Powerbook G3 Wallstreet / Pdq / lombard : CF, SSD, SD to IDE

[Cedsrepairs]

Hey everyone,

I opened a similar post on the great MacOS9Lives forum (which I recommend by the way)

Powerbook G3 PDQ - CF, SSD, SD : freeze when writing

Powerbook G3 PDQ - CF, SSD, SD : freeze when writing

macos9lives.com

But I'd like to benefit from the 68Kmla wisdom as my problem is more "vintage computing" than Macos9 related, I think.

I'm replacing the stock 8GB IDE hard disk drive of my PB G3 PDQ ( 300Mhz ) with a flash memory solution, and get nothing but incompatibilities (and frustrations)

I've tried

1. IDE to SD card, with $18 adapter + Sandisk Extreme SD
2. IDE to CF, with transcend card, then transcend industrial card (not cheap) that usually solve all my incompatibilities problems in the PC world
3. ID to SSD nvme, with a nice 2,5 adapter than takes a small form nvme SSD to IDE.

The drive is always recognized, I can install Macos9 from CD, but the flash based drive proves to be unreliable, the most reproducible problem being that macos9 crashes (freezes) when copying large amounts of data (large amount by 1998 standards ; like > 10MB) , from ethernet, from pcmcia, or internally from IDE to IDE)
Reading and "light" usage seems to work, until it doesn't. It's just unreliable and pretends to work really. What is obviously super weird is that I get the same problem with 3 completely different technologies !

Switching back to spinning IDE hd drive solves all problems.

Is there like a known working brand , a known working solution ?
Is there a reason for this behavior (i've seen mention of using "advanced" IDE features like multi sector),
Did anyone else see this problem before ?

thanks !

 

[avadondragon]

Try removing the CD drive. A few people have experienced odd behavior with IDE adapters. My theory is that it has something to do with master/slave/cable select drive settings. Since there are usually no jumpers on laptop drives there's no way to change this.

 

[Cedsrepairs]

You could be on to something indeed.
Great find.
I would say this only affects some type of adapters however. I'll get to the bottom of it, I always do

 

[quinterro]

I'll take my Lombard out of the closet and see what I have in it.

It has a 32GB CompactFlash card with a CF to 44-pin IDE adapter. I'm pretty sure the adapter is one of those generic ones.

 

[AndyO]

I tried one of these in my PDQ:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08SK4G7RP/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It didn't work, after multiple attempts, but works nicely in my Lombard.

I tried one of these:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00S6GNZQQ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

with

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07F8P7VY3/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

In the PDQ and Wallstreet - and this solution works well in both.

 

[quinterro]

I'll take my Lombard out of the closet and see what I have in it.

It has a 32GB CompactFlash card with a CF to 44-pin IDE adapter. I'm pretty sure the adapter is one of those generic ones.

It took a while, but I finally got access to my Lombard.