-
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.
SSD for Powermac G3 beige minitower
- Thread starter Dimitris1980
- Start date
Just casually though I recently popped a SCSI2SD v6 with a Samsung Evo "Select" card in my beige g3, because it feelsl ike the beige has gotten less reliable. It is "fine" -- it's a bit better at actually booting when first asked with the SCSI2SD, so I suspect the original 8GB Quantum disk is dying. I'm not super surprised about this, given I've encountered another dead Quantum disk (4GB) from a beige G3 desktop and after discussing it in #68kMLA.
I've got MacBench 4 on hand and I intended to do a full bench of the disk in the SCSI2SD but the machine crashes during the publishing benchmark, so I'm chalking it up to some of the oddly specific things the machine does at that point.
Anyway, I have a newer Maxtor 40GB IDE disk which I formatted in a firewire case the other day, so tentatively my plan is to put that in, restore the contents of the old disk to it, and then MacBench that, as well, to see where these things lie.
I've got a slightly higher spec SanDisk SD card I might try, and I also have a SCSI2SD v5 I've been meaning to try.
I realize among the most expensive options for this particular machine, but in general the SCSI2SD v6, paired with a good SD card gets a vote of confidence from me.
68k Macs, notably, are different because they have physical PMMU chips or on-CPU circuitry and can handle some of the more advanced memory management stuff without having VM turned on.
If you have enough RAM to turn off VM, you should probably leave it on anyway, your RAM will go further and your apps will launch faster.
If you don't have enough RAM to turn off VM, consider whether you are picking appropriate software and tasks for the machine you have. Mac OS 9 and a bunch of 2000-2003 software won't run well in anything less than 128MB of RAM. Mac OS 8 and a bunch of 1996-1998 software won't run well in any less than about 24 megs of RAM, for example.
I've got MacBench 4 on hand and I intended to do a full bench of the disk in the SCSI2SD but the machine crashes during the publishing benchmark, so I'm chalking it up to some of the oddly specific things the machine does at that point.
Anyway, I have a newer Maxtor 40GB IDE disk which I formatted in a firewire case the other day, so tentatively my plan is to put that in, restore the contents of the old disk to it, and then MacBench that, as well, to see where these things lie.
I've got a slightly higher spec SanDisk SD card I might try, and I also have a SCSI2SD v5 I've been meaning to try.
I realize among the most expensive options for this particular machine, but in general the SCSI2SD v6, paired with a good SD card gets a vote of confidence from me.
Apple's own VM implementation does not do this. VM on Classic Mac OS never has. If the hard disk is being hit, it's because the machine is out of real memory. In my experience, this is true as far back as 7.6.1 (which is the oldest I usually run, personally, and is the minimum I'll run on any given PPC.
68k Macs, notably, are different because they have physical PMMU chips or on-CPU circuitry and can handle some of the more advanced memory management stuff without having VM turned on.
If you have enough RAM to turn off VM, you should probably leave it on anyway, your RAM will go further and your apps will launch faster.
If you don't have enough RAM to turn off VM, consider whether you are picking appropriate software and tasks for the machine you have. Mac OS 9 and a bunch of 2000-2003 software won't run well in anything less than 128MB of RAM. Mac OS 8 and a bunch of 1996-1998 software won't run well in any less than about 24 megs of RAM, for example.
mraroid
Well-known member
I have a Sandisk 16 GB Extreme Pro CF card in my Color Classic Mystic. I read some place that if you format a CF card and do not use all of it (say, format a 16 GB CF as three 4GBs partitions), the CF will last longer. It has something to do with buffering the read/write area. My Mystic is not my daily driver, but I do use it allot. I think it will be fine for quite some time.
You can buy standard CF cards. You can pay a little more money and buy a Ultra. You can pay even more money and buy a Extreme. And if money is falling out of your pocket, you can buy the Extreme Pro. I think I paid less then $30 for the 16 GB Extreme Pro.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ECEVE50/ref=emc_b_5_t
They have a limited lifetime warranty. The demands I make on this card are far, far less then a photographer shooting 30 fps, or capturing 4K video.
mraroid
You can buy standard CF cards. You can pay a little more money and buy a Ultra. You can pay even more money and buy a Extreme. And if money is falling out of your pocket, you can buy the Extreme Pro. I think I paid less then $30 for the 16 GB Extreme Pro.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ECEVE50/ref=emc_b_5_t
They have a limited lifetime warranty. The demands I make on this card are far, far less then a photographer shooting 30 fps, or capturing 4K video.
mraroid
mraroid
Well-known member
I can second that Cory. I first learned about this when a buddy was trying to bring back a Windows 95 machine. It was running some old, outdated software he needed for a old video camera. He was advised to format under the size of the CF to make the CF last longer. So I do not believe it is Mac specific. It seems to be a trick to give more life to a CF card. I can not say for sure that this trick works on SD cards, but I would think so. Same probably holds true for a standard SSD....
But wouldn't it be easier and cheaper to just install a modern solid state hard drive in a G3 beige? About all one would need would be a simple adapter like this:
https://www.amazon.com/HDE-Computer-Drive-Interface-Adapter/dp/B008X8NK0I/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1549057209&sr=8-9&keywords=SATA%2Bto%2BATA&th=1
or this:
https://www.amazon.com/Parallel-DVD-ROM-Interface-Convert-Adapter/dp/B0089F7KWY/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1549057209&sr=8-3&keywords=SATA+to+ATA
Thoughts?
mraroid
johnklos
Well-known member
IDE to SATA adapters work well. I use them in all sorts of machines, and I even use them with SCSI to IDE adapters. IDE to SATA adapters generally run at up to 133 MB/sec, and with a modern SSD, everything feels very fast. I have yet to find any issues with SSDs on older machines, even Quadras or VAXstations.
TL;DR: Storage is complicated and there are a lot of factors, and I do think that there's no "one perfect solution" - there's easy solutions, complicated solutions, slow solutions, fast solutions, and cheap solutions and expensive solutions to almost any situation or problem.
Most CF cards don't do wear leveling in this way. Some "real" SSDs do, but they ship with that over-provisioning in their firmware. A 180GB SSD might have, for example, 186GB of actual NAND flash and firmware will switch to some of the reserved capacity when sectors begin to go bad.
I don't believe I've ever heard that intentionally short-stroking an SSD using partitioning will do anything helpful. In the case I mentioned, I think it was a reporting error between the SSD's "written on the object" capacity and the way Mac System 7/8/9 was detecting the drive.
If you've got a good CF/IDE adapter, a Beige is probably a good system to use it in, especially if you have "enough" RAM or you're in the habit of disabling VM. (I have not had a lot of time to put effort into researching that.)
Modern "real SSDs" are designed with wear leveling explicitly for use cases like frequent swapping and applications like Atom-derived text editors and almost all modern web browsers, which save data to the disk constantly for various reasons. Very little Mac OS 9 software does this.
That said: If you've got some kind of write-heavy use case, it may be worth evaluating whether multiple disks (boot SSD + data HDD, for example) or a higher end SSD would be a better solution. Video almost always benefits from having multiple drives, for example.
Another factor of the Beige G3 specifically, compared to some other hot-roddable systems is that it's got fewer PCI slots than most of them do, and so it's really up to the individual's judgment whether an IDE to SATA adapter or a SCSI device like the SCSI2SD v6, or a SATA card or much-faster SCSI/IDE card is the best use of the machine's slots and space.
Most CF cards don't do wear leveling in this way. Some "real" SSDs do, but they ship with that over-provisioning in their firmware. A 180GB SSD might have, for example, 186GB of actual NAND flash and firmware will switch to some of the reserved capacity when sectors begin to go bad.
I don't believe I've ever heard that intentionally short-stroking an SSD using partitioning will do anything helpful. In the case I mentioned, I think it was a reporting error between the SSD's "written on the object" capacity and the way Mac System 7/8/9 was detecting the drive.
It depends.
If you've got a good CF/IDE adapter, a Beige is probably a good system to use it in, especially if you have "enough" RAM or you're in the habit of disabling VM. (I have not had a lot of time to put effort into researching that.)
Modern "real SSDs" are designed with wear leveling explicitly for use cases like frequent swapping and applications like Atom-derived text editors and almost all modern web browsers, which save data to the disk constantly for various reasons. Very little Mac OS 9 software does this.
That said: If you've got some kind of write-heavy use case, it may be worth evaluating whether multiple disks (boot SSD + data HDD, for example) or a higher end SSD would be a better solution. Video almost always benefits from having multiple drives, for example.
Another factor of the Beige G3 specifically, compared to some other hot-roddable systems is that it's got fewer PCI slots than most of them do, and so it's really up to the individual's judgment whether an IDE to SATA adapter or a SCSI device like the SCSI2SD v6, or a SATA card or much-faster SCSI/IDE card is the best use of the machine's slots and space.
I'm happy to hear this! To supplement the SATA cards I plan on putting in vtools, I've picked up a "starter" SATA to IDE converter. For convenience' sake, I'll probably get one of these for my Beige eventually as well.
Dimitris1980
Well-known member
So, can you give me a couple of links for adapters and solid state drives?
Anecdotally, this adapter worked out horrifyingly badly, for me. It appears to be utterly incompatible with LBA48 and also completely incompatible with working in primary/secondary configuration with another disk. I tried for a good solid two or three nights to get a 2TB disk running in my QS'02 and just couldn't.
I ended up leaving the adapter connected to one of the power points (because it's stuck now, love those molex connectors) and putting the original disk back, and then moving to a firewire disk for my first supplementary storage location.
For now, I'm going back to my original plan of using SATA cards for the storage disks.
I'm sure there's a specific one out there that does work, I don't happen to see a proven one in this thread, but a couple threads mentioned them over the past few months.
jimjimx
Well-known member
Price! CF is essentially ATA anyway.. There’s not any conversion going on to get from CF to ATA. ... And CF is Ssssooooo damn expensive!!!
Write cycles? Ugh.. I’d go mSATA.They can come in cheap TLC or QLC types, but you can get them in eSLC or SLC Types that have a 100k write cycle life...
jimjimx
Well-known member
If you’re looking for speed, why not use a SCSI 320 card? The ATA on that PC is only ATA 33!!!
ArmorAlley
Well-known member
If I remember correctly, U320 cards don't work on Mac OS 9.2.2 or lower (although I'll be very happy to be corrected). They require Mac OS X. I don't think Adaptec made an APD-29320 card and ATTOs UL4x cards have no Mac OS 9 driver or firmware.
jimjimx
Well-known member
I have to think back to the years I had a 7600, but I know Adaptec did make a OS 9 320, although I can’t remember the model. I was going to save up for one that worked with OS 9. I ended up getting a blue & white, and a sonnet tempo 133, and bigger, cheaper HDs.........
Edit..
upon looking, my old memories might be wrong, and I was thinking 160.... still better than the 33 or 66 that is built in..
Last edited by a moderator:
error1
Active member
I'd love to know some confirmed working combinations.. I've tried a SATA to IDE bridge in my new PowerMac G3 Beige with three different SSDs (intel, ocz and kingston) and although all of them showed up and would let me partition, format and install an OS on them the machine would either instantly freeze or crash with bus errors and illegal instructions when I tried to boot from them.
I made sure the partitions I installed to was on the first 8gb of the drives, too... I've ordered a CF slot adapter to boot from, hopefully that will work better.
The IDE to mSATA adapters look nice, but I have a feeling I will have the same boot issues there. It's a shame SCSI SSDs are so insanely expensive
I did manage to transplant a new ATX power supply and a new fan at least, so the machine will be whisper quiet eventually
I made sure the partitions I installed to was on the first 8gb of the drives, too... I've ordered a CF slot adapter to boot from, hopefully that will work better.
The IDE to mSATA adapters look nice, but I have a feeling I will have the same boot issues there. It's a shame SCSI SSDs are so insanely expensive
I did manage to transplant a new ATX power supply and a new fan at least, so the machine will be whisper quiet eventually
error1
Active member
Thanks! It didn't solve the problem but at least it clued me in on what the problem might be. Silverlining includes a TimeDrive benchmarking tool that reported tons of read errors during testing.
It seems like writing to the drive works fine but reading the data back causes a lot of garbage. That explains why I can install the OS but not boot from it.
I'll try to find a different SATA/IDE bridge, I think it's probably the bridge chipset that doesn't like the ATA controller in the G3.
It seems like writing to the drive works fine but reading the data back causes a lot of garbage. That explains why I can install the OS but not boot from it.
I'll try to find a different SATA/IDE bridge, I think it's probably the bridge chipset that doesn't like the ATA controller in the G3.
error1
Active member
Wohoo I got it to work! The solution was to replace the standard 40 wire IDE cable with a modern 80 wire IDE cable, I think that improved the signal integrity enough that the SATA bridge works reliably
The only tricky bit is that the IDE connector on the motherboard has all 40 pins while the new cable had a key and wouldn't fit. I decided to drill a hole through the key position, i think you could just cut off pin 20 on the board but I didn't want to mess up and cut the wrong pin, hacking the cable seemed less scary...
If anyone else is struggling with unreliable SATA SSDs on old macs try using an 80-wire cable, it might fix it!
The only tricky bit is that the IDE connector on the motherboard has all 40 pins while the new cable had a key and wouldn't fit. I decided to drill a hole through the key position, i think you could just cut off pin 20 on the board but I didn't want to mess up and cut the wrong pin, hacking the cable seemed less scary...
If anyone else is struggling with unreliable SATA SSDs on old macs try using an 80-wire cable, it might fix it!
I change the old IDE cable to a 80-wire cable but system still not booting up. I have a G3 beige mini tower. System runs well on 8.6 but the old 20 gb Maxtor HDD is on its last legs so I'm trying to install an OWC 120 GB SSD with the Addonics SATA/IDE adapter.
I partitioned the 120 gb into three partitions, 7, 50, 60. I copied a working OS 8.6 to the first partition but the system won't boot. So I put back the old Maxtor and it boots ok with the new 80 wire cable. Deleted the 8.6 and installed a 9.2.2 on the first partition. Still no luck.
Would sure appreciate your insights. What I'm hoping to do is replicate the steps you took to install your SSD if you could share them. Thanks!
How did you do the copy of 8.6?
If you have a working CD-ROM drive, I recommend booting from a Mac OS 8 or 9 CD and using Drive Setup to do the partitioning of your SSD to do a partition. (You could also put a minimal install of 8.6 on, say, a Zip100 disk to do this.)
120GB is small enough that you don't have to partition it if you don't want to. Though, just to be on the safe side, you can (and I would, personally) make your single partition a couple (up to maybe ten) gigs.
If you formatted/partitioned it with Mac OS X, a thing to be aware of is that in Disk Utility (OSX's disk partitioning app) you have to select to include Mac OS 9 drivers for booting to work. I find it easier to just do the partitioning in Drive Setup (the Classic Mac OS application)
If you have a working CD-ROM drive, I recommend booting from a Mac OS 8 or 9 CD and using Drive Setup to do the partitioning of your SSD to do a partition. (You could also put a minimal install of 8.6 on, say, a Zip100 disk to do this.)
120GB is small enough that you don't have to partition it if you don't want to. Though, just to be on the safe side, you can (and I would, personally) make your single partition a couple (up to maybe ten) gigs.
If you formatted/partitioned it with Mac OS X, a thing to be aware of is that in Disk Utility (OSX's disk partitioning app) you have to select to include Mac OS 9 drivers for booting to work. I find it easier to just do the partitioning in Drive Setup (the Classic Mac OS application)
Thanks for responding.
I have a Quicksilver and formatted and partitioned the drive in OS X with the OS 9 drivers and copied the system folder into the first partition. Then I installed the drive in the G3. Could hear the chime but the video never started. Never saw the blinking floppy icon. When I put back the old HD, it worked perfectly.
I then formatted an old 60 gig seagate HDD and copied over an OS 9.2.2 system folder and installed it in the G3. This time I got the blinking icon with the ?. The system folder showed the active system glyph when I copied it over so it should've been recognized.
The CD-ROM drive seems to be broken. Every time I put in a CD, the system would freeze and I had to restart.
I'm thinking it may have to do with the formatting. There's no reason why it wouldn't work with the seagate. Is there a special way to format the boot drive in G3s? Never had this problem before. Not sure what you meant by the single partitioning a couple gigs. Did you mean to partition them in 2 partitions or in 2 gig partitions?
I didn't know you can have a minimal 8.6 install with less than 100 megs. I'll try that. Hopefully the zip drive still works.
Thanks again.
I have a Quicksilver and formatted and partitioned the drive in OS X with the OS 9 drivers and copied the system folder into the first partition. Then I installed the drive in the G3. Could hear the chime but the video never started. Never saw the blinking floppy icon. When I put back the old HD, it worked perfectly.
I then formatted an old 60 gig seagate HDD and copied over an OS 9.2.2 system folder and installed it in the G3. This time I got the blinking icon with the ?. The system folder showed the active system glyph when I copied it over so it should've been recognized.
The CD-ROM drive seems to be broken. Every time I put in a CD, the system would freeze and I had to restart.
I'm thinking it may have to do with the formatting. There's no reason why it wouldn't work with the seagate. Is there a special way to format the boot drive in G3s? Never had this problem before. Not sure what you meant by the single partitioning a couple gigs. Did you mean to partition them in 2 partitions or in 2 gig partitions?
I didn't know you can have a minimal 8.6 install with less than 100 megs. I'll try that. Hopefully the zip drive still works.
Thanks again.
A thing I've seen a few times is SSDs misbehaving when you let OS 9 format them to what it sees as capacity, so, format the SSD to like 110gb and leave the last ~8-10gb free (it can be a bit less than this, IDK what the threshhold is or what SSDs do it) just in case.
So basically the disk would ahve a single big boot partition and then a couple empty gigs at the end.
That was a different set of circumstances, but.
On your QuickSilver and OS X, what version of SO X are you running? Is it 10.3 or newer? I wonder if Journaled HFS is causing problems.
I would, if you can, use Classic's disk partitioner, Drive Setup.
Another thing to think about is that the onboard IDE controller can be weird, so maybe consider doing like a 7.0-7.5 gigabyte partition at the front of the disk to boot from and then provisioning the next ~100gb as a data partition. (This is known to be an error for OS X but IDK about OS9, I haven't tried it.)
So basically the disk would ahve a single big boot partition and then a couple empty gigs at the end.
That was a different set of circumstances, but.
On your QuickSilver and OS X, what version of SO X are you running? Is it 10.3 or newer? I wonder if Journaled HFS is causing problems.
I would, if you can, use Classic's disk partitioner, Drive Setup.
Another thing to think about is that the onboard IDE controller can be weird, so maybe consider doing like a 7.0-7.5 gigabyte partition at the front of the disk to boot from and then provisioning the next ~100gb as a data partition. (This is known to be an error for OS X but IDK about OS9, I haven't tried it.)
Similar threads
