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May 30, 2007 7:50 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alderby jpl,Grant,
I agree; it's amazing what you can still do with 9.x when troubleshooting. The Unix guys probably call Classic a toy but it works for me... -
May 31, 2007 8:40 AM in response to jplby Appaloosa mac man,jpl, I call Classic 20 years of productive work done while waiting for a convenient Unix interface. In 1969, programing university main frames was far from pretty and far from productive. I moved on to other interests. It is nice to now have OS X but I haven't held my breath waiting for that interface. Ji˜m -
May 31, 2007 10:00 AM in response to Appaloosa mac manby jpl,Appaloosa mac man,
Well said; Unix is still incomprehensible to me. Fortunately, Apple made a user-friendly front-end for OSX so I am content. -
Jun 6, 2007 7:33 AM in response to mezerikby Fleur DeTran,Mezerik, has your problem resolved now?
I just had the exact same thing happen to me yesterday, after I finished reinstalling the internal HD into my bronze Lombard Powerbook G3-400. It booted from HD fine before (in testing mode, HD not screwed into the carrier), so I pulled out the ribbon cable to screw HD in. Afterwards, on power-on, no folder — went to CD to load OS9.2 that I happened to have on CD. Disk Utility (OS9) reported only CD device, no HD in machine. My guess: either ribbon cable broke when I pulled it out, or the motherboard connection itself to the ribbon cable broke.
I pulled the HD back out, ran it on external FW drive case, and had no problem with power or with reading the folders; so it must be Hardware-related: (electrical/signals) connection to motherboard/IDE controller failure.
12" iBookG4, iMacG3-400 (dead 2007), 15" PowerBook G3-400 Mac OS X (10.3.9) Toying at OSX Server networking -
Jun 6, 2007 12:01 PM in response to Fleur DeTranby mezerik,No, i'm still having the same problem. So how much is a FW drive case, i tried with a IDE to USB cable and had no joy, with either drive. I know my old drive works fine and if i can retrieve the data from my old hard drive and get it onto my macbook pro i'd be happy to sell the G3 on ebay for spares. The only reason i bought it was to get to my old data. -
Jun 7, 2007 6:21 AM in response to mezerikby Fleur DeTran,Having just tried myself: OS9 from the OS9 install disk for the PowerBook does not use the USB port as a disk drive. I plugged known good external disk into the USB port, and the OS9 from the install disk was totally oblivious. If you look at the install disk, OS9 contains extensions for USB use, that have to be installed during loading, in order to read the USB port.
My (ignorant) guess is that you have a hardware problem somewhere between the motherboard and the hard drive itself.
Good luck! -
Jun 7, 2007 1:29 PM in response to mezerikby Fleur DeTran,Notebook computers use 2.5" drives with a physically different IDE cable than the more usual 3.5" drives found in desktops, don't know which cable you tried.
If you have a working PB where you tested the drives - could you not transfer data from PB to MacBook via USB or via Ethernet (cat 5 or cat 6) cable? Haven't tried, don't know if that would work. Turn on Apple File Sharing on both computers, and let the Finder find the other computer's hard drive for you?
If all you want it an external case to back up your data to your MacBook, USB-only cases (cheapest solutions) should work - I see a bunch as low as US 9.99$ (no fan, powered by USB port). It'd be an almost disposable, one-time use only: you cannot start up your MacBook from USB, AFAIK, so you could not use the case for emergency boot should/when something happens to your MacBook internal HD; whereas if you spent a bit more on a FW case, it could be your emergency system startup drive or even external backup drive for your data. Due to cost of FW circuitry, prices range from $65 to $85.
You can buy just the bare case, or you can buy a drive in a case, remove the drive, exchange with your old drive to transfer your old data, then reinstall the shipped (new) drive. Install Mac OS X to the external HD, and now you have an emergency startup drive. Example . After data transfer, you still have an external 120 GB drive for US $ 138 + S&H, including backup software.
I bought just a bare case from Other World Computing (the link above), my bias = to choose one with its own power supply (not just bus-powered). Again, make sure to double-check that you are getting a 2.5" drive case, not the more common 3.5" disk size. Also does your MacBook have FW400 (the original Firewire), or FW800 (the newer)? Plug shapes are different. Data will still transfer at 400 MBPS, but you might need a 400-to-800 cable to connect them; or buy a case with FW800 (more expensive, but data transfers twice the speed?).
Don't know what prices would be in £, if that's where you live, but I imagine would be in same relative range after currency conversion.
Let us know what you decide and how it worked out.
12" iBookG4, PowerMac G4, 14" PowerBook G3-400 Mac OS X (10.3.9) Toying at OSX Server networking -
by Grant Bennet-Alder,Jun 7, 2007 12:27 PM in response to Fleur DeTran
Grant Bennet-Alder
Jun 7, 2007 12:27 PM
in response to Fleur DeTran
Level 9 (61,337 points)
DesktopsRE: Startup from USB:Beginning with the Power Mac G4 (AGP Graphics) and the iMac (Slot-Loading), two new features to USB are most apparent: support for USB audio devices and booting from USB drives.
58430- USB Info and Benefits of Dual-Channel USB