User profile for user: Elimo
Elimo Author
User level: Level 1
8 points

Good SCSI PCIe card for macOS ?

Hello, I am looking for a good or the best among the last SCSI PCIe cards that where made for OS X and that has got driver support for Intel OS X 64 bit.


I've seen some users having good results with ATTO cards under El Capitan:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7511615?start=0&tstart=0


The plan is to use it with AKiTiO Thunder2 PCIe Box and connect old devices externally to it. Like scanners, HDDs (Seagate Cheetah 68 pin (?)), Iomega Zip drives, etc. So internal RAID is not needed.


What cards do you recommend?


(I am asking this under Mac Pro since that's where expansion cards usually are used.)

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015), OS X Yosemite (10.10.5), null

Posted on Mar 23, 2017 6:31 AM

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User profile for user: John Lockwood
John Lockwood
User level: Level 6
13,691 points

Posted on Mar 24, 2017 12:00 PM

I think ATTO is going to be your only choice, way back in history Adaptec used to make SCSI cards for the Mac but they stopped doing so many, many years ago and ATTO kept up doing this a lot more recently.


Note: ATTO also have discontinued their SCSI cards.


As far as I can see the last SCSI card ATTO did was the ExpressPCI UL5D and this lists drivers covering up to OS X 10.8.5 i.e. Mountain Lion. (The ExpressPCI UL4D also lists drivers up to OS X 10.8.5.)


So it seems you need to -


  1. Use a version of OS X no newer than 10.8.5 aka Mountain Lion
  2. Get an ATTO ExpressPCI UL4D or UL4S or UL5D


Based on the article you listed to it maybe that whilst ATTO only officially sanctioned using their card and driver up to OS X 10.8.5 you might be able to use it on newer version at your own risk. The article you linked to suggests that for El Capitan it will work if you disable SIP protection in El Capitan, Sierra uses the same SIP protection so the same workaround may work for Sierra.


Here is an article discussing how to disable SIP. See http://www.fitzweekly.com/2016/07/disable-sip-system-integrity-protection.html

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User profile for user: John Lockwood
John Lockwood
User level: Level 6
13,691 points

Mar 24, 2017 12:00 PM in response to Elimo

I think ATTO is going to be your only choice, way back in history Adaptec used to make SCSI cards for the Mac but they stopped doing so many, many years ago and ATTO kept up doing this a lot more recently.


Note: ATTO also have discontinued their SCSI cards.


As far as I can see the last SCSI card ATTO did was the ExpressPCI UL5D and this lists drivers covering up to OS X 10.8.5 i.e. Mountain Lion. (The ExpressPCI UL4D also lists drivers up to OS X 10.8.5.)


So it seems you need to -


  1. Use a version of OS X no newer than 10.8.5 aka Mountain Lion
  2. Get an ATTO ExpressPCI UL4D or UL4S or UL5D


Based on the article you listed to it maybe that whilst ATTO only officially sanctioned using their card and driver up to OS X 10.8.5 you might be able to use it on newer version at your own risk. The article you linked to suggests that for El Capitan it will work if you disable SIP protection in El Capitan, Sierra uses the same SIP protection so the same workaround may work for Sierra.


Here is an article discussing how to disable SIP. See http://www.fitzweekly.com/2016/07/disable-sip-system-integrity-protection.html

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User profile for user: Elimo
Elimo Author
User level: Level 1
8 points

Mar 24, 2017 4:51 AM in response to John Lockwood

Thanks John!


I have come to the same conclusion as you. Adaptec was the main manufacturer back in the days. But it seems like it can be difficult to get those card (no matter how good) to work on a modern machine. And the torch was carried on by ATTO. And it seems like no one picked it up after ATTO.


ATTO has a convenient list of discontinued products:

https://www.atto.com/support/discontinued-products

Select: SAS/SATA HBAs & RAID Adapters > Order by date > Search (filter) SCSI.

And just as you wrote ATTO ExpressPCI UL5D standard height and low profile are the last ones.


And yes, it should have been just PCI in the title. I am a newbie when it comes to PCI cards on mac. I have only used MacBook Pros since I left Windows.

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Good SCSI PCIe card for macOS ?

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