PowerMac G3 Blue & White Hard Drive Trouble/Help Requested
Hey all,
I work for a small IT/computer repair company. We recently got in a PowerMac G3 Blue & White (300 MHz; 512K cache; 64 MB SDRAM) which has what appears to be a bad hard drive.
(Upon boot, it comes up with a flashing disk/question mark and you can hear the drive making noises it shouldn't be/spinning up and down/etc.). I've tried booting with the OS CD (8.5.1) in the drive and get a bit further, but it complains of an unimplemented trap, and if I try holding down C to boot up, it starts to load, but then the screen flashes and it eventually locks up (but without the hard drive connected at all doesn't even get that far; just a gray screen).
I've done some research and think my first step should be to replace the hard drive (though if that's not the case, I'd appreciate some insight). I haven't fixed many Macs before, though, so I still have several questions:
1.) The drive that came with the machine is a 6 GB IBM connected to the mainboard IDE interface. It lists it as having Apple HDD Firmware. Is this firmware required on any drive I'd have to get to work with this machine, or can I go with any IDE drive and not worry about it like with PC's (I'm going to stay as small as I can, but with newer drives, that's probably still a lot of gigs)?
2.) Similarly, when I do get a new drive, assuming that's the problem, will OS 8.5.1 be able to format and use it, as I've never done an install of this particular OS before. I'm assuming I just boot from CD and go through the process?
3.) Unfortunately, I've discovered this unit is using the Revision 1 chipset. So I may need to go for some sort of PCI IDE interface option. Any recommendations for a cheap solution here, and is this a definite must to get this working reliably?
4.) The owner of this machine also inquired about a DVD/CD burner (would have to be external as there's no room inside). Any recommendations that would work well with this machine, or is this machine not suited to using these types of drives well?
5.) Can this Apple G3 run Mac OSX well enough, as the client has also expressed interest in upgrading OSes, or is it too slow for this?
Thanks much for any help - this is fairly new territory for me!
Shaun
I work for a small IT/computer repair company. We recently got in a PowerMac G3 Blue & White (300 MHz; 512K cache; 64 MB SDRAM) which has what appears to be a bad hard drive.
(Upon boot, it comes up with a flashing disk/question mark and you can hear the drive making noises it shouldn't be/spinning up and down/etc.). I've tried booting with the OS CD (8.5.1) in the drive and get a bit further, but it complains of an unimplemented trap, and if I try holding down C to boot up, it starts to load, but then the screen flashes and it eventually locks up (but without the hard drive connected at all doesn't even get that far; just a gray screen).
I've done some research and think my first step should be to replace the hard drive (though if that's not the case, I'd appreciate some insight). I haven't fixed many Macs before, though, so I still have several questions:
1.) The drive that came with the machine is a 6 GB IBM connected to the mainboard IDE interface. It lists it as having Apple HDD Firmware. Is this firmware required on any drive I'd have to get to work with this machine, or can I go with any IDE drive and not worry about it like with PC's (I'm going to stay as small as I can, but with newer drives, that's probably still a lot of gigs)?
2.) Similarly, when I do get a new drive, assuming that's the problem, will OS 8.5.1 be able to format and use it, as I've never done an install of this particular OS before. I'm assuming I just boot from CD and go through the process?
3.) Unfortunately, I've discovered this unit is using the Revision 1 chipset. So I may need to go for some sort of PCI IDE interface option. Any recommendations for a cheap solution here, and is this a definite must to get this working reliably?
4.) The owner of this machine also inquired about a DVD/CD burner (would have to be external as there's no room inside). Any recommendations that would work well with this machine, or is this machine not suited to using these types of drives well?
5.) Can this Apple G3 run Mac OSX well enough, as the client has also expressed interest in upgrading OSes, or is it too slow for this?
Thanks much for any help - this is fairly new territory for me!
Shaun
B&W G3 300 MHz; 512 K cache; 64 MB SDRAM, Mac OS 8.6 or Earlier, Revision 1; 6 GB IBM HDD