[mrtrsharp]

I just purchased a maxtor, 300 gig ultra ata/133 hard drive to add to my G4 tower. I discovered upon install that there is a 137 gig barrier, so I ordered a PCI-ATA-133 Controller card (specifically: the ACARD ATA-133 AEC-6280M) and thought it would be a simple process to install and connect the new hard drive.

Not so simple.

I cannot get disk utility to recognize the drive in order to mount our format. Can someone walk me through what I might have done wrong?

The PCI card snapped in properly enough, I attached the new drive on top of the old one in the double drive bay, plugged in the power with one of the extra power cords, and attached the IDE cable to the new PCI card. I double checked to make sure the Maxtor Hard drive was in cable-select mode, concerning the jumpers.

Even installed a driver for OS X on the CD that came with the ACARD PCI Card.

Thanks for the help.

System stats:
Power Mac G4, 733 MHz, bus speed 133 MHz. This was one of the first G4 towers - so perhaps it is sawtooth? I'm not sure hot to find out.

Oh, when I check System proflier, I do NOT see the new PCI card under the PCI/AGP cards list, so that is probably where the problem is - how do I get the system to recognize the new PCI card I installed?

- Tom Sharp ([email protected])

[reader50]

Your system is a Quicksilver 2001 model, which is in the middle of the PowerMac G4 production history. The Sawtooth was one of the first two PowerMac G4s. Your Quicksilver was the last PowerMac that had the 128/137 GB limitation. We have a thread regarding that limitation here.

Reading your product manual often helps. Your card doesn't say anything about supporting Cable Select. Set your new drive to Master and plug it into the end of the supplied IDE cable. The cable will look like this:

|== ATA card end, different color from the other connectors.
|
| most of the ribbon
| cable is in this area
|
|== Slave connector. Usually same color as Master connector.
|
|== Master connector. Usually same color as Slave connector.

Note: make hardware changes only with your computer turned off first. An antistatic wrist strap is recommended, you can get one cheap from Radio Shack.

Your card manual claims your card does not require a driver to work. Try unplugging it and replugging it into the PCI slot a few times, or try a different slot. If the slot has never been used, it may have dust in it by now.

Contrary to the manual, you do not need to boot from their CD (or any CD) in order to initialize the drive. You can find Disk Utility on your hard drive already at:

/Mac HD/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app

If the card and drive are seen, you will see a new hardware icon in the left pane of Disk Utility, labelled 279.5 GB Maxtor 6B300R0 or something very like that. Select it. Click on the Erase tab to the right. Choose Volume Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Type a unique name for the new volume. Check the box to install Mac OS 9 Drivers. Click the Erase button.

Optional: if you wish to have multiple partitions, click on the Partition tab and make your choices from that tab. When done, click the Partition button.

Let us know how it goes.

[bowwowman]

Originally Posted by mrtrsharp

I double checked to make sure the Maxtor Hard drive was in cable-select mode, concerning the jumpers.

Even installed a driver for OS X on the CD that came with the ACARD PCI Card.

The above steps were your 1st & 2nd mistakes........
A) use only master or slave.
B) drivers for that card are built-in to OS X.....

System >> Library >> Extensions >> ACard 62xxM.kext.......have been for a long, long time

It's hard to tell how outdated the ones on the cd were

fix these + what Reader50 said & you should be ok after that. Possibly add a pram zap for good measure

[mrtrsharp]

Thanks for the input.

I changed the jumpers to the MASTER setting, closed her all up, and still, no drive recognition.

I'll go ahead and try another PCI slot, or look for dust, and pull it out a few times.

By the way, will I have messed any thing up by installing the driver off the CD? Will it have replaced a better driver that is already in OS X? If so, how do I find it or uninstall it?

Thanks for the help - here's hoping the replugging PCI card is all that remains to do

-Tom

[bowwowman]

Originally Posted by mrtrsharp

By the way, will I have messed any thing up by installing the driver off the CD? Will it have replaced a better driver that is already in OS X? If so, how do I find it or uninstall it?-Tom

√ the file path in my 1st reply..... if there are 2 of them, they are most likely conflicting with each other, so dragging the oldest of the two to the trash, emptying it, and restarting would be the best way to solve that issue.

The Tiger (10.4.7) Acard driver in my extensions folder is version #1.5.2, dated 3/26/05.......

And BTW, reseating the card in & out of a dirty pci slot could damage the slot & the card, you need to remove the dust.....then clean the contacts on the card & try it again......