G3 B&W optical drive and hard disk drive questions

Hi, I'm new to this forum so hi everyone, hopefully someone can help me out with my query and i can help some of you with your problems too 🙂

i've got a G3 Blue & White (although it looks more green to me!) Mac tower system computer, It currently has a CD-ROM drive and I would like to replace it with a CD-RW drive. Will any standard IDE drive such as this work in the Mac? http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/91532

I would also like to upgrade/replace the hard drives. it currently has a SCSI upgrade card fitted running 3 hard drives, a 20GB and 2 10GB drives. I notice there is a spare IDE connector on the motherboard, would I be able to remove the SCSI card and the 3 SCSI hard drives and install a standard 80GB IDE hard disk drive and then re-install OS X ?

also under under the power button on the front of the unit there are 2 small buttons, the first one sticks out a little and the other is recessed into the case a bit, what are these both for?

and my last question is on the back of the computer there is a socket that looks like an S-Video socket that you would find on a TV, DVD player etc. what is that for? I have no instructions for the computer.

Thankyou

G3 Power Mac B&W, Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Posted on May 17, 2006 4:31 AM

19 replies

Jul 11, 2006 6:18 AM in response to asdigi

Hi,

before you use Patchburn, make sure your drive is not supported in System Profiler.
I have a Pioneer DVR-110D, which shows up in Profile as "Apple shipper/supported".
Check this as you might not need Patchburn with the DVR-111D

cheers

Jul 13, 2006 8:33 PM in response to Mauro Maitan1

All Pioneer drives are supported by OSX as factory installed. I dropped a 106D in a few years ago. Phugged it in, booted the B&W and "Presto," DVD burner was fully supported by the OS, no shenanigans necessary.

Cheers

Jul 28, 2006 9:04 AM in response to EITLtd

There is no second free ATA port. The bottom front
and bottom middle are for SCSI only.

On the B&W motherboard there are 2 IDE ports, or slots, or inputs one for the CD and Zip drive, and one for an IDE Hard Drive. I was not talking about the slots on the bottom of the case.

However, there is a way to add a second ATA drive without losing
your zip drive.

That only applys if you have a rev 2 G3 with the corrected ATA Chip, or if you buy a PCI controller, i was just suggesting a temporary or cheap way to get around the issue of the flakey ATA.

Patrick

Jul 28, 2006 4:12 PM in response to asdigi

asdigi,

see if this can work for you. My suggestion is that you keep the two largest SCSI drives, remove the smallest and install the IDE drive in the bay where you had the SCSI.

Preferably, try to free the bay right in front of the IDE channel. If that is taken, try to relocate the SCSI drives to the other two bays.

Use the SCSI drives as your main drives for for OSX and OS9.
You can then install backup OS9 and X partitions on the IDE drive.
This will allow you to boot the machine from another partition and perform the necessary maintenance/repairs without having to use the CD/DVD.

With this configuration, you will not need to worry about all the headaches caused by master/slave configurations that
don't work properly (as you can find out in a number of other posts related to Rev. 1 machines).

Nowadays, you can also find large SCSI 68PIN drives on eBay for a fraction of their original price.

I missed out on a 73GB SCSI which sold around AUD 90 (about 67/68 US).

Hope this will help

cheers

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G3 B&W optical drive and hard disk drive questions