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Hello all,

I tried to upgrade this machine to WD 7200RPM w/ 8MB cache, it was a cavier SE with a capacity of 80GB. I have had plenty of experinece replacing and swapping HD's, but this one was a problem. I suspected the HD in the end and requested an RMA. I did want to double check here to see if maybe I missed something.

I first removed the 10GB HD in this AGP G4 and put in the WD HD and started up from the Mac OS X installed CD, all went well until I needed to select the drive, there was none. Of course then I realized I did not format the drive, I used the disk utility on the CD and is saw the drive, but when I tried to erase it on got an unknown error -20. I tried to do this in OS 9 after re-installing the original HD set as master and the WD HD as the slave. I could not verify or repair the disk either, the options were not available. I also tried on a different machine in both OS X and OS 9. This is the thing though, under Mac OS X the WD HD had ROM-MAMMOTH in its name, ROM? what's that all about? I have never seen this before. Of course I also set the jumpers in various configurations after the initial configurations as guided model specs did not work, nothing worked.

Any inputs, thought? I didn't know if maybe this was a AGP problem, but the other machine I tried it on was a 733QS.

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This is the drive

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?DriveID=32

[reader50]

PowerMacs sometimes do not like changes in hardware configuration, and need a PRAM zap or CUDA-button reset to get along with the new hardware. This isn't supposed to be needed, but it does work sometimes to fix odd boot/recognition problems.

Try jumpering as Master/Slave, press and hold the CUDA button for 10 seconds, then boot up. Give Disk Utility another try at formatting. While you have Disk Utility open, check the HD's SMART status for the heck of it, see if the drive reports internal errors. I think the SMART readout only appears in OSX 10.3 Disk Utility, but it's available in Alsoft's Disk Warrior 3.x under earlier versions of OSX.

Notes:

Verify/Repair[Permissions] only apply to formatted drives. Until the drive is successfully formatted, those buttons will remain dimmed out.

The normal configuration this model shipped with was one internal HD jumpered as Single. Cable Select is not supported on this motherboard. Master/Slave is supported.

You can do a PRAM Reset (Parameter RAM - aka BIOS reset in PCese) by holding Apple+Option+p+r during startup until you hear several beeps. You may need to reset a few hardware preferences afterwards, like the system clock and default boot drive.

The CUDA button (aka the PowerManagerReset button) has been in various places on Mac motherboards. Usually it's near the battery, here is a pic of it in a G4 350 AGP which should be identical to your motherboard:



A CUDA reset is considered more serious medicine than a PRAM reset. You will have to reset the system clock and possibly other preferences afterwards.

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Thanks reader50, I gave it a shot to no avail. I had initiallyy tried this on two different computers and had the same result. After trying your suggestions without success I really think it's the HD. Hopefully I will have a replacement this week and can try it next weekend.