[funkboy]

Edit: okay, so I was frusturated, and had no clue why it was doing what I say below. However, I had the jumper wrong on the hard drive, and that's why it was only showing 32GB. Now I got its entire 120GB, and I'm copying over the contents of my 13GB right now. Wish I had an ata/66 to make this go faster, but not sure if that would even speed it up that much.

I partitioned it to separate the first 7.4GB from the rest of the drive - this way I can use the drive as an OS X bootable drive someday. Since it's sitting in the right drive, right now, I may even keep it as my bootable drive and see how it works. It's a Maxtor 120GB that Best Buy has on sale for $90 (after rebate...) - I'll let you know if it seems snappier? after I install 10.2 on it. I hope my regular 8GB hard drive isn't acting weird, though - it wouldn't be recognized in the secondary slot, but I wonder if that has something to do with its jumpers somehow, as well. Anyone know if factory installed hard drives in beige G3 minitowers work in the expansion bays without any changing of the jumpers?

Thanks, glad I figured this all out


I'm trying to install a new Maxtor 120GB hard drive into my beige G3 333 MHz minitower. I'd just as soon have it as my secondary hard drive, with the original factory-installed 8GB hard drive as my main Mac OS X booting disk.

When I connected it as my secondary drive (its jumpers are set up as a slave drive) , it did show up - but only as a 32GB drive. Is there some limit to the size of a secondary hard drive?

I tried swapping my 8GB one, in the upper back drive bay of my tower, with the 120GB one, putting the 8GB in the secondary drive bay. However, when doing so, the computer just gives me a flashing disk icon, even after zapping the PRAM. Can I put my OS X main booting drive into that front bay drive?

Any help would be appreciated!

[Xaositect]

Ok, quite a few questions...

IDE conrollers work the same whether the drive is in the top bay or an expansion bay. In the beige G3s, you may have a Rev 1, Rev B or Rev C logic board (don't ask me why they switched from numbers to letters), which does change the IDE controller chip and configuration. Rev 1 boards only support 1 device per controller no matter what you set the jumpers to. Rev B (and early Rev C) boards have one connector that supports two devices and one that supports 1 device. Most Rev C boards support two devices per controller (normal IDE). One drive should be jumpered as master, one as slave. Proper form is to put the master on the furthest connector from the logic board, but it isn't necessary in this model (it is necessary in G4 MDD models). Also, it is proper form to put the newest drive as the master for best speed, but you may not have to in this case.

Side note: some beige G3s don't work well with drives over 20GB. If your machine becomes unstable, especially when booted off the 120GB drive, you may have this problem. One of the size limitations on IDE drives was 20GB, and the beige G3s straddled the changeover to the more capable chips. Hopefully, your machine will work corectly with the larger drives (most do).

If you get everything working and stable, you may want to leave the 8GB drive in the unit and redirect the OS X swap file to that drive. Unix systems with dedicated swap drives run faster, in my experience. Just make sure everything is stable first, so you aren't wondering what's causing grief if you have any.

Good Luck!

[funkboy]

Originally posted by Xaositect:
Ok, quite a few questions...

IDE conrollers work the same whether the drive is in the top bay or an expansion bay. In the beige G3s, you may have a Rev 1, Rev B or Rev C logic board (don't ask me why they switched from numbers to letters), which does change the IDE controller chip and configuration. Rev 1 boards only support 1 device per controller no matter what you set the jumpers to. Rev B (and early Rev C) boards have one connector that supports two devices and one that supports 1 device. Most Rev C boards support two devices per controller (normal IDE). One drive should be jumpered as master, one as slave. Proper form is to put the master on the furthest connector from the logic board, but it isn't necessary in this model (it is necessary in G4 MDD models). Also, it is proper form to put the newest drive as the master for best speed, but you may not have to in this case.

Thanks for the answers! Mine is a Rev B or C, not sure which. I think Rev C. The chain seems to be my ATAPI CD is in the Master position, with my two other hard drives acting as its slaves.

Side note: some beige G3s don't work well with drives over 20GB. If your machine becomes unstable, especially when booted off the 120GB drive, you may have this problem. One of the size limitations on IDE drives was 20GB, and the beige G3s straddled the changeover to the more capable chips. Hopefully, your machine will work corectly with the larger drives (most do).

Great, wonderful. Mine's worked fine so far - just going to install OS X 10.2 on a 7.5GB partition I made on the 120GB drive. I just hope I understand it correctly - I am *required* to partition off 8GB or less to a partition to let my big hard drive be bootable in OS X, right? The ystem won't just happen to look at only the first 8GB of a 120GB partition, will it?

If you get everything working and stable, you may want to leave the 8GB drive in the unit and redirect the OS X swap file to that drive. Unix systems with dedicated swap drives run faster, in my experience. Just make sure everything is stable first, so you aren't wondering what's causing grief if you have any.

Going to install 10.2 right now, with *all* the printer drivers and everything, because, hey, why not? I got 120GB!

How do I specify which drive is my swap drive? I actualy have a 13GB Western Digital 7200 rpm drive I will probably use as my swap drive, since it's newer than the 8GB that came with the computer, and probably is faster since it is 7200 rpm. I'm wondering how effectively the G3 processor could leverage two hard drives, though... I'm kind of doubting it. But I'll make sure it's stable before doing any weird things.

Good Luck!

Thank you, it's been fun

I just have to be careful of filling up this drive too quickly now!