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iMac G3 DV Compact Flash Hard Drive upgrade

macnerd93

macnerd93

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Nov 28, 2009
712
192
United Kingdom
Given that the iMac G3 should be a pretty quiet computer given that its fanless and convection cooled the hard drive noise in mine is actually annoying me quite a bit tbh.

I upgraded the drive a good few years back to an 80GB 7200RPM IDE . It works fine performance wise, but can’t help but think an IDE to compact flash adapter might be the way to go instead?

I was thinking of buying either a 32GB or 64Gb CF card and one of the IDE to compact flash adapters and install it in place of the hard drive. It is my understanding that compact flash and IDE have the exact same pin protocol and are interchangeable so should work without much issue.

I just wondered if anyone had done such a mod before and if there were any tips? I'm fairly competent (build my own PC's and stuff) but unsure if I need to look for a specific adapter or CF card to guarantee compatibility in such an old system.

I know older operating systems like OS 9 have no TRIM support and stuff either, so wondering if this is anything to be worried about.
 
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macnerd93 said:
Given that the iMac G3 should be a pretty quiet computer given that its fanless and convection cooled the hard drive noise in mine is actually annoying me quite a bit tbh.

I upgraded the drive a good few years back to an 80GB 7200RPM IDE . It works fine performance wise, but can’t help but think an IDE to compact flash adapter might be the way to go instead?

I was thinking of buying either a 32GB or 64Gb CF card and one of the IDE to compact flash adapters and install it in place of the hard drive. It is my understanding that compact flash and IDE have the exact same pin protocol and are interchangeable so should work without much issue.

I just wondered if anyone had done such a mod before and if there were any tips? I'm fairly competent (build my own PC's and stuff) but unsure if I need to look for a specific adapter or CF card to guarantee compatibility in such an old system.

I know older operating systems like OS 9 have no TRIM support and stuff either, so wondering if this is anything to be worried about.
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It should be possible. Don't recall which thread, but there was someone here who was running a G4 PowerMac off a CF card.

Your concern is going to be longetivity. CF cards aren't designed or optimized for persistent read/writes and a computer is reading/writing all the time. I'm not sure these cards have GC either. Maybe someone else can speak to that.

That aside, I will say that I miss hard drive noise. Back when I had my first PC in 1990 (a homebuilt 286), being able to hear the hard drive working told you if stuff was happening. Particularly when installing games or apps you never knew if the computer had stalled or not - unless you could hear the hard drive.

I also miss the white noise.
 
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r6mile said:
Why don't you get an SSD (128GB ones go for 15-20 bucks), and then get a SATA-IDE adapter (5 bucks or so)? Both are very easy to find and probably cheaper than the CF-IDE route, and might perform better.
Click to expand...

Heard about a lot of compatibility issues regarding the SATA to IDE adapters in old Macs to be honest. IDE and compact flash are meant to have the same pinout. Hence why it is meant to be much easier to get them working in an old machine.

Adapters to alter the CF connector to a full-size IDE are also extremely cheap as well only around £10 or so. A 32GB CF card is around £26.

The performance of a good quality modern Compact Flash card is also far greater than the iMac's internal IDE bus so I don't think performance would be much of an issue either. Long term is more of a worry and what I am thinking though.

I've just got no idea which one to go for, (so many choices and options) wondered if anyone else had done it to there machine.

I'm taking my iMac apart over the coming weeks as I am going to be replacing the speakers, ordered some replacments from Ali express to replace the rotted ones. So will probably do some kind of flash storage upgrade then.
 
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eyoungren said:
That aside, I will say that I miss hard drive noise. Back when I had my first PC in 1990 (a homebuilt 286), being able to hear the hard drive working told you if stuff was happening. Particularly when installing games or apps you never knew if the computer had stalled or not - unless you could hear the hard drive.

I also miss the white noise.
Click to expand...

I still experience HDD noise with several external drives, a PC desktop and my 2011 MBP - which during quiet moments is particularly noticeable. :D

macnerd93 said:
Heard about a lot of compatibility issues regarding the SATA to IDE adapters in old Macs to be honest. IDE and compact flash are meant to have the same pinout. Hence why it is meant to be much easier to get working.

Adapters to alter the CF connector to a full-size IDE are also extremely cheap as well only around £10.
Click to expand...

I agree with @r6mile, an SSD and a SATA to IDE adapter is the best choice for price and performance in this scenario. I've paid £5 each for my SATA to IDE adapters that use the Marvell 88SA8052 chipset and one of them is working with an SSD in my iMac G3 without any problems whatsoever. :)
 
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As an unrelated sidenote, while PATA in computers tops out at 133 MB/s (UDMA-6), UDMA-7 (max 167 MB/s) was introduced just for CF cards. Not that our Macs can take advantage of that...
 
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Than
TheShortTimer said:
I still experience HDD noise with several external drives, a PC desktop and my 2011 MBP - which during quiet moments is particularly noticeable. :D



I agree with @r6mile, an SSD and a SATA to IDE adapter is the best choice for price and performance in this scenario. I've paid £5 each for my SATA to IDE adapters that use the Marvell 88SA8052 chipset and one of them is working with an SSD in my iMac G3 without any problems whatsoever. :)
Click to expand...

Thanks very much I think I'll look out for a 60GB or 80GB SSD and SATA adapter then I guess
 
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TheShortTimer said:
You're welcome. :)

Personally, I'd wouldn't bother with 60GB or 80GB when you can buy a 120GB SSD for less than £17, including delivery.
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Yeah, "go big or go home" :D - I'd also go for a 120GB or even 250GB SSD. Nice to have enough space to store old games/software from the garden, have dual-boot os9/Tiger and a bunch of music ...

Here's more information about SATA-IDE-adapters, that will work: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/imac-g3-with-sata-ide-adapter-doesnt-boot-into-mac-os9.2135561/

A few weeks ago someone here in the PPC-forum mentioned the option to remove the SSD-brick from the SATA-SSD-case and put that into as special IDE-adapter. All together a much smaller solution and easier to fit in.
 
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macnerd93 said:
I'm taking my iMac apart over the coming weeks as I am going to be replacing the speakers, ordered some replacments from Ali express to replace the rotted ones. So will probably do some kind of flash storage upgrade then.
Click to expand...
There's another thread about replacing the foam-rotten speakers and some suggestions, how to re-use the magnetic-child of the old speakers (which I unfortunately didn't do ...)

Just follow posting #14 to find out more.

(Merits go to those unnamed fellow PPC-forum members, who contributed the original ideas somewhere else in this forum ...)
 
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Amethyst1 said:
According to EveryMac, the iMac G3 can only deal with 128 GB disks. That's still loads of space. :)
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Won't you just need another PPC Mac in order to partition disks larger than 128GB (with the first partition not bigger than 128GB) before fitting in the disk?
240GB SSD nearly come at the same price as lower size drives.

@Amethyst1 is it this site about 128GB drive limitation, you've cited? Unfortunately it doesn't say anything about >128GB drives with partitions smaller than 128GB - so to avoid any hassle, going for an SSD smaller than 128SSD might be more on the save side.
That page also mentions the option to boot the iMacG3 through FireWire from an external drive. I can confirm, that an external FireWire-drive (e.g. those from LaCie) as well as an external FireWire-OpticalDrive do really come in handy in a lot of situations.
 
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Ordered an adapter and SSD, but it unfortunately didn’t work, results in erratic behaviour. Had a nightmare to be honest.

I’ve ordered another adapter this time with a red circuit board, but if this doesn’t work I’m going the compact flash route.

I Originally ordered this green one as it has the slave/master jumpers on the left-hand side which are needed for the iMac apparently. When installed and set to master the iMac kernel panicked within about 10 seconds of trying to read the Mac OS X install disk.

I Switched the jumper over to Slave option and the install CD booted all the way through, but the new SSD did not show up at all in Mac OS X disk utility or the OS 9 equivalent.

when attempting to load the machine into Target Disc mode the iMac just switches itself off within ten seconds.

I also connected a mechanical SATA hard drive just to make sure power was getting to the adapter properly and I can confirm the two mechanical hard disks I tried did spin up but they still wasn't detected either within disk utility or the install screen.

I have made sure everything is pressed in properly and nice and firm, putting in the old 3.5 inch IDE HDD the iMac boots right away and no issues at all.

so far a rather disappointing experience.
 

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macnerd93 said:
Ordered an adapter and SSD, but it unfortunately didn’t work, results in erratic behaviour. Had a nightmare to be honest.

I’ve ordered another adapter this time with a red circuit board, but if this doesn’t work I’m going the compact flash route.
Click to expand...

How did it go? Did the adapter with red circuit board work this time?
 
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