Molar Mac SSD issues

[iamtheSpicer]

 Hello, I posted on this forum before about my Powermac G3 all in one machine rescued from a scrapper a year and a half ago. I found that the machine would constantly restart and make crackling noises from the CRT, so I was initially disappointed, but later I disassembled it and did some soldering touch ups to cracked solder joints on a major internal power connector. The soldering did help, and especially after letting the machine sit for a while without use, it seems to be 99% stable in regards to the CRT and not having sudden restarts. I only mention this issue because of the small possibility that it may bear relevance to the actual topic of this post.

 My current issue with this machine revolves around my attempt to install a SATA SSD into it. I bought two 120 GB Micron SATA SSDs from a scrapper that seemed to be fine on Gparted and tried both of them in the Molar Mac (not at the same time). I used the original IDE cable and a JMicron IDE to SATA bridge to connect it. Both drives initially installed Mac OS 9.2.2 without issue and the drives could be initialized without issue. However, after a couple of boots, or sonetimes the first boot, the installations failed. Sometimes they would boot with extensions off, other times not, and sometimes they would lock up in the Finder. The worst issue was when having an SSD plugged caused a blank screen and not being able to boot, even from a CD. I went through some trial and errror and found that the RAM, CD drive, and floppy drive were not causing this, and that it probably rested on the SSD, the adapter, the cabling, or a combination. I would like to ask what possible solutions would be available while still being able to use a 120 GB SATA SSD. I have heard that my issues could be the cable, and that a new 80 conductor IDE cable could be more reliable. I could also try to use a PCI IDE card that may prove more willing to accept the drive than the onboard controller. Lastly, the bomb error codes that I encountered on startup that may be of help were a bus error, illegal instruction error, and address error code 10. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Byrd]

It's probably an incompatibility with the SSD (the IDE implementation of the G3 doesn't play nice with the later ATA standard used by the SSD, adapter); I've found this many times trying to make my 68K/PPC Macs run off them.  I assume switching back to a mechanical HD all problems are gone?  Yes, you could try a later PCI IDE card - or consider native SATA.

 

[iamtheSpicer]

Yes, it seemed to work fine on the original 4 GB HDD. I don't think it's practical to do native SATA because I want to run OS 9 and the very few PCI SATA cards that run under OS 9 are difficult to attain or too expensive. What could be some reasonably priced PCI IDE controllers compatible with booting OS 9 to look for?

 

[Byrd]

Look out for a Mac compatible Promise ATA66-100-133 card.  But I'd try another SSD brand if you can

 

[Franklinstein]

I usually use ATA-to-CF adapters in Old World machines when necessary because there are usually problems with adapters for SATA or m.2 SSDs and the like; usually CF plays nice, at least the <4GB cards tend to. Just don't use VM and a CF card will last a long time unless you're constantly adding and removing files. Normally I save that stuff for the PowerBooks though since I have no shortage of 3.5" 20-100GB IDE drives (and in a PB the extra shock resistance and power savings help too); it's the SCSI drives that are hard to find and thus more in need of a flash-based substitute.

 

[waynestewart]

I’ll agree with the incompatibility idea.

About 3 years ago I tried an Intel ssd with a PPC Mac. The install went fine but after a couple of boots it seemed to lose it’s formatting. Reformatted and did another install and on the second boot, the same thing happened. I installed it in an Intel Mac and it’s still working fine today. I tried a Samsung in the PPC Mac and it worked and kept working.

I wouldn’t take that as an endorsement of current Samsung drives for this use as the model numbers have changed since.

 

[bunnspecial]

Shove a bootable SATA card in it and be done with it. The ATA bus on G3 beiges is kind of garbage anyway especially with 8gb first partition issue. You have slots and the space to drop a SATA card in and route it to the drive, even if it means getting creative with where exactly you put the drive in the AIO case.

 

[MagicBoy]

As above - from experience I'd say forget the SATA bridge idea.

It's slightly off at a tangent, but I've had similar problems with a PVR box with a PPC 405 CPU. It's fine with any ATA spinning rust. Ideally I wanted it near silent so tried a couple of SATA to ATA bridge adaptors that I know are good from other machines with various SSD and laptop drives. I was getting intermittent failure to record, data corruption and random reboots. An old SATA2 OCZ SSD was the worst of the bunch - would artifact the video then crash the OS within 5 minutes, where a SATA laptop drive would last say 20 minutes. The PVR works perfectly back on the original ATA Deskstar. The drives and adaptors work flawlessly in other machines, so has to be something in that era IDE controller.