Marathon Rack - G3 - OS 9.2 - ?

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Marathon Rack - G3 - OS 9.2 - ?

Hello, I recently purchased a used Marathon Beige G3 system. For those of you who don't know, Marathon is a company that produced some Power Mac Beige G3 units in a rack mount case.

In my system, I have no floppy drive installed. I've been searching for technical information on the Wings Board (i.e. what are the connectors. ) One connector has 26 pins and looks like a floppy. I also see a connector on the motherboard to the right of the processor which seems like a logical connection point for a floppy. However, seems different than a regular PC floppy connector. From what I 've seen on e-bay, older Macs used a floppy connector with a 20 pin cable?

Questions are :
- on the wings board is that a floppy connector or something else entirly. Note, also looks like there is a SCSI connector on the Wings board as well.

- can a regular floppy be used if I can find a conversion cable?

G3 - Marathon, Mac OS 9.2.x, Music System - Pro Tools

Posted on Sep 9, 2006 6:24 PM

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Answer 1

Sep 9, 2006 6:58 PM in response to zetm99

Stay away from the Wings board -- it does not contain the Interfaces you are looking for. They just used a readily available, cheap, convenient connector. those connectors are for the All-in-One front panel board, the Digital Audio/Video ad-on card, and the All-in-One built in monitor.

The Mac has never used a PC diskette drive for its built-in diskette. Its drive has a variable-speed motor. This diagram will show you where the connector is located on all beige G3 boards:

http://macgurus.com/products/motherboards/mbppcg3mini.php

one additional note: Apple dropped support for the built-in floppy in Mac OS X. You have to use a PC-style USB floppy if you want one, and you lose the ability to read old Mac 800K diskettes -- they require the drive with the variable-speed motor.

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