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spookymulder · Mar 9, 2005, 02:56 PM

Hi,

I have a G3 300 Blue and White with a 6GB HD and OS 9.2.2

I rcently bought a new sealed 40GB Maxtor hard disk drive (Jumpered as Master) to replace the internal 6GB HD but have failed to get the G3 to even recognise the HD.

If I boot from my Panther CD and run Disk Utility (DU) it sees a maxtor 6e040l0 drive but when I choose to format it as MacOS Extended with os9 drivers it just hangs. The progress bar remained static for over hours.

If I boot from my os9.1 cd then the HD does not mount on the desktop and Drive setup cannot see the drive at all.

I checked the drive by installing it into my G4 dual 450 and it worked fine. It was visible to both os9 and osx and could be low level formatted and checked in both!

I just cannot get this drive to show up at all in the G3 even though the stock 6GB HD works perfectly.

I'm tearing my hair out as this is the first ever weird hard drive issue I've ever had on a mac.

does anyone have any ideas on what could be up or any suggestions for me to try out?

thanx in advance

omar96 · Mar 9, 2005, 02:58 PM

Is this a Rev1 or Rev2 B&W? Rev1's have a bad ATA controller that can cause corruption and other issues with bigger (larger than 6 or 9GB) drives. Also, have you tried jumpering it for cable select? Probably won't matter, but it's worth a shot. Finally, I'd also recommend making sure your firmware is up-to-date before installing this HDD.

spookymulder · Mar 9, 2005, 03:19 PM

Hi omar96, thanx for your reply.

I belive the machine is a rev1 and i have tried cable select. I am going to try the firmware thing next and let u know how that went

spookymulder · Mar 9, 2005, 03:54 PM

Hi again,

just tried the firmware thing and I'm afraid it hasn't solved the problem. This is really bugging me!!

reader50 · Mar 9, 2005, 06:58 PM

Do you have two HDs on the bus when you try this? ie - are you leaving the OEM 6GB drive in as slave while the new 40GB is in as Master? The Rev1 G3 has a defective ATA controller chip which does not properly support having 2 drives at once. If the 6GB drive must be present, try putting one of the drives on the connection for the Zip bay.

Note: cable select doesn't work on any Macs before the later-model G4s.

spookymulder · Mar 10, 2005, 04:00 AM

Hi Reader50, thanx for your reply.

I've only been trying to replace the stock 6gb with a single 40gb as a master so there is only the 40gb hd in the machine.

does it sound like my machine has a hardware fault? I hope not!

MORT A POTTY · Mar 10, 2005, 04:58 AM

Originally posted by spookymulder:
Hi Reader50, thanx for your reply.

I've only been trying to replace the stock 6gb with a single 40gb as a master so there is only the 40gb hd in the machine.

does it sound like my machine has a hardware fault? I hope not!

actually, a PCI ATA controller is relatively cheap, so that wouldn't be that big of a deal (or that bad of an investment)

angelmb · Mar 10, 2005, 12:42 PM

Originally posted by MORT A POTTY:
actually, a PCI ATA controller is relatively cheap, so that wouldn't be that big of a deal (or that bad of an investment)

I second that, being a 300 MHz must be a rev.a that is, I fear you can not get that drive working with out a pci ata card like MORT A POTTY says, and you get some more real speed that way.

spookymulder · Mar 10, 2005, 12:49 PM

Hi guys,

can anyone recommend a reliable card? I'm from the uk and we don't seem to see many of them!

omar96 · Mar 10, 2005, 12:53 PM

ACard makes some pretty reliable and relatively cheap ATA cards that are Mac compatible, but as far as a retailer goes, I wouldn't be any help as I'm not familiar with UK retailers.

Captain Egotist · Mar 10, 2005, 01:08 PM

Okay, I could be wrong here, but I think you need to format that 40 gig drive to have a partition that is UNDER 6 gigs, right in front. So make a 4-5 gig partition, then whatever is left over. Something about the IDE controller wasn't made to recognize drives that big, and that's the work around.

Also, try booting from the OSX cd, opening disk utility, and mounting the drive from there.

- Rob

omar96 · Mar 10, 2005, 02:43 PM

That's just the beige. The B&W can have partitions up to 127GB.

edit: just out of curiosity, what happens if you format it without OS9 drivers?

spookymulder · Mar 10, 2005, 03:45 PM

Hi Guys,

here's the latest:

Tried partitioning it on my g4 5GB and around 33GB - NO Luck when subsequantly placed in the g3

Tried formatting it without os9 drivers. Disk utility sees the drive but again when formatting it says creating partition map and hangs.

looks like I'm stuck for a pci card but I have to say I'm still very confused about what could be wrong. after all, its a mac, it just works right?

Captain Egotist · Mar 10, 2005, 04:23 PM

Have another mac to try it in?

Sounds like maybe the drive itself could be funky.

Captain Egotist · Mar 10, 2005, 04:24 PM

Also, if you need one, I have a Sonnet Tempo Ultra ATA66 PCI card. You can have it for like $15+ shipping if you want it. I really have no idea how much it's worth, let me know if I'm off.

- Rob

spookymulder · Mar 10, 2005, 06:24 PM

Originally posted by Captain Egotist:
Also, if you need one, I have a Sonnet Tempo Ultra ATA66 PCI card. You can have it for like $15+ shipping if you want it. I really have no idea how much it's worth, let me know if I'm off.

- Rob

Hi captain, thanx for your reply. I'm afraid I don't really know anything about buying from the states. could you enlighten me as (if I chose to buy after some more playing around with my g3 proves to be fruitless) to how I would pay you? I take it you can't accept personal cheques drawn from a uk bank? (I don't use electronic forms of payment ever since my wife had her identity stolen.)

Captain Egotist · Mar 10, 2005, 07:41 PM

Originally posted by spookymulder:
Hi captain, thanx for your reply. I'm afraid I don't really know anything about buying from the states. could you enlighten me as (if I chose to buy after some more playing around with my g3 proves to be fruitless) to how I would pay you? I take it you can't accept personal cheques drawn from a uk bank? (I don't use electronic forms of payment ever since my wife had her identity stolen.)

You mean you don't have a paypal account? Um... I guess you could send me a money order. Or better yet, trade me something. Time to move this to PMs.

- Rob

Lateralus · Mar 10, 2005, 08:03 PM

I'll take it if he passes on it. I need an ATA card for my PowerTower Pro.

angelmb · Mar 11, 2005, 06:23 AM

Originally posted by omar96:
edit: just out of curiosity, what happens if you format it without OS9 drivers?

I did it some time ago, it is annoying, not only I can not have access to it from my another internal Mac OS 9 hard disk, what is a shame, I had lots of valuable info there, but I was not able to choose Mac OS 9 hard disk as start up disk anymore, (I solved it starting up from a CD every time I wanted to go to Mac OS 9).

spookymulder · Mar 14, 2005, 10:06 AM

Originally posted by Captain Egotist:
You mean you don't have a paypal account? Um... I guess you could send me a money order. Or better yet, trade me something. Time to move this to PMs.

- Rob

Hi captain,

I've done some finding out and it seems that to send you a money order from here would cost more than the item! would you object to me sending you cash?