Power Mac 8500 USB 1.1 PCI Card - make it work!

Dang, I thought this might make life easy - now all of a sudden the 8500 had decided to boot only to HD - will not allow booting from CD. (holding down C on startup) I was trying this of course only because the system now boots and only goes to my desktop - shows a brief warning message that cannot be read and sits there with no menus of HD on the desktop - the old mouse works though. I was going to try to reinstall 9.1 - but with no boot from external working that's a dead end.

This state change just happened - I touched nothing in hardware or software other than hooking up a different monitor one time.

This is with nothing plugged in other than standard keyboard and monitor. The new PCI/USB board is probably the culprit. It was really tight to get it seated - but I'm thinking taking it out is the only way to recovery at this point. 😟

Card has been removed (but the problem with the stuck finder remained).

Here is all the text off the card I can see -
On top - DT-0109 Rev. 0.5

Processor - NEC
D720100AGM
D123KP015

Right 2/3rds of the way down - 02 13

Lower Right - 66 94V0

Back - small sticker that says - DT-0109-2 GG03191023

After a lot of trying I finally got it to boot from an original OS9 CD, and did a clean install to go back to OS9.0 - No more stuck FInder, so that problem was solved.

System Profiler shows no card hardware before installing the 9.1 update, but booting is fine. Next is to reinstall the USB card and then run the 9.1 update... Odd - I got a warning dialog "the disk is being used by another application - Please quite all applications and try again" It should have automatically quit all other apps however. Maybe FIle Sharing? I stopped the install and turned it off. Trying again. Same thing - this time I chose "Ignore Warning".

Next stopping point - "The hard disk drivers cannot be updated - formatted with a non-Apple utility...blah blah". Going to say "Continue" - otherwise I have to reformat the internal - which I would prefer not to do.

9.1 installed - finder is working but no card is seen - going to try to re-seat it now.
Reseated - now I'm back to no finder/desktop again. This is maddening!

There is some kind of video card in the lower most slot - I've never used it. Maybe time to pull that one out. reinstall the OS and try again?

In answer to the question again - yes the card has always been installed before the 9.1 update - every time it's been tried.

With the finder frozen again now - I removed both cards (video and USB) and restarted - same thing. Putting the USB card in the lower slot made no change.

A clean install of 9.0 fixed this before so that's the next step. This time doing it with the USB card installed in the lower slot...no other cards. If it comes back working, next will install the 9.1 update.

9.0 Clean install worked - though no USB card showing up in System Profiler. 9.1 Updated - while USB card is installed - back to the blank desktop - no menu or HD. Any further attempts at this are going to be pointless I think.

I emailed the seller that the card I got was not 1.1, but 2.0 - and got a (hopefully) positive response -

"Sorry, our mistake.
We'll mail you out a 1.1 card tomorrow when we're back in the office."

Guess I will wait and see if that one works before giving up entirely now!

Thanks Tom, but I believe according to this - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1835 - 9.1 is the end of the road for the Power Mac 8500 as far as OS updates go.

Meanwhile they are sending me another "for sure" 1.1 card. And to entertain myself I've been able to connect the OS9 8500 to the OSX box via Ethernet (crossover cable) - from the 8500, using Apple Menu > Chooser > AppleShare > Server IP Address > OSX computer_IPaddress > OSX username_andpassword.

It's one way control from the 8500 only but can move files no problem and is +one way+ to work.
Once I have a USB port, it will be easier and breathe new life into a computer that's been in the closet for the last 8 years.

I received the replacement 1.1 card and after a couple of tries (had to do another clean install of OS9 first) the card is working!

Great news....except -

The one drive I've tried (1GB thumb drive) comes up as unrecognizable and I get prompted to format it. This is an OSX formatted drive so I'm wondering if there is anything I can do on the OS9 box to get it to recognize it?

I haven't tried this yet, but also wonder if I did reformat the thumb drive in OS9, if it would be recognized (without caveats) by an OSX machine, (since it seems a problem going the other way)? I'll play with this and see. - Also OS9 gives the option for "Standard" or "Extended" formatting - I assume Extended has a better chance of forward compatibility.

I had this hope that USB drives might just work interchangeably however (at obviously different speeds).

Moving to 9.2 as noted here in the thread, sounds interesting too. Thanks!

Follow up post to this -

I reformatted the unrecognized 1GB USB Thumb Drive with the PowerPC 8500 (USB 1.1 PCI card installed and now working). The drive works fine moving it over to my OSX Mini. Brilliant - and it was easy to do once I had the proper USB card installed.

So forward compatibility OS9->OSX disk formatting seems to work fine - but not backward?
Just wondering if I'm missing something that would enable going the other way, as that would be useful for existing drives with data on them. I can always juggle the data onto backups, reformat and restore onto the OS9 formatted drives, but if there's a simpler answer that would be helpful.

Thanks again to all.

(Added note - seller shipped the correct replacement card at no cost and said keep the other card - do not bother returning! A+ for them!)

Message was edited by: igirl1