Western Digital Drive Tip
In response to Mac OS X and a
Beige G3, Brian Futrell writes:
Vaughn Corden wondered:
Until I decided to add a Western Digital 80 GB 7200 RPM drive.
I believe this is an ATA/100 drive, so my first question is can it
replace my original Quantum Fireball ATA/66 drive? I haven't been
able to get the darn thing to boot up, and after reading about your
problems with Carbon Copy Cloner, which I used, that might be the
reason.
A problem with Western Digital drives not mentioned is if they
are the only drive on the IDE cable they must be set to Single, not
Master. Setting it to Cable Select may also work, but I haven't
tried it yet. As far as I know, WD is the only HD manufacturer to
do this with their hard drives.
Thanks for the info. I'll put it in the next mailbag
column.
More on Powerline Networking
After reading Wireless or
Powerline Networking, Bhavesh Patel writes:
I jumped on the same free-after-rebate Fry's deal on the
Gigafast Power Line Networking (Home Plug) ethernet bridges last
week. I'm happy to report they work great. I'm using them to
connect a Quadra 630 running
OS 8.1 to the rest of my home network.
Both TCP/IP and AppleTalk work perfectly through these bridges
as I can mount drives and browse without any issues on the Quadra.
The Quadra obtains its IP address via DHCP from my wireless
router.
The bridges require a PC to configure a security password on
them, a step that takes 10 minutes. After that it is literally a
plug & play device.
Now I hope those rebates really come through!
What a shame any type of hardware requires a PC (Windows, I
have to assume) for configuration. I like the way most routers let
you use a browser to configure them, so they don't care what kind
of computers you use.
Great to hear the your network supports both TCP/IP and AppleTalk -
that really simplifies things for both older Macs and older
printers (such as LaserWriters).
Info on NuBus SCSI Cards Wanted
Andy Pyle writes to suggest:
I would like to see an article or tabulation on NuBus SCSI
cards, what works in what, what are the best, and what the outputs
are (50 or 68 pin).
I would also like to have available a table showing the capacity
of the hard drive controllers on various models, or to have this
available in the Profile for each machine.
You guys helped me get started on Macs and nobody appreciates
you more than I do.
Thanks for the kind words and the suggestion. Something like
that would be an invaluable resource, especially if it listed where
drivers could be located and what versions of the Mac OS they
worked with. We already do something similar with NuBus video cards.
But despite the breadth of content here at Low End Mac, we remain primarily a
one-person operation. Although I don't write everything, I edit it
all, design it all, write a fair bit, manage about 30 mailing
lists, and am just generally swamped by what is essentially a
full-time operation that I can only dedicate part of my time to due
to the need to earn money. (It's not easy earning a living on the
Web.)
Low End Mac has sometimes been labeled a "community" website, which
is an intriguing concept. We're not a news site. We link to news
and new content, but our primary focus is helping users get the
most out of the Macs and Macintosh clones. As such, we have become
the center of a community, which is further enhanced by our email lists.
If someone in the community would like to research and contribute
this kind of information, or something else like it (PCI and AGP
video cards, PCI SCSI cards, NuBus ethernet cards, etc.), I'd be
happy to provide space for it, but I don't have the time to do this
kind of research myself.
More on OS X and the Beige G3
Vaughn Corden writes in response to Mac OS X and a Beige G3:
I've since found many of the great lists on your Web site that
you manage. What a great resource! I'm a little bit of a newbie to
lists, and I see that I received a gentle nudge about list
etiquette, which I will adhere to in the future.
In the end, my new drive installed just fine, but I went through
a bit of hassle trying to do it with Carbon Copy Cloner. It just
wouldn't work. I've since found out (from the G-List) that if I installed a basic
copy of OS X on the new drive first, CCC should have copied
over just fine.
I ended up purchasing a Sonnet Tempo ATA/133 card, and I just
reinstalled Jaguar from scratch on an 8 gig partition. I see now
with the System Profiler that it's showing up as a SCSI card, so I
probably could have installed Jag without partitioning. Do you
think that's right? When I next have a free day, with nothing
better to do, I may go back and do it over without a partition.
Thanks again for being a great resource for us cowboys!
Yes, cards like the Sonnet Tempo and Acard Ahard fool the Mac
into seeing your IDE drive as a SCSI drive, so there's no need to
partition.
I've also heard that recent versions of Carbon Copy Cloner include
an option to "bless" the system after you copy it, which will
apparently solve the problem beige G3 owners have run into copying
a working OS X install from one drive or partition to
another.
I haven't tried it yet, but I have a reason to try is soon - my son
erased the IBM DeskStar drive in our beige G3, but we have another
copy on the Seagate Barracuda. One more project for the coming
week.
More on Beige G3 Memory, ROM Revisions, Western
Digital Hard Drives, and Mac OS X
Ron MacKinnon writes about his beige G3:
I have a beige G3 that wouldn't
even use 8-chip 256 MB DIMMs, let alone call it a different size.
That is, until I replaced the Rev. A ROM with a Rev. B version I
got off
eBay. Now, the 8-chip DIMM that wouldn't even be
recognized works just fine as 256 megs of RAM. I was actually after
the ability to install slave drives.
There appear to be lots of wrinkles in these darn computers. So,
I don't know the fine details on the memory controller, but that
ROM change fixed mine, so maybe it isn't the memory controller at
all but the ROM version. Or maybe my computer is just weird.
As for OS X in the beige G3, I'm not surprised someone couldn't
get OS X to work on a Western Digital drive. I tried and tried
to get OS X installed and working on my G3 and never succeeded
until I installed on the original Quantum drive. Then everything
went fine.
I was trying to use a Western Digital 20 GB 7200 rpm drive
(WD200BB). I partitioned it into 3 virtual drives of less than 8
gigs each. Then I booted from the CD and installed OS X. There
were a few wrinkles in the process, but nothing real bad. After the
install, though, I could never get it to boot from the WD drive.
Nothing I tried would get that thing to run. I'd get the q-mark
drive icon, I'd get kernel panics, I'd get all sorts of stuff. But
no boot.
The bottom line is that I never got it to work until I installed
OS X on the original 4 GB Quantum drive. It's been
running fine since. I've tried to do this on two different
occasions about a year apart, separated by the installation of the
"B" ROM, the first time with 10.1 and most recently with Jaguar. It
still doesn't work on the WD drive. But OS 9 installed and
booted just fine on that WD drive, all versions thru 9.2.2.
Oh - one last thing (where've we heard that before?); yours is
one of maybe four or five "don't miss" websites that I never fail
to visit every day. Great work.
Wow, you've had some adventures. Thanks for the information on
chip capacity and ROM revisions. I don't know if your findings are
unique - or if others might read them and find the solution to
their problem. I'm sure we'll get email from anyone it helps.
I don't know enough about IDE hard drives, let alone Western
Digital specifically, to know why you might be having problems with
a drive that works just fine with Mac OS 9. It's a long shot,
but you might try XPostFacto,
which I've heard solves installation problems on some beige
G3s.
iBook Questions
Christopher J. Rebel writes:
My apologies if I'm emailing the wrong person to answer these -
but maybe you could direct me to the proper email address for
questions?
- I have an iBook SE, 466
MHz FireWire. Can the graphics card be replaced in this to enable
Quartz Extreme? If so, which one?
- Apple states that the RAM con only be upgraded an additional
256 MB. Is it possible to go higher? What's the max?
- Finally, I have an old Performa
6200CD. Is there a way to upgrade the graphics capabilities on
this to allow thousands of color at 640 x 480 or higher? An LC PDS
card?
Thank you - my apologies for taking your time.
No, there is no graphics card in any laptop computer as far as
I know. At least in the case of Apple's portables, the video is
built into the motherboard, so there's no way to remove, replace,
or upgrade it.
Apple is conservative in their specifications and only states that
a computer will support as much memory as they have been able to
test in it prior to shipment. Because of this, Apple's stated
maximums never change even after there is clear-cut evidence that
the clamshell iBooks are apparently all able to accept a 512 MB
memory module, which would give you a total of 576 MB of RAM.
The old "Road Apple" 6200
has an LC PDS, so you could install a third-party video card. Not
many video cards were made for the LC slot since all of the
machines with an LC PDS already had onboard video. We have a short,
incomplete list in our Guide to LC
PDS Video Cards, which you may find helpful.
As for finding the cards, eBay is
probably your best bet.
Quartz Extreme and PCI Video Cards
In response to Radeon 7000 with
beige G3 and OS X, Adam Hope notes:
Although QE can be hacked to work on PCI Power Macs, it only
provides a modest speed gain, of around 1-2% in some very limited
areas, but performance actually decreases significantly in other
areas up to 15%. Enabling QE on an unsupported machine also causes
various graphical glitches throughout the OS. Unfortunately I don't
have the actual figures in front of me, but this was discussed
recently in the XLR8yourmac forums amongst others. Sometimes it
just isn't worth trying to prove your Mac can do everything a newer
one can!
That's exactly why I warn readers that they may not be happy
with their results and noted that PCI Extreme!
even comes with a utility to undo its modification. I don't think
any damage can be done to the hardware by trying this, but I have
heard that a lot of people why try the hack end up removing
it.
Mac Service Manuals
A couple readers emailed copies of the Quadra 840av Service
Manual. They and several others asked why I hadn't posted a link to
these manuals in Finding Older Apple
Manuals.
Well, there are several good reasons for it. The first is that
the writer was asking about the Quadra 840av User Manual, not the
Service Manual. I checked the usual sites; they all had the service
manual available in PDF format, but none had the owner's
manual.
The second is that Apple considers the service manuals
proprietary information, which goes beyond simply being copyright
protected. The service manuals - which are not hard to find on the
Web - are intended only for Apple certified technicians. Their use
by uncertified technicians or field users not familiar with Apple's
terminology and procedures nor subscribed to Apple's service
bulletins could lead to more trouble than it's worth. Instead of
fixing a problem, an untrained user could cause more damage.
The third reason is that Apple cannot be held liable for any
injury arising from the use of this material if it makes a good
faith effort to restrict access to authorized service personnel.
This keeps the lawyers happy.
The fourth reason I don't post links to Apple's manuals (or
allow members of my email lists to do so) is that while I recognize
that the clandestine availability of these is a great benefit to
the Macintosh community, I also realize that Apple must take steps
to keep this material from the public. By linking to these manuals
or even linking to a page with links to these manuals, I increase
the likelihood that the manuals will be moved, the links will
break, and those who know and love old Macs will lose access to a
wonderful resource.
Yes, I know where they are, and I can tell you how to find them
(Google), but going any
further than telling users that they should be able to find them
would work to the detriment of the Macintosh community in the long
run. As long as Apple has no reason to actively seek out the link
sites, we all benefit from the benign neglect surrounding these
helpful old service manuals.
Kanga Is Better Than I Thought
This past Monday I raised the question, Is the Original PowerBook G3 Too
Limited Today? In it I suggested that Mac OS 8.1 and Microsoft
Word 5.1 might be among the best to use on it. John Muenzberg
responds:
I read your analysis of the
original PowerBook G3 as a possible best buy, and I generally
agree that for someone shopping for a used PowerBook, this is
probably not the one to look for. But I think you are too
conservative in suggesting OS 8.1 and MS Word 5.1. There is no
reason this computer can not easily run OS 9.1 and Office 98, along
with current web browsers also. Even the memory requirements for OS
9.1 are well within range of this PowerBook.
I bet it could run Office 2001, too. Most PPC 603 and 604
PowerBooks can run Office 98 without problems. Heck, I used Word
5.1 on a Color Classic for
years. The fact that it can run OS 9.1 and Office 98 makes this
machine very compatible with all recent programs and word
processors and gives it more value. There is no reason to use a ten
year old word processor when Office 98 came out at the same time
the machine was sold.
I agree, for those shopping for a used PowerBook, the later G3
PowerBooks are better values. But the Kanga is more compatible with
current software than you suggest.
Thanks for the great columns.
As far as I'm concerned, Microsoft Word has been all downhill
since the 5.1a revision. Word 6 was a bloated nightmare with a
horrendous interface, and following versions worked to retain Word
as the most overpowered writing tool on the planet. Frankly, unless
I need style sheets (and I haven't since I got out of desktop
publishing), I use AppleWorks.
I don't care about file compatibility; I don't send files to
anyone. I do have Word 5.1a and some newer version on my computer.
I use them when someone submits a file in Word format and
AppleWorks can't translate it. That's all I use them for.
I'm sure that OS 9.x is great on a Kanga for those who have the
memory, but sites like ramseeker don't even track memory for this
machine, so I suspect it's getting hard to come by. I don't even
find it listed at Other
World Computing, which usually has a great selection of
upgrades for legacy Macs, so unless someone finds a Kanga with
sufficient memory, adding more could be difficult.
Because Kanga only shipped with 32 MB, took expensive memory back
then, and because the Mac OS had much lower hardware requirements
in those days, I think most users would find OS 8.1 about all
that's comfortable in a 32 MB system. With at least twice that, OS
9.1 would be fine. It's more a matter of memory than horsepower in
this case.
Longest Lived Mac?
Zack wonders:
I have been reading Low End Mac
for over a year now, and I hardly miss a day without visiting. I
was wondering if the (now discontinued) Teardrop iMacs would be
considered one "model" and therefore the longest lived Mac line
ever.
No. The original Bondi blue design was first sold on August 15,
1998. This model had a 66 MHz system bus, tray-loading CD-ROM, and
a cooling fan. The Revision D iMac was essentially the same machine
with a faster CPU and better video circuitry. It was discontinued
on October 5, 1999.
The Kihei series was launched on October 5, 1999 with 350 and 400
MHz models. For the entire run of this iMac series, which ended
this past week, these models had a 100 MHz system bus, slot-loading
drives (whether CD-ROM, DVD, CD-RW, or Combo), and no cooling fans.
There was also a motherboard revision with the February 2001 line
to accommodate the PowerPC 750CXe processor, a new version of the
G3 that had an onboard level 2 cache.
If we ignore that motherboard revision, the Kihei version of the
iMac was in production for 3 years and 5 months. With a product
life of 4 years, 10 months, the Mac Plus still beats it - the
original iMac only started shipping 4 years and 7 months ago.
Dan Knight has been publishing Low
End Mac since April 1997. Mailbag columns come from email responses to his Mac Musings, Mac Daniel, Online Tech Journal, and other columns on the site.
