B&W Rev A - Is it really that bad?

[John Hokanson Jr.]

I recently found a good deal on a B&W Power Mac. The problem is that it's a Rev A.

I know that these had some serious problems with the IDE bus for the hard drive. My question is whether a SATA PCI card can be booted off of, thus bypassing that problem and PATA drives altogether?

 

[protocol7]

That depends on whether you want to boot OS8/9 or OS X. There are cards that can boot both but the ones that can boot OS8/9 are Mac-only (Sonnet Tempo SATA for example) and more expensive. It's possible to flash a generic Silicon Image-based card with firmware that will boot OS X.

I have a Rev A and it will only work with the original stock hard disk on the IDE channel. Doesn't matter if the other drives I try are older, newer, bigger or smaller. It'll corrupt like crazy.

 

[John Hokanson Jr.]

Yeah, the one I found has no HD, but is otherwise intact and has an asking price of $10. Thus, it would be a start, but would require some work to get running. I'm trying to calulate the "value versus pain in the ass ratio." I would like to run 9.2.2 on this beastie, but I also note that the ROM would need to be updated first.

PATA optical drives are fine on that bus, right?

 

[protocol7]

Yep PATA is fine.

The reports about the flaky IDE controller on the Rev 1 stated that there were issues trying to add a second and/or larger hard disk. In my experience I couldn't add ANY disk regardless of the size. Even using third-party formatting tools like HardDisk SpeedTools to limit the UDMA mode failed to stop it from corrupting any data that was written to it. Luckily I was able to recover the original hard disk.

If you want OS9 and don't have a suitable SATA PCI card around I'd be inclined to pass on it. They're not cheap on ebay.

 

[John Hokanson Jr.]

For some reason, the Yikes and Sawtooth G4s can be had cheaper than Rev 2 B&W systems. Are decent Rev 2s rare or something?

I would buy one if quoted a good price.

 

[Unknown_K]

The days people begged you to buy their B&W G3 for $10 are over, most have been recycled by now. If you are going to save a B&W then the rev 2 is the one to keep (just like people liked last revision ROM Beige G3's). These days you also have the same issue with G4 AGP Sawtooths where the later revisions that allow for dual processors are much more valuable then the earlier revisions.

You can still find some good deals, recently a guy in California was giving away a few machines one of which was a B&W G3 with a 1Ghz upgrade processor but he would not ship. There are some decent upgrades for a stock unit like the PCI Radeon video cards that work in the 66mhz video slot, G4 ZIF upgrades and fast G3 ZIFs.

 

[FlyingToaster]

I remember having a Rev 1. It made me very unhappy. You must have the original HD. Period. Find the exact drive on ebay and you have a very good OS9 machine. :'(

 

[Unknown_K]

Were the originals 6GB drives?

 

[protocol7]

6 and 12. Mine is a 12.

6GB is p/n 661-2136 and 661-2137

12GB is p/n 661-2140

 

[MacJunky]

You must have the original HD. Period. Find the exact drive on ebay and you have a very good OS9 machine. :'(

I used to run a 120GB HDD attached to my Rev 1 board, then later once I got my Rev 2 my father used an 80GB with that same board. I continued using my 120GB HDD until it failed(prematurely, jut like my father's 80GB) By that time I was using it in my Sawtooth and it failed the night before the day that I was going out to get a new 250GB HDD. :/
At some point in time the PATA on both the Rev 1 and 2 B&W boards stopped working properly and I am not really sure what happened.

I realize this seems "quite convenient" in a way, because I cannot just whip out a drive and boot it up for proof. :/

 

[protocol7]

It does seem strange that mine wouldn't work with any of the drives I tried. And it sounds like FlyingToaster had a similar experience. Maybe this is something that happens to the controller after a while. It did stump me as I've never experienced anything like that before (or since). All I know for sure is the original drive works fine.

If the B&W had the drive then maybe $10 wouldn't be too bad. But knowing it's a Rev.1 with no hard drive, and knowing what I do about them now, I'd run a mile from it. It's possible that the reason it doesn't have one is because the original was removed (for security) and the seller can't get any others to work in it. I do like the look of the smurfs, but it would be hard to recommend anything but a Rev.2.

 

[Unknown_K]

A Rev 1 would be a decent OS 9 machine even with the stock 6GB HD. I picked up 2 B&Ws over the years and both are revision 2's which also have room for 5 HDs using a single and two dual drive trays. One of mine has a G4-450 installed the other is a 400 both with Radeon Video cards and 1GB RAM. They are very nice machine and would make a decent vintage low power server if you need one. If you are worried about the Rev 1 IDE bus I suggest you get a mac rommed SCSI card and go SCSI for the HDs and you will not have any issues. There are some great deals on PCIX SCSI cards that work in Apples on ebay from time to time, or just older Adaptec PCI cards that are dirt cheap now (same with ATA/66 PCI cards).

Since the B&W has hit the worthless stage and is now going up in value as a collectable you should try pickung up one now before they get harder to find. I got mine a few years back during the worthless stage and have moved on to G4 Powermacs for utility work these days (since they are in the worthless for main machine stage).

 

[John Hokanson Jr.]

Operator Headgap has the purple Tempo SATA card for $90 shipped. Figure about another $50 for a decent HDD. Then I have to source a copy of OS 8.6 because that's what the ROM requires for me to boot it and update the ROM for OS 9 and X.

So basically I'd be out $200 to get this thing up and running. And it would still be a Rev 1. It hardly seems worth it. *sigh* I guess I need to keep my eyes open for a good Rev 2 deal.

 

[John Hokanson Jr.]

OTOH, you are correct that 50-pin SCSI cards seem to be pretty damn cheap. And I DO have an external HP scanner that can work either through SCSI or USB 1.1. Hmmmmm. I wonder, if they are Apple Rommed, would they be bootable?

 

[Unknown_K]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ACARD-AEC-6280M-DUAL-ATA133-CARD-MAC-G4-G5-IDE-DISK-/200458521505

$29.95 shipped and most people have old PATA HD's laying about.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ADAPTEC-PCI-SCSI-Controller-Card-AHA-2940U2B-Apple-Mac-/270707135849

SCSI cards are even cheaper

If they have Apple ROM then they are bootable.

 

[John Hokanson Jr.]

Alright... thanks to you, now this doesn't seem quite that ridiculous.

What about the old ROM issue. Got any magical workaround for that?

 

[Unknown_K]

What old ROM issue?

 

[Gorgonops]

You can still find some good deals, recently a guy in California was giving away a few machines one of which was a B&W G3 with a 1Ghz upgrade processor but he would not ship.

Not that it's helpful to mention this, but I'm in California and I'd probably give someone a good deal on my last-I-checked-working Rev. 2 B&W... and I'd also not ship.

Anyway. Just one comment on the Rev. 2: frankly, its IDE controller isn't all lollipops and roses either. I've had no corruption problems (caused by the IDE bus, see below) and I've also been able to run dual hard drives on occasion but it's still picky. Several hard drives I tried in it when originally setting it up had this strange thing happen where OS X would seemingly install correctly but would display a "No!" (/) symbol on first boot. It particularly hated IBM/Hitachi Deskstar drives. (But hey, who can blame it?)

The B&W overall is an idiosyncratic and flaky system. It's possibly slightly less buggy than the Beige G3 but it has several well known problems. First off, it can be *really* picky about RAM DIMMs. Mine still has the 544MB it came with because a large sample of perfectly-good-in-the-PCs-they-came-from 256MB DIMMs caused random kernel panics and disk corruption. (That's something to watch out for, actually... if your Mac is trashing its filesystem it may not necessarily be the controller or drive.) Second of course is the IDE weirdness. And best of all it's prone to several well-known "silent death" hardware failures, where it will just "decide" to not boot anymore, or only boot under irreproducible conditions. (IE, "I left it unplugged for a week and it booted again! Oh, wait, it's broken again now..." A common cause of this symptom is apparently a bad firewire module.)

Unless you *must* have a B&W for some reason (or Yikes! G4, it's the same thing with another beard and mustache) frankly I'd recommend skipping it in favor of a Sawtooth AGP G4. Those are getting old and crotchety too but at least it's a cleaner design.

 

[protocol7]

Gorgonops, is there any way to check the RAM in the B&W to see if it's the cause of the disk corruption? I doubt the RAM in mine is stock.