[peter_cph]

WHERE DID MY HARDDRIVE GO?

I have this Beige G3 MT / 300 Rev. 2 with a 6 GB harddive (ATA-1, master) a CD-ROM drive (ATA-1, slave), 2 IBM 80 GB disk GXP120 dives (ATA-0, master and slave) plus a Zip100 drive (internal SCSI).

The 6 GB drive holds system 9.2.2, Norton and Techtool - nothing else really. I had 5.3 GB free on it.

The other harddrives holds data and image libraries etc.

The machine has been a file server and it has worked flawlessly as it is for most of 2 years with perhaps two or three restarts during that time.

Today I wanted to install OSX Server 10.2 on it ...

I popped the CD in the drive, double-clicked on install, selected the language and the target disk and bingo ... 30 minutes later it restarted all by itself ...


... in OS 9.0

A system folder the Mac found embedded in another folder on one of the big IBM disks.

The CD was still in the drive, but no icon on the desktop.

The icon for the 6 GB startup disk was gone too.

I restarted and restarted. Same sh....

System profiler tells me that I have 2 IBM-drives on ATA-1

But ATA-0 apparently isn't there ... no CD, no startup disk.

Where did it go? What should I do to get it back?

Hmmm ...

I restarted with command and option held down ... to rebuild desktop ... that helped ... the ATA-1 drives (CD and my usual start-up disk) mounted.

I was in OS 9

I then went to the control panels and selected the "missing" harddrive as my start-up drive and restarted.

Which only lead to the drive missing again.

Hmmm ... once more I rebuilt the desktop, and the drives mounted. I then ran Norton Disk Doctor on the HD ... and it found some errors ... a.o. some catalog thing and multiple system folders (true ... 9.2.2 and 10.2).

Then I restarted again ... and the ATA-1 drives are still missing. They only mount, if I rebuild the desktop during start-up.

What am I missing here?

Now it will not start at all ... even when I hold down the shift key to start with extensions off it tells me to hold down shift and start with extensions off.

I'm lost ...



P

[normyzo]

There are a lot of caveats when installing OS X on a beige G3. I've got the same box, a G3 server 300Mhz, installed 10.2 client. This one has the Apple SCSI card, which requires a firmware update before it is OS X compatible. At least you don't have the "must be within 8GB" problem.

So, first off, I would disconnect the IBM drives completely. Then, move the boot drive (the 6gb) to ATA-0, Master. Put the CD on ATA-0 Slave. Then zap the PRAM, and open up the box and press that little switch by the last PCI slot for 20 seconds (CUDA reset switch). Then, go into OS 9 and turn off _all_ energy save prefs. Reboot with the OS X install CD in the drive and install, periodically clicking on menus during isntall to be sure the machine doesn't go to sleep.

When OS X is installed, reconnect your IBM drives, and reboot with OS X. But keep your IBM drives on ATA-1, master and slave. See if OS X recognizes them then.

Dan

[Moonray]

As normyzo said ... OS X is pretty picky on where you have which drives in a beige G3, and it even changes from version to version. But it affects only the installing, once you're through that things will run fine.

To get your drives back, install them in a different order on your buses and they will eventually re-appear when you boot from a system CD. My experiences are that PRAM and CUDA reset does not help, but that doesn't mean it won't help others. There's also a way to set things back in the open firmware settings, but no one ever gave a good explanation how.

Remember to partition your large drives so that the first partition for OS X is 7.99 GB if you plan to install it there (I really recommend this cause you might run out of space with your 6 GB sooner or later).

-

[normyzo]

To do the OF reset, you have to get into OF by holding down Cmd+Opt+O+F at boot up. Then, when you're at the prompt, type the following and hit return after each one.

reset-NVRAM
set-defaults
reset-all

(last one should reboot the machine).

Dan

[besson3c]

make sure the drive was formatted as HFS+ by Drive Setup, and not formatted as HFS or converted to HFS+