Sonnet Technologies announced today two new peripheral lines for users looking for fast storage and tiny portable storage. The company introduced its Tempo ATA100 card — a high speed drive controller, and also introduced Piccolo — a new line of portable flash-based storage devices about the size of car keys.
Tempo ATA100 works on Mac OS 8 through X
The Tempo ATA100 is a PCI host adapter that enables users to hook up to four internal ATA/IDE drives. The drive mimics a SCSI controller under Mac OS 8.6 and Mac OS 9, enabling users to utilize any ATA hard drive. Under OS X, the card is recognized as a native ATA controller, which makes it possible to use not just hard drives but DVD-ROMs, CD-RWs and other removable devices.
Sonnet will ship the Tempo ATA100 with software that enables you to configure the drive for optimal performance depending on what you’re doing, without needing to restart the system.
Sonnet expects the Tempo ATA100 Macintosh PCI Host Adapter to ship late in the third quarter. The card will cost US$119.95.
Piccolo combines tiny size, USB interface
If you’re more interested in the ability to card around dozens or hundreds of megabytes of data in a small, easy to use form factor, you may be interested in Piccolo. Piccolo is Sonnet’s new line of portable USB flash drives, which the company describes as about the size of a car key. The devices will be available in storage capacities from 32MB to 256MB and will work on any USB-equipped Macs and PCs.
The Piccolo is recognized as a storage device and mounted on the desktop when it’s plugged in, and requires no extraneous cables, batteries or adapters. Sonnet indicated that it’s working with Trek2000 to bring this product to its customers, and claims that the Piccolo is the first flash drive that requires no drivers for universal compatibility.
The Piccolo is expected to ship in August with capacities of 32MB to 128MB. The 256MB model will ship later this year. Estimated list prices are $99.95 for the 32MB model, $189.95 for 64MB, $349.95 for 128MB, and $599.95 for 256MB.
Sonnet also introduced upgrade products for iMacs and “Wall Street” model PowerBook G3s.