How would I add a second HD to a G3 Beige Tower?

[Johnnya101]

Hi everyone,

I am receiving a G3 tower thats beige next week, and I have an extra 120 GB HD that I would like to install in it. How would I add a second? I do know that there is an extra bay because there is no Zip. The drive I have is a standard 3.5 inch.

Im assuming I need an SCSI cable or something like that. 

Thanks!
 

 

[bibilit]

IIRC The G3 is able to accept SCSI and IDE drives, you have a caddy on one side to accept a second drive, so pretty easy.

 

[Johnnya101]

Oh good. So that means just a cable.

My mistake, I have a 80 GB one, not 120.

 

[Johnnya101]

By the way, how would I create a duel boot of OS 9 and OS X?

The HD thats in the tower I bought has OS 8 and 9 on it, but the seller says that I should probably just replace the HD. 

So now I think I am going to back up the old drive, remove it, and replace it with the 80 GB one I have, and then install OS 9 first. But would I have to partition anything, or just then boot up the OS X installer and install in the same HD?

 

[rsolberg]

If your spare 80GB drive is PATA/IDE, you probably won't even need a cable as a connector is probably already present. If the drive is SCSI, you'll need a 50 pin internal SCSI ribbon cable to fit the logic board's connector. As I'm not aware of any 50-pin SCSI hard drives as large as 80GB, You'd probably also need a terminated 50-68pin or 50-80pin adapter. If the Mac has an add-in SCSI card, then you'll need to identify the connector on it to find the correct cable. If your spare drive is SATA, you'll need a PATA to SATA adapter.

 

[Johnnya101]

Ill see what happens when I get it, as I have no idea what will be there. I might not even need to install a new HD, and just use a FW HD I have. 

Now if I decided to leave the original, how would I partition a new section in the existing drive? Is there a disk utility type things?

 

[Johnnya101]

Found a manual. Turns out the HD I have is ATA, and has a 40 pin slot. Since the tower doesn't have a zip, theres an extra, and the manual says to just set the drive to slave with he jumper, and plug the connecter into the drive... Gonna have to try this when I get it.

The instructions in the manual dont mention anything about a power cable. Im going to assume that the HD needs a power cable, so if theres one for the zip (Which is no zip), I guess Im supposed to plug that into the HD too...

 

[bibilit]

OS X will only work with Xpostfacto BTW, will work if you are lucky (mine did) but i had one of the last Beige, was useable but slow.

Using OS 9 at the same time, well you can use the Classic mode or another partition.

 

[Johnnya101]

Actually, it will work without that up to 10.2.8 I think. I have it on my AIO and its actually pretty fast for something that doesn't meet the ram requirements.

I opened up the tower today. It has an AsanteFast Ethernet card, along with an SCSI card, with an SCSI cable. Somebody removed the original HD and left the HD spot empty at the top, and instead connected it with the SCSI and put it where the Zip spot is.