[bobsie]

I'm ready to get an Ultra IDE hard drive for my blue/white, and there's a whole bunch of them out there. What I wonder is, do they all have the same plug and play cable connectors, and are the cables included? The computer has both power and drive connectors sitting in there waiting to be used.

I have one of the early blue/whites which had an expansion bracket for 33 meg IBM's, that are out of the picture now. Apple changed the bracket and say in one of their TILs that you have to have their 'U-shaped bracket' to add another drive. There's plenty of room, so why couldn't I just use velcro to mount a drive?

Advice will be appreciated.

-- Thanks, bobsie

[Gregory]

There are articles and pictures on how to do it on rev 1 B&W units on http://www.xlriyourmac.com just do a search.
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/G3-ZONE/y...DE/index3.html

It's gotten easier and there are very fast and capable IBM ATA/66 drives that work fine. The 75GXP series offer 444 Mbps in 15GB and up starting at $117. I'm using 34GXP 9.1GB in my b&w (rev 2).
http://commerce.www.ibm.com/cgi-bin/...grfnbr=1825243

If you have the money, a PCI ATA/66 ($99+) can support sustained throughput of 34MB - the IBM 75GXP drive supports ATA/100 and is backward compatible. And let you support additional drives.

Greg

[This message has been edited by Gregory (edited 07-25-2000).]

Space was never an issue, and the bracket thing only applies if want to mount the 2nd drive ON TOP of the main unit, which is the easiest way since the IDE connector & power cable are right there. But even if you skip the bracket & mount the new drive BESIDE the old one, then all you MAY need is a longer IDE RIBBON CABLE. HOWEVER, as you will see if you go to the xlr8 page, then main problem with the Rev 1 B&W is a defect in the IDE controller chip that will cause data corruption in the 2nd drive. They mention possible work arounds, and even show pictures of how to identify your controller chip to see if it is one the ones that cause the problems.........definitely check it out.........but whatever you do, get a 7200 rpm drive.....they are so much faster than the stock units, I noticed SIGNIFICANT system-wide speed increases when I upgraded my stock 6GB 5400 rpm unit (in a Rev2 B&W). And I went with a Maxtor DiamondMax PLUS 15 GB, since the stock unit was a Maxtor, I knew there would not be any compatability problems. The whole thing took less than 10 minutes to install, and about 15 min to initialize & install OS 9 onto it. Good luck....

[bobsie]

Thanks for the advice, Puttmutt and Gregory.
I went to xlr8 as suggested, and after reading the info there and your posts, I'll put a drive add-on on hold for now.

BTW - does this mean that the rev 1 B/W's accepts only IBM's?

Right now, our local Office Depot is offering the 45gig Western Digital IDE for $189, after rebate. Sure would like to be able to use it.

-- bobsie

I have a stupid question. I have a B&W that came with the U2SCSI drive. Can I slap an IDE drive in there as a second drive?

Or am I stuck having to buy $$ SCSI drives?

I guess I would have to buy an IDE ribbon cable, but it looks like power is already good to go.

Thanks in advance.

Kevin

[bobsie]

Originally posted by kmickey:
I have a stupid question. I have a B&W that came with the U2SCSI drive. Can I slap an IDE drive in there as a second drive?

Or am I stuck having to buy $$ SCSI drives?

I guess I would have to buy an IDE ribbon cable, but it looks like power is already good to go.

Thanks in advance.

Kevin

This is NOT a stupid question. What you want is exactly what I'm hoping to do. However, the data corruption issue mentioned above is making me back off till I get further info. I'm open to a second opinion.

-- bobsie