shame. fix this apple.

You guys are hillarious, upgrading to a SSD even on the older macbooks is definately a HUGE performance gain, you guys don't seem to understand what the advantage an SSD has before a HDD, now do you?

An SSD can do multiple operations 100times faster than a SSD thanks to the reeally low access times, just think 0.1ms vs 15-20ms.. That means that if you are for example searching for files, the SSD will have found 150-200files when a HDD have found at most 2 files under those 15-20milliseconds.. You guys see the difference?

Now, an SSD is superior to a HDD because when you read multiple files it will do it almost instantly, the read/write speed does not have any huge impact except for large file transfers (if that's what you do, but then you are not aware of SSD capabillities and whey they are so good).

The continous speed from an SSD isn't that important, 100MB/s vs 200MB/s vs 300MB/s isn't really that huge of a deal. I would know as i have, myself got my SSD that i formerly had in a SATA II compatible laptop doing 275MB/s read/writes vs an older macbook4.1 that is SATA I and is probably only doing around 100-150MB/s, and i can't tell any difference between the two machines.

What difference i can tell though is that vs the mechanical HDD it replaced in this macbook, it's WAY faster.

So returning a drive because of that? Naah. Not a legit approach imho. Besides, you can always use that SSD later on in a newer system, no? Sure you can..

So comon guys, upgrading an older macbook is gonna be a huge profit for the peformance, thinking otherwise is just plain wrong, seriously.

It's a little funny though as most windows users already know this, but reading on apple forums or the like, it only shows that you need to educate yourself a little further than what chipset limitations the motherboard holds. You can think longer than your nose points out, right? I know you guys can.

SATA I isn't gonna limit the access times so i'm saying you should always look into what makes the product so good overall.

Anyhow, removing the chipset limitation of 1.5Gbit to 3Gbit is not gonna harm the optical drive, but rather make it useless, it will still function like normal, under normal conditions.

So it sure would be fun to see apple doing a fix for this for those people who change their optical drive out for a SATA SSD on the PATA connection where the optical drive is. Because there are tons of people running two disks in their system, so the optical drive is used via USB instead via an enclosure/usb..

As has been noted at great length above, Apple has moved on. If your old machine hasn't had its SATA capabilities updated yet, it's only getting less likely to happen as more time passes. If you want newer technology, buy it.

we do not want new technology. this tech is enough, it can run sata II, that's that simple

No it can't, and that's why you're complaining. If you want a machine that can, you'll have to buy one, because Apple is very unlikely to offer any further updates for your old hardware.

apple already did that for some models, we just want that they release the same patch to all models with ich8-m

Well, you've been told how to deliver your message directly to Apple. All the grousing here is just wasted time and breath.

Agreed, it's such a simple fix, so i don't really understand why they don't. Every other laptop (windows PC) that has had ICH8-M has had SATA-II enabled, so i find it strange that apple will not fix this. SSD's are popular since some time now so it makes no sense that they wouldn't.

Though i suspect that because the superdrive is connected via PATA/IDE and not SATA, that is the problem, the laptops i had with ICH8-M has had a SATA-connector to the DVD-drive too, so that might be a cause why SATA-II isn't enabled(?) because the PATA/IDE device would become useless because it can't interact through SATA-II.

I also wanna add to the post i did before about SSD's, is that it's totally quiet compared to a mechanical HDD, creates alot less heat and isn't effected by vibrations or dropping it etc and draws generally less power thus you get better battery life, this is something many doesn't take into account here, so there is many good reasons to upgrade to SSD even with SATA 1.5Gigabit/s

1) I guess what he is trying to say is that the controller is CAPABLE to run at SATA II (even though at the price of disabling the DVD).

I guess the only way to persuade Apple to create the EFI update is to create a petition and collect enough macbook 3.1 and 4.1 user endorsements that they would like to have this update and they do not mind that their DVD drive will become disabled.

2) I have installed the Kingston SSDNow V+ 128GB SATA II drive, and even at the SATA I speed the performance boost is EXCELLENT compared to regular HDD. The boot times are very short (both OSX and Win7), the system is very snappy and responsive, applications load instantly (only Photoshop CS5 takes a few secs, but compared to before it is in no time). The TRIM is supported in both OSX and Win 7.

I have no remorse, this was very good investment on extending the life expectancy of my notebook.

Since the MacBookpro series before 5.1 can't upgrade to SATA II (3Gb/s) without loosing the ability to operate the DVD driver (running on PATA) We wont se this nice SATA II firmware upgrade.

That said It will keep on running in SATA I (1.5Gb/s) but who cares, If you have a 3.1 or a 4.1 serie you probably have an small and old 5400rpm hard drive, some of them, the Hitachi HTS have shortlife issues, and your Graphic card ship might also be one of the bad ones Nvidia produced back in 2007-2008 (by the way Mac is ready to give you a new hardware if you have the Nvidia GeForce 8600M issue. )

Put yourself back in 2007-2008, back then having a 7200rpm 320GB was a luxury option, now add in the SSD afordble prices of today,or the Hybrid HDSSD with big 16MB or 32MD cache, and the low prices of a 500GB compact Firewire external HD or Esata... AND SMILE (that's what I did even after I've purchased a SATA II capable HD, wich can drive in SATA I anyways), because with two or three hundreds you can turn your Mac book pro 3.1 or 4.1 in a fast booting machine with more than twice the storage of your old Hitatchi 200GB, who cares about SATA II capabilities, the upgrade to a new fast silent and reliable SATA I with a big cache will let you enjoy your machine for two more years and after that you'll get to SATA III if it still exists.

To all of you who came here while searching for the solution to the SATA II update,

PLEASE take a few minutes and SEND A FEEDBACK MESSAGE directly to Apple asking to create EFI update for MacBook and MacBook Pro 3,1 and 4,1 which would disable the PATA DVD drive and enable the SATA II capability of ICH8-M chipset.

Unless they see there is a demand for this update among the users, they will not even consider this update.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macbook.html

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macbookpro.html

My request to the MacBook (RIP) Team:

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Please offer a firmware update for MacBook (and MacBook Pro) computers which use the Intel ICH8-M Serial-ATA controllers — so that these machines may take advantage of the SATA II capability the chipset offers.

I fully understand that this would disable the built-in optical PATA drives. For many of your customers such as myself, this is no problem. I haven't used my optical in many years, opting instead last year to remove it and instal an SSD.

My family and I have been loyal customers for years. Apple understand how crucial product longevity is — not just for the company and its image — but for the planet we share. Don't retire the machines so early, please!

I don't expect Apple to release this as a general EFI update through software update, but please supply it as a tool for those of us who followed your lead, dropping floppies and oppies.

I've written a feedback for my Macbook Pro 3.1.

In my opinion the most beautiful ever Macbook pro... My Mac is 5 years old, without a scratch, aesthetically and mechanically perfect.

Why not provide a simple update and show everyone that a Mac could have mre than 10 years of working time life? 🙂