Recently I (foolishly?) agreed to take a dual 1.25 Ghz MDD G4 Tower (OS 9-bootable, not FW800) off a coworkers' hands for $50. (I'm not sure why. I think I had this vague idea that I could let my two-year-old bang on it instead of a fragile old Powerbook.) I'll be getting it today, supposedly it has a number of goodies that might make it worth the price. (a second video and USB 2.0 cards, etc.) Worst comes to worse I guess I might be able to flip it for what I paid for it.
I have one silly question about this monster that perhaps someone with experience could enlighten me on: I'm not sure how large of hard drive it's coming with. If it's "small" I figured I'd toss in a 400GB drive from a retired server I have lying around. From my research it appears that MDDs have no problem with large IDE drives under OS X. However; I *may* occasionally want to boot OS 9 on this thing. (Most of the rest of the time I suspect I'll run Tiger, although it's possible it might end up dual-booting Leopard if I desperately need it for compatibility with something that needs 10.5 but otherwise works on a G4. That's a small category to be sure.) So...
This somewhat confusing KB article says: "If you plan to start the partition up from Mac OS 9.2.2, the partition sizes may be a maximum of 200 GB. If you have a drive that is larger than 200 GB in size, you will need to create multiple partitions with no single partition exceeding 200 GB in size. Once formatted, the drive will be recognized under the version of Mac OS 9.2.2 that comes with the Power Mac G4 (Mirrored Drive Doors) and later products..." Does this mean that a partition larger than 200GB won't be seen by OS 9, a drive with *any* partition on it larger than 200GB won't be seen by OS 9, or that if I have a drive with such partitions on it they'll be in mortal danger if I *ever* boot into OS 9, even from another drive?
If it means a drive with larger partitions will be ignored, or that partitions larger than 200GB will be ignored, then I'm not too worried. (I could always put a smaller drive in alongside the larger one for OS 9.) I'm mostly worried about the "will it completely trash and/or threaten to reformat larger drives every time it's booted" scenario. If anyone has such a monster and could let me know whether it's "silent treatment" or "active hostility" thanks ahead of time.
Anyway, yay. I suppose I'll have to dispose of my G4-ed B&W now... ;^b
I have one silly question about this monster that perhaps someone with experience could enlighten me on: I'm not sure how large of hard drive it's coming with. If it's "small" I figured I'd toss in a 400GB drive from a retired server I have lying around. From my research it appears that MDDs have no problem with large IDE drives under OS X. However; I *may* occasionally want to boot OS 9 on this thing. (Most of the rest of the time I suspect I'll run Tiger, although it's possible it might end up dual-booting Leopard if I desperately need it for compatibility with something that needs 10.5 but otherwise works on a G4. That's a small category to be sure.) So...
This somewhat confusing KB article says: "If you plan to start the partition up from Mac OS 9.2.2, the partition sizes may be a maximum of 200 GB. If you have a drive that is larger than 200 GB in size, you will need to create multiple partitions with no single partition exceeding 200 GB in size. Once formatted, the drive will be recognized under the version of Mac OS 9.2.2 that comes with the Power Mac G4 (Mirrored Drive Doors) and later products..." Does this mean that a partition larger than 200GB won't be seen by OS 9, a drive with *any* partition on it larger than 200GB won't be seen by OS 9, or that if I have a drive with such partitions on it they'll be in mortal danger if I *ever* boot into OS 9, even from another drive?
If it means a drive with larger partitions will be ignored, or that partitions larger than 200GB will be ignored, then I'm not too worried. (I could always put a smaller drive in alongside the larger one for OS 9.) I'm mostly worried about the "will it completely trash and/or threaten to reformat larger drives every time it's booted" scenario. If anyone has such a monster and could let me know whether it's "silent treatment" or "active hostility" thanks ahead of time.
Anyway, yay. I suppose I'll have to dispose of my G4-ed B&W now... ;^b