iBook G3 not recognising IDE devices

[jake18125]

Bit of an interesting one. Recently I was given an iBook G3 with a pile of assorted stuff and I could not get it to boot from the CD drive. In fact I couldn't even get it to *eject* the CD tray. 

Once I had booted it from an external firewire disk it just could not detect either the internal hard drive or the CD drive. In fact it didn't detect there was an IDE bus at all! 

Anyone got any ideas? Failed IDE controller, dodgy IDE cable, pure bad luck and both the drives are just dead?

 

[EvilCapitalist]

Personally, I haven't experienced a dead IDE controller on an iBook but I have experienced torn/otherwise damaged cables.  Assuming you're talking about the iceBook / dual USB iBook, that cable makes a bit of a journey to go between the optical drive, HD, and back to the motherboard.  If the case has been opened and not put back together properly it's entirely possible the cable got nicked in reassembly.  

 

[jake18125]

Personally, I haven't experienced a dead IDE controller on an iBook but I have experienced torn/otherwise damaged cables.  Assuming you're talking about the iceBook / dual USB iBook, that cable makes a bit of a journey to go between the optical drive, HD, and back to the motherboard.  If the case has been opened and not put back together properly it's entirely possible the cable got nicked in reassembly.  

Sorry! Yes I am talking about the icebook 

As far as I can tell I don’t think it has been opened before. I might take the hard drive out and replace it with a known working one as well as giving the cable a bit more of an inspection 

 

[dan.dem]

While having simultaneously a dead IDE hard drive and a dead optical would not be totally improbable giving the limited reliability of old electromechanical devices, a dead IDE bus is in fact rare.

1. How does IDE (not) show up in the System Report? Do you find an entry in the left listing? And if there is one, what shows up to the right if you click on it?
   
2. And just to make sure it's not a software problem: Is the system on the Firewire drive known to work well with IDE?