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AkimaNakai · Feb 11, 2006, 12:39 PM

I have a feeling I know the outcome of this catastrophe, but I guess I might as well get some input before I deem the computer fried. Recently tried to reinstall Mac OS X.3 on my G3 300 mHz, 896 MB ram, and one domino after another fell. I have a Seagate Barracuda 120 GB drive installed alongside the native 6 GB Quantum Fireball ATA drive, as well as a SCSI card with a 9 GB Quantum Viking II. Now, before this mess, all three drives got along fine. After the 4-hour re-installation attempt of Mac OS X, only one drive would work. the 6 GB ATA. Fine. So, installation went off without a hitch after that, and I reconnected the Seagate. Big. Mistake. The CD booted, and the Installer recognised no disk. ...Shut down, and unplug the Seagate. Reboot, and there's the "NO" symbol. .... Here goes. Now, the installation that -was- on the 6 GB drive should have kicked in. but it didnt. and it also didnt kick in the CD's system folder. Problems galore. SHut down, and reconnected the Seagate drive, and disconnected the ATA and rebooted. Nothing except the no symbol. Reconnected the SCSI drive, and the ATA drive. the CD installer booted, but booted sluggishly. Once the installer menu came up, something was not right. The Seagate and the Fireball were aparently merged, somehow. The Installer menu showed what was supposed to be the Seagate drive as a jarbled title, with a mix of Seagate and Quantum Fireball mixed in. So I shut off, and disconnected everything but the SCSI drive. And now, nothing will boot. It freezes at the Apple logo, and when I switch to the internals, it brings up the NO screen. I've removed all non-standard memory, leaving only the stick it came with, i've switched out CD drives, but I do NOT want to format, because I don't want to lose the stuff on my Disk.... in case of the possibility the Seagate isnt really corrupted.

Any ideas/suggestions/help would be greatly appreciated.

bowwowman · Feb 11, 2006, 05:35 PM

You have a rev 1 B&W, and 99.99% of them will NOT allow more than one ATA drive to be connected to the mobo, without major data corruption occurring, which sounds EXACTLY like what you are describing. And trying to re-install OS X on top of that is DEFINITELY a recipe for disaster

Unfortunately, your best option now is to connect only one of the ATA drives (preferably the 120gb one), remove the SCSI HD & card, but leave in all the ram. Then choose the erase, reformat and 100% fresh installation option in the installer choices. Yes you will lose your data on that disk, but at least it will work.

If you really must run 2 or more drives on this machine, sell/toss the scsi stuff (rapidly fading support in OS X) & get an ATA controller card (Sonnet Tempo's are great), connect the seagate to it, and be happy

If you must keep the 6gb drive, connect it to the mobo by itself, and use it only as a back-up/maintenance drive.

Either way, remember that you MUST select the boot drive in the system prefs IMMEDIATELY following the first reboot after installing OS X........

AkimaNakai · Feb 12, 2006, 11:47 AM

Well, the thing is, i've had the three drives working simultaneously without problem for a year, now. Why would the Motherboard decide to create problems now? And as far as installing OS X goes, it won't boot into the installer. It hangs at the grey Apple bootscreen.

bowwowman · Feb 12, 2006, 04:37 PM

Well, data corruption can happen at ANY time, it's just a matter of when, on those machines with the flaky ATA controller chips. Consider yourself EXTREMELY lucky to have made it this long w/o any problems.

If you can't boot into the installer, your ATA controller may have bit the dust forever.... therefore the install disk is not seeing any valid drives to allow an installation to take place. This sounds like the case here, and therefore your best option now is pci card I mentioned before.....

I know thats not what you wanna hear, but ya gotta face the facts when 'puter stuff dies, it's gone for good, and has to be replaced

AkimaNakai · Feb 13, 2006, 04:52 PM

Originally Posted by bowwowman

Well, data corruption can happen at ANY time, it's just a matter of when, on those machines with the flaky ATA controller chips. Consider yourself EXTREMELY lucky to have made it this long w/o any problems.

If you can't boot into the installer, your ATA controller may have bit the dust forever.... therefore the install disk is not seeing any valid drives to allow an installation to take place. This sounds like the case here, and therefore your best option now is pci card I mentioned before.....

I know thats not what you wanna hear, but ya gotta face the facts when 'puter stuff dies, it's gone for good, and has to be replaced

Hmm. Yeah, you're quite right. I don't want to hear it, but there's not a thing I can do about it if it just isn't going to work. Just a question before I call it quits-- Is there anything I can test/do/try to see if it'll respond to me? I don't have a PCI ATA controller handy, and no cash to get anything, so... it'd have to be something I can do to the system itself. If not, no biggie, I'll just wait until I can afford to buy a new Mac.

lothar56 · Feb 13, 2006, 07:05 PM

If you've got access, throw the hard drives in an external FW case or something like that on another Mac to see if you can still get your data, it's worth a shot, it worked for me. When my computer went bad.

wei · Feb 13, 2006, 09:30 PM

I have a G3 B&W 300MHz RevB. I just managed to boot it up yesterday after some long trial and fail. The machine doesn't detect and boot from my 20GB Maxtor ATA drive. But it load OSX recovery DVD fine. I finally get it booted from the HDD by swapping the IDE connection. I connected the Startup disk to the IDE connector, and the DVD-ROM to the ULTRA ATA connector. It's stupid to do so, but hey, it works. Don't ask me why & how, I dont know, it just work. When I try to swap it back, it just doesn't load OSX, flashing quesiton mark or grey screen with a "no" sign.

AkimaNakai · Feb 14, 2006, 02:05 PM

Originally Posted by wei

I have a G3 B&W 300MHz RevB. I just managed to boot it up yesterday after some long trial and fail. The machine doesn't detect and boot from my 20GB Maxtor ATA drive. But it load OSX recovery DVD fine. I finally get it booted from the HDD by swapping the IDE connection. I connected the Startup disk to the IDE connector, and the DVD-ROM to the ULTRA ATA connector. It's stupid to do so, but hey, it works. Don't ask me why & how, I dont know, it just work. When I try to swap it back, it just doesn't load OSX, flashing quesiton mark or grey screen with a "no" sign.

Alright, I'll try that. It sounds like a familiar circumstance, now that I think about it...

AkimaNakai · Feb 14, 2006, 05:52 PM

Originally Posted by AkimaNakai

Alright, I'll try that. It sounds like a familiar circumstance, now that I think about it...

Yes! That worked. It also appears as if the larger Seagate drive is completely corrupted. MacDrive won't open it, and it causes Kernel Panic without exception every time it's connected... but at least the Mac runs now... except that the IDE port the CD drive is now connected to is no longer working. so....

wei · Feb 14, 2006, 07:19 PM

wow... glad to hear that. i think it's time to get a ATA-PCI or SATA-PCI card

AkimaNakai · Feb 15, 2006, 09:50 AM

Originally Posted by wei

wow... glad to hear that. i think it's time to get a ATA-PCI or SATA-PCI card

I think you're right. The SCSI still works, so I'm going to get a new SCSI cable, and that'll at least give me an extra 8 G of storage... I can't foot 100 bucks for a new ATA card right now ^^>;;;
Thanks for all the advice, everyone