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marusin · Sep 30, 2001, 11:45 AM

Hey everyone,

I acquired yesterday a 400mhz G3 Tower from my place of employment.. The problem is that there is no hard drive or video card or memory... Well, it's not really a problem for the fact that I have extra parts at home.. I just am unsure as to where to mount the hard drive..

There is a cdrom that is in the standard spot. Below it is where i think I would put the hard drive in.. However, there's a metal strip that goes through the middle of it and I don't know how to get into that bay without breaking something..

Anyone out there willing to let me know how to get into that bay? I just don't want to break the front cover... I'm ready to roll other than this drive not being in here..

Thanks,
Mike

marusin · Sep 30, 2001, 12:36 PM

Ok, I figured out that the front plastic piece is One piece (thought it was two) and was able to pop it off and see how I remove the whole cage.. So now I got the drive in there and booted it up.. Looks like my video card doesn't work.. I've had problems getting this video card to be recognized in linux (it's generic and old) so I'm banking on it being just unusable...

Anyways, thanks! If anyone has a recommendation on a good (cheap) video card, please let me know...

Thanks,
Mike[/LIST]

Scott Gerenser · Sep 30, 2001, 03:26 PM

You don't want to put the hard drive there, that's on the slower externally accessible (i.e. for Zip and CDs) bus. Put it down at the bottom right of the case, right near where it hinges. There should be an IDE connector down there.

cjpainter · Oct 1, 2001, 07:16 AM

Stop by your local Apple Dealer and have one of the salespeople open up the case and show you where the harddrive goes.

Craig

marusin · Oct 1, 2001, 10:44 AM

Well, since I don't have any mounting brackets or hardware, I'm just going to leave the drive in the bay beneath the CD-ROM... I'm just going to run a ribbon-cable from the plug on the motherboard to the drive... No muss, no fuss..

My biggest concern now is finding a cheap video card so that I can at least get a picture! Anyone out there have their old Rage 128 card that they're wanting to get rid of? I'm not a gamer and don't really feel the need to spend big money on a Radeon, etc...

Thanks,
Mike

wormboy · Oct 3, 2001, 11:20 AM

Take a close look at XLR8yourmac. They have tons of good advice on drive installations in the Blue and White machines. Do you know if it is a rev 1 or rev 2 B&W? You should be able to get a Rage128 off of ebay. Lots of B&W owners are upgrading these days.

You should put the drive in the lower bays (on the "floor" of the tower). There should be a plate down there. If not you can get cheap HD mounting kits from PC wholesales/assembly shops. Whatever you do, don't put your drive slave to the CD-ROM on the IDE chain. It will be slow. Make sure your drive is master of its own bus.

BTW The B&W is a sweet machine. I would look for a Rage Orion on ebay, and get RAM from OWC.

guerro · Oct 8, 2001, 08:37 PM

Put the drive down on the bottom of the case where it belongs. Only takes 4 screws and the bracket is a tray that takes up the whole length of the botom of the case.

macvillage.net · Oct 8, 2001, 08:42 PM

for a video card CALL macwarehouse they may have some older model sitting arround. They don't list everything on the site and in the catalog as I have found various time.