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Updated 2023-07-12: Hello, Guest! Welcome back, and be sure to check out this follow-up post about our outage a week or so ago.
Solid State Drive for G3?
- Thread starter Iamanamma
- Start date
The thing to know about most (all?) power supply connectors is that they are a plastic housing filled with pins.
The pins and the housing are sold separately. The pins crimp onto the ends of wires. Then the pins snap into the housing. There's usually a little "latch" or prong (or two) that hold the pin in the housing after it has been inserted.
So, if you want to rearrange the wires on a connector, you can carefully remove the relevant pins from the housing (depending on the brand/model of housing there are often dedicated tools available, though improvising works too) and insert them in the hole to which you wish to move them.
Of course, new pins can be bought and crimped onto the ends of cut wires and new housings purchased.
The trick in the latter case is knowing which housing/pins you need.
The pins and the housing are sold separately. The pins crimp onto the ends of wires. Then the pins snap into the housing. There's usually a little "latch" or prong (or two) that hold the pin in the housing after it has been inserted.
So, if you want to rearrange the wires on a connector, you can carefully remove the relevant pins from the housing (depending on the brand/model of housing there are often dedicated tools available, though improvising works too) and insert them in the hole to which you wish to move them.
Of course, new pins can be bought and crimped onto the ends of cut wires and new housings purchased.
The trick in the latter case is knowing which housing/pins you need.
error1
Active member
It was a complete nightmare to remove the pins from my new ATX supply to rewire the plug, even with the right pin removal tools from ebay it took at least an hour just to learn a working method to release the pins.
If i had to do it again I would much rather buy an extension cable like in the instructions I linked, cut the wires that have to be changed and solder them back together while leaving the plug pins alone.
As long as you're not in a hurry the proper cable is quite cheap to get, something like https://www.amazon.com/24-Pin-Detachable-Extension-Conversion-Cable/dp/B01N5MWYX1/ with a 20/24 convertible plug and color coded cables makes the process easier.
You'll need to buy a new 120mm system fan as well, the original fan is powered by a custom pin header on the standard power supply. If you get a modern quiet fan your G3 will be almost silent. I am really happy with how mine turned out
If i had to do it again I would much rather buy an extension cable like in the instructions I linked, cut the wires that have to be changed and solder them back together while leaving the plug pins alone.
As long as you're not in a hurry the proper cable is quite cheap to get, something like https://www.amazon.com/24-Pin-Detachable-Extension-Conversion-Cable/dp/B01N5MWYX1/ with a 20/24 convertible plug and color coded cables makes the process easier.
You'll need to buy a new 120mm system fan as well, the original fan is powered by a custom pin header on the standard power supply. If you get a modern quiet fan your G3 will be almost silent. I am really happy with how mine turned out
Well, I am back inside the beast, and it appears there is something seriously wrong with the CD-ROM. The vidoe will not start up if the CD-ROM is plugged into either of the ATA ports. This is going to complicate getting the OS onto the new SD Card on the SCSI Bus. The Zip drive and the floppy drive both work, thanks to a Youtube video on how to take your floppy drive apart and clean it. I Have a USB card for this G3, I just hadn't put it back in. I also have a USB CD-ROM. I will figure this all out yet.
jessenator
Well-known member
If you want a new CD-ROM, I can highly recommend Apple Rescue of Denver for spares. I ordered a SCSI model myself, and it was in excellent shape. Here's an IDE/ATA listing. Shipping isn't too bad either: http://www.applerescueofdenver.com/products-page/cd-dvd-drives-ide/cd-rom-drive-32x-power-mac-g3-g4-imac-g4/
This sounds a little bit like something that happened with mine. I'm trying to recall because I didn't write it down, but, it was either when I installed a mis-configured SCSI2SD with wrong termination settings or when I installed a faulty hard disk drive.
Did you end up using the OWC SSD or on a SCSI2SD?
Did you end up using the OWC SSD or on a SCSI2SD?
I am going with the SCSI2SD. It actually was a piece of cake putting it in and firing it up. My video and PRAM zapping problems all appear to be related to either that CD-ROM or its ribbon cable, because my issues start whenever it is plugged in. It doesn't matter which IDE port. The PATA hard drive I have works just fine off of wither port, although it's kind of slow and pretty full. I bought a 512 GB SD card. That should give him some space.
My biggest problem right now is trying to figure out how to get the operating system onto the SCSI2SD. My install disk for 8.5 is on a CD. I have a USB card in the G3 and a USB CD-RW, but I can't seem to get it to work. The CD-RW may be too much newer.
jessenator
Well-known member
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USB cards will not boot a Beige G3.
For the SCSI2SD - this sounds a lot like my issues. Are you using a SCSI cable with termination? any external devices? Is termination enabled or disabled as appropriate in the device settings?
I'll be really honest, I'm about 20% sure I did, in fact, get the SCSI2SD (v6 in my case) running in my Beige G3, but I have no recollection at all as to what I did to do it.
To get it working on my 8600, I ended up using a scsi cable that was already in the machine, as opposed to one I brought in.
For the SCSI2SD - this sounds a lot like my issues. Are you using a SCSI cable with termination? any external devices? Is termination enabled or disabled as appropriate in the device settings?
I'll be really honest, I'm about 20% sure I did, in fact, get the SCSI2SD (v6 in my case) running in my Beige G3, but I have no recollection at all as to what I did to do it.
To get it working on my 8600, I ended up using a scsi cable that was already in the machine, as opposed to one I brought in.
error1
Active member
For what it's worth I'm not using any SCSI device at all in my beige g3. It boots from a 120gb ssd (partitioned as 4g,4g,50g,60g) through a SATA-IDE bridge and the CDROM is an IDE cdrw model I grabbed from an old G4 tower. You should be able to install a wide range of old generic IDE cdroms i think. I would save the expensive SCSI2SD for an older Mac without IDE.
As for modifying the IDE cable I had a tiny 1mm drill bit and carefully drilled out the plastic from the connector so I could push it into the motherboard. The blocked hole is pin 20, you only have to drill the motherboard end of the cable since the IDE devices don't have that pin at all
As for modifying the IDE cable I had a tiny 1mm drill bit and carefully drilled out the plastic from the connector so I could push it into the motherboard. The blocked hole is pin 20, you only have to drill the motherboard end of the cable since the IDE devices don't have that pin at all
Thinking about this further, I'm becoming more certain that in my own Beige G3, I never got the SCSI2SD running fully and I gave up on using it in the Beige G3 and instead installed it in my 8600.
I left the default config in, expanded the volume size to 31 gigs, and used LaCie Silverlining on a Zip disk while booted to an OS 9.1 install CD to partition and format it.
I left the default config in, expanded the volume size to 31 gigs, and used LaCie Silverlining on a Zip disk while booted to an OS 9.1 install CD to partition and format it.
Hi Cory. The SCSI2SD isn't all that expensive any more. It cost about the same as a 120 GB SSD. The SD card was the more expensive part, because I wanted a honking big one. The v 5.1 SCSI2SD has software termination built in. It was ridiculously easy to configure it for the G3. I haven't et installed OS software onto it yet, I still need to figure a way around the malfunctioning CD-ROM to do that.
I'm just curious because I have a v6 and my system started doing weird things (Zip drive and CD drive not working) that persisted until I took it out and restored the original disk.
I guess my question is:
If you take out the SCSI2SD, does the CD drive start working again?
If so, the SCSI2SD is probably still not quite configured correctly, in some way.
I guess my question is:
If you take out the SCSI2SD, does the CD drive start working again?
If so, the SCSI2SD is probably still not quite configured correctly, in some way.
I isolated the problem with the CD-Rom before I installed the SCSI2SD. The CD-rom isn't SCSI, so I am confused as to how termination settings on my SCSI bus could be causing problems?
It's possible I'm misremembering, in that case. I had the machine on my desk for several months and tried to do a handful of different things with it, so it's possible that I had that problem at some other time.
I did something, the machine didn't like it, and when the machine was in that config, the CD-ROM and Zip drives didn't work. I undid whatever it was and they both started working again.
Which, again, yeah, I know, weird because the CD-ROM drive is IDE and if I remember correctly the stock Zip drives (mine's a /300) are SCSI.
At any rate:
If it does this without the SCSI2SD installed, then, replacing the CD-ROM drive with another IDE one would be the easy way forward.
If you have more than one Beige G3, you might consider just installing your scsi2SD in the second G3 machine and using that to copy stuff to it, or swapping the CD drives around, whichever seems easiest.
I did something, the machine didn't like it, and when the machine was in that config, the CD-ROM and Zip drives didn't work. I undid whatever it was and they both started working again.
Which, again, yeah, I know, weird because the CD-ROM drive is IDE and if I remember correctly the stock Zip drives (mine's a /300) are SCSI.
At any rate:
If it does this without the SCSI2SD installed, then, replacing the CD-ROM drive with another IDE one would be the easy way forward.
If you have more than one Beige G3, you might consider just installing your scsi2SD in the second G3 machine and using that to copy stuff to it, or swapping the CD drives around, whichever seems easiest.
Yes, the zip drive is SCSI, and it is working properly. I do have 2 non-working desktop G3 machines. I will swipe the CD-rom out of one of them to see if it works. I also have a G4 and another SCSI2SD board and another 512Gb SD card. I could put it into the G4 (which does have SCSI) and write everything I need onto the SD card that way, then simply switch SD cards in the G3.
Trash80toHP_Mini
NIGHT STALKER
Maybe not so strange really, given the many odd configurations available. These are the clearest set I could find on EveryMac:
1997 233MHz:
Shipped standard with an IDE/ATA-2 hard drive.
It has two 3.5" drive bays (one is internal and intended for a hard drive, and one is external and intended for a Zip 100 drive).
By default, the external 3.5" bay is free. The system also has an external 5.25" drive bay occupied by the optical drive.
1997 266MHz
M6142LL/A shipped standard with an IDE/ATA-2 hard drive. M6459LL/A shipped with an Ultra/Wide SCSI PCI card and hard drive.
This system also has an internal SCSI bus (up to 5 MB/second) -- drives larger than 128 GB are not supported.
1998 300MHz
M6572LL/A shipped with a single 4.0 GB Ultra/Wide SCSI hard drive and corresponding PCI card,
M6494LL/A shipped with dual 4.0 GB Ultra/Wide SCSI hard drives and a corresponding PCI card, and M7247LL/A shipped with a single 8.0 GB IDE hard drive.
*This system has internal buses for IDE/ATA-2 and SCSI (up to 5 MB/second) -- drives larger than 128 GB are not supported.
Strange stuff, but looks to me like the "external" bay was meant for SCSI, be it baseline right up thru Fast Narrow or Ultra/Wide?
I'd dearly love to see inside one of those dual 4.0 GB Ultra/Wide SCSI hard drive units.
I just meant that it was weird that my (IDE) CD-ROM was misbehaving due to an error on the SCSI bus.
However, my bad/apologies for the misdirection, it appears the fault here really was the drive itself and not the bus or the scsi2sd.
There are a lot more total configurations than that, there were the 333s as well, desktop /300s, the servers, a whole range of /233 and /266 options at launch replicating the 7300-7600-8600 family the BeigeG3 replaced, plus the on-the-books-but-never shipped 366MHz family.
However, my bad/apologies for the misdirection, it appears the fault here really was the drive itself and not the bus or the scsi2sd.
There are a lot more total configurations than that, there were the 333s as well, desktop /300s, the servers, a whole range of /233 and /266 options at launch replicating the 7300-7600-8600 family the BeigeG3 replaced, plus the on-the-books-but-never shipped 366MHz family.
