Putting a hard drive in a Powerbook G3 Wallstreet PDQ

[blue lander]

Hello,

I picked up a Wallstreet PDQ without a hard drive. No matter what kind of disk I put it in it, Mac OS 9.2 sees it but won't initialize it. I've tried the following

Real 120 GB hard drive
IDE-> M.2 adapter with 128gb card
IDE -> SD adapter with 32 gb card
IDE -> Compact Flash with 1GB card

I initialized the CF card and Compact Flash card in a Mac G5 but they still report as uninitialized when I put them in the Powerbook.
If I put the Compact Flash in a PCMCIA adapter I can install OS 9.2 on it, but it still shows as unitialized when I connect it to the IDE adapter.

Is there anything else I could try? I read another article here that says this ought to work. I also tried reinitializing the NVRAM

 

[dankcomputing]

What info about the connected hard drive can it see (try system profiler) and does that info look corrupted? could be a hardware/cable issue

 

[s_pupp]

I have had luck with the following:
- Fujitsu MHS2060AT 60GB hard drive in the internal hard drive caddy (edit: with Apple ROM)
- CF-PCMCIA adapter in one of the external expansion slots, with an older Transcend industrial CF card. A few other CF cards worked, too, but I had fewer issues with this one (see picture). It does NOT work in the internal caddy.

I’ve tried many other hard drives, also PATA ssd’s, cf-ide, sd-ide, and m.2 sata-ide combinations in the internal hard drive caddy with no luck.

 

[blue lander]

It seems to see it. Product ID is "Highspeed SD to CF" and the size is correct. No Mac OS partitions even though I partitioned it on the G5

 

[blue lander]

Sounds like my best bet is to get a hard drive with an Apple ROM then. The CF-PCMCIA adapter works but when I did the Norton Utility speed test, the disk speed was half of what it should be

 

[s_pupp]

Advice at LowEndMac.com is to use an ATA/66 drive (because of incompatibility with ATA/100), and avoid IBM/Hitachi drives for the Wallstreet and PDQ. Low End Mac link

 

[dankcomputing]

I get away with using 32GB CFs in the IDE bay all the time. What brand/adapter are you using? I've had good luck with SanDisk Extreme 32GB cards, and bigger cards up to 128GB should work.

 

[Byrd]

Partition the drive on the host Mac itself, from a G5 might not play nicely. Also can confirm to have had issues with solid state substitutes on early G3 Macs notably, best option was a Sandisk Extreme 8-16-32-64GB card and generic adapter card.

 

[s_pupp]

Not to steal focus from the OP, but for CF cards, I’ve tried Syba, ASHATA, QNINE, generic, and I believe at least one of those above was verified by at least one forum member here or elsewhere to work in their Wallstreets.

In addition to Transcend Industrial, I tried Sandisk and Sandisk Extreme 32GB CF cards in all the above, without success. I did have great success with Sandisk and Sandisk Extreme in generic and Syba adapters with my Lombard, just not the PDQ’s.

LaCie Silverlining Pro, Apple in OS9 and OSX, patched Apple, Intech HDST and FWB Hard Disk Toolkit were used to format the cards, all while booted from installation CD’s on the PDQ.

In the end, I felt that I had spent enough time and money on these failed experiments, and put in the Fujitsu hard drives.

 

[Unknown_K]

I just run OS 9 on my WallStreet's so old HDs work just fine in them and they were cheap.

 

[blue lander]

I have had luck with the following:
- Fujitsu MHS2060AT 60GB hard drive in the internal hard drive caddy (edit: with Apple ROM)
- CF-PCMCIA adapter in one of the external expansion slots, with an older Transcend industrial CF card. A few other CF cards worked, too, but I had fewer issues with this one (see picture). It does NOT work in the internal caddy.

I’ve tried many other hard drives, also PATA ssd’s, cf-ide, sd-ide, and m.2 sata-ide combinations in the internal hard drive caddy with no luck.

I bought an Apple OEM'd Fujitsu MH2060AT hard drive off eBay and it has the same exact problem as the rest of the adapters/disks I've tried

 

[s_pupp]

I bought an Apple OEM'd Fujitsu MH2060AT hard drive off eBay and it has the same exact problem as the rest of the adapters/disks I've tried

How disappointing!
Similarly, I had no success with solutions that others posted had worked for them.
I wonder what the differences are among different Wallstreets and PDQs that make them behave differently with regards to storage.

These are some links to successes others had that didn't work for me:
SD-IDE
mSATA-IDE
CF-IDE

In one of the threads, someone had success only after zapping the PRAM. That might be worth a try.

 

[blue lander]

Is there a PRAM battery I can replace in this model? I lifted the keyboard but I don't see one.

 

[Unknown_K]

It's under the palm rest from what I remember so you have to take the top off.

 

[s_pupp]

Is there a PRAM battery I can replace in this model? I lifted the keyboard but I don't see one.

Unless you have a good main battery, I don't believe it is worth the effort to replace the PRAM in this machine. It does not hold a charge for very long by itself. I hope to be corrected if I'm wrong, but I don't believe I am.

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

I have a 40GB Seagate drive in mine. I've heard that they're picky about SSD adapters and stuff, haven't experimented myself yet.

 

[blue lander]

I've tried formatting the disks in Mac OS 8 and OS X , OS 8 gives me the same error as OS 9 and OS X complains about "Invalid B-Tree node size".

A few people have said that PRAM problems can result in hard disk issues, that's why I ask about replacing it. I've noticed the date and time randomly change every time I reboot the computer so that PRAM battery is definitely kaput

 

[ninefathom]

Not necessarily trying to revive an old thread, but I'll include this for posterity in case anybody else comes here from Google.

The Wallstreet G3 Powerbooks are OLD WORLD MACHINES. This has major implications when preparing hard disks for them.

68k Macs, Old World PPC machines, and even New World PPC machines (the last only when booting Classic afaik) actually load the "main" OS drivers for their HDDs (and SSDs, as may be these days) from the drives themselves early in the boot process. There are small driver partitions at the beginning of the disk dedicated to this purpose. The firmware/ROM on 68k and Old World PPC systems has just enough drive logic to be able to get to and load these drivers from disk, after which the full drivers just loaded must be able to take over. To work properly in classic Mac OS, they must be properly prepared on a Mac OS system that can create and populate these small, usually-hidden driver partitions.

Furthermore, these driver partitions must be appropriate for the machine and Mac OS version you wish to boot.

Finally, for Old World PPC systems, the partition must be formatted as either "plain" HFS or HFS+. HFSX (that is, HFS+ without the HFS compatibility wrapper) will not typically work well on Old World machines.

The following are some ways that will work:

BEST - boot a classic Mac OS installation CD of the appropriate version on the machine in which you will be using the new drive. Use either Apple's "Drive Setup" (make sure to use Functions > Update Driver) or a third party tool like La Cie Silverlining to partition the drive (install their third party disk driver in the process). Getting Silverlining on a bootable installation CD can require some creativity.

SOMETIMES OKAY - Use Disk Utility from Mac OS X and make sure to select "Install Mac OS 9 Drivers" when erasing/partitioning. Obviously use APM, not GPT or MBR. NOTE 1/2: This is generally okay for New World machines, but may not behave well for Old World machines like Wallstreet/PDQ Powerbooks, see "BEST" option above. Note 2/2: If your version of Mac OS X Disk Utility does not give you this option, it is TOO NEW and the disk likely will not work in Classic Mac OS if you partition it using such a version of Disk Utility.

Typically WILL NOT WORK - Formatting the disk from Linux, Windows, "modern" macOS, your Android phone, or whatever other things folks might come up with.

Symptoms of not having the correct Disk Driver in the appropriate partition of the disk can include the following in Classic Mac OS: failure to boot, drive not appearing on desktop after boot, drive appearing on desktop but giving errors when accessed.