SCSI/IDE Bus Issues on PowerMac G3 Beige Desktop

[daniel_chapstick]

Hello,

I had some issues connecting SCSI and IDE hard drives on my Powermac G3 Beige Desktop and wanted to get some feedback on possible solutions/causes.

My G3 contains an internal/external SCSI port and 2 different IDE ports. There is an IDE CD drive connected. Any time I try connecting a separate IDE hard drive, either on the same IDE bus or via the second IDE port, the Mac (booting off System 8 CD) will not recognize the hard drive. Whenever I connect an internal SCSI hard drive, the Mac will also not recognize the drive. The mac boots successfully off my external BlueSCSI.

It looks like previous posts here all point to the IDE buses on the G3s being very faulty. Are there are any fixes to this beyond relying on the external SCSI connection or using a PCI SCSI/PATA/SATA card?

 

[Phipli]

Hello,

I had some issues connecting SCSI and IDE hard drives on my Powermac G3 Beige Desktop and wanted to get some feedback on possible solutions/causes.

My G3 contains an internal/external SCSI port and 2 different IDE ports. There is an IDE CD drive connected. Any time I try connecting a separate IDE hard drive, either on the same IDE bus or via the second IDE port, the Mac (booting off System 8 CD) will not recognize the hard drive. Whenever I connect an internal SCSI hard drive, the Mac will also not recognize the drive. The mac boots successfully off my external BlueSCSI.

It looks like previous posts here all point to the IDE buses on the G3s being very faulty. Are there are any fixes to this beyond relying on the external SCSI connection or using a PCI SCSI/PATA/SATA card?

On most beige G3s you can only have a single IDE device per bus. You can only have master and slave on with later ROM revisions.

SCSI should be fine though. What IDs are you using internally and externally? How is termination set up?

 

[Dude.JediKnight]

It should work fine with just an IDE HDD on the one connector, and just an IDE CD-ROM on the other one. Both would have to be set to master of its own bus, but it should work regardless of ROM version. Is the IDE HDD confirmed to be working in another machine?

SCSI is always more complicated; SCSI problems are typically a matter of setting SCSI IDs and properly terminating the bus. Overall, provided that the SCSI HDD you are using is set to an unused SCSI ID, it should work.

ID 3 is typically used for SCSI CD drives, ID 6 is usually for the internal SCSI HDD, and the Mac itself (or the SCSI controller card) uses ID 7. I have to assume the SCSI bus is working, since the SCSI2SD works externally. Is the SCSI HDD confirmed to be working in another machine?

Some SCSI HDDs do have a termination jumper that may need to be set or unset, in addition to jumpers to set the SCSI ID. Just make sure if you’re using the SCSI HDD and the SCSI2SD together, that they each use a different unused SCSI ID.

“SCSI Voodoo” was a thing for a reason, so unless you really want or need SCSI drives, I’d probably avoid those headaches and just go with IDE, all else being equal. Just remember that older IDE Macs cannot fully recognize any drives larger than 128GB.

 

[daniel_chapstick]

On most beige G3s you can only have a single IDE device per bus. You can only have master and slave on with later ROM revisions.

SCSI should be fine though. What IDs are you using internally and externally? How is termination set up?

Thank you for the info: single IDE device per bus! I did not know that and it makes sense now why things weren't working.

Late reply, but wanted to give a solution for those with similar issues:

1. My internal SCSI ribbon cable was just bad. With a brand new ribbon, my internal ZuluSCSI drive worked just fine.
2. I also bought a brand new IDE cable and connected an old IDE hard drive (that came with an iMac G3) to the second IDE bus connector (the first connector going solely to the CD drive). It worked, and the hard drive powered on/was accessible.