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Looking for a SCSI HDD for my B&W G3/400 running MacOS 8.6

capa150

Active member
I currently have a 2.3GB IDE drive that works fine. But I would like a SCSI drive ... because SCSI. SCSI is smooth.

I recently purchased a Fujitsu MAB3091SP 68-pin SCSI drive and plugged it in to my 2940U2W SCSI card. Drive Setup didn't want to recognize the drive as the drive isn't an official Apple-sanctioned drive. So I used FWB Hard Disk Toolkit to format the drive. Then it mounted. But I found I couldn't boot off it.

I found an article about hacking Drive Setup to recognize unofficial drives using ResEdit and that allowed Drive Setup to recognize the drive. I installed MacOS on the drive but the drive wouldn't boot.

Attached is a list of drives from using ResEdit to view "fSCR" from Drive Setup:
hdsetupdriveslist.pngd
I can only assume these are the "officially supported" drives.
What I found interesting is the use of asterisks, the "wildcard." Note, for example, the entry "IBM*." Does this mean that any IBM SCSI drive is OK?
Note that there are two. Fujitsu drives listed, but no "Fujitsu*."
So if I were to track down another SCSI HDD, would it be OK to buy for example an IBM SCSI drive that did not have the Apple logo on it, as some drives have?
Or does the drive specifically need to have "Apple" or the Apple logo somewhere on the drive label?
I'm especially interested in 50-pin drives coz my 2930CU SCSI card is bootable with NetBSD and the 2940 is not.
Or I was also looking at OWC's Mercury legacy SSD. Which would be more sensible. But I rather like the personality of spinners XD
 
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robin-fo

Well-known member
Are you sure your SCSI card itself supports booting?
As an alternative, I can really recommend certain SATA cards: They are incredible fast and bootable!
 

MacKilRoy

Well-known member
Do you have a clear photo of your 2940 SCSI card? To be bootable on the Mac it needs to have Mac firmware on it, and it will say so somewhere on the card.
 

capa150

Active member
Both SCSI cards are the Mac ones, for sure. I know coz I also have a PC one that I tried first XD.
Do SATA cards work with MacOS 8.6 and the G3?
 

robin-fo

Well-known member
I can confirm SATA works with my Apple Workgroup Server 8550 with System 7, Mac OS 8 (including 8.6), 9.1 and 10.3. It will most certainly also work with your G3. However, you must carefully choose card and firmware.
 

capa150

Active member
OK I appreciate the response. Pretty amazing you can do that on a Mac. I looked into that and SCSI and OWC's SSD legacy drive and eventually just decided to go with a 30GB Maxtor DiamondMax 8 IDE drive I found new in box on ebay for $20.
 
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