New member here needing a ton of help with a few G4's

[arkieboy72472]

Where can I find a good IDE optical drive or two for a MDD G4? Is ebay my only option? I want to be able to read and write CDs and DVDs. One site trying to sell me a SATA drive said that once connected with an adapter, the drive loses writing capabilities.

 

[foxlet]

Where can I find a good IDE optical drive or two for a MDD G4? Is ebay my only option? I want to be able to read and write CDs and DVDs. One site trying to sell me a SATA drive said that once connected with an adapter, the drive loses writing capabilities.

I have stacks of IDE Optical Drives, mainly used for these older PowerPC machines, although I've found that USB internal adapters also work as a last resort. Anyways, the only model I could find in stock from a short search is the HP 630i on Amazon.

 

[Cox Orange]

Compare the ATA features at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA#Features_introduced_with_each_ATA_revision

With ATA/100 the 48-bit LBA compliance was introduced. I think that is the first ATA revision capable of more than 128 GiB. Therefore I believe the ATA/66 controller will have a limit of 128 GiB. With these two different ATA versions on board it makes that G4 support drives larger than 128 GiB, what the everymac site states, but IMHO not on both controllers. Nevertheless, the 120 GB should work on both controllers.

The same wikipedia article explained the limitation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA#Interface_size_limitations
EDIT: There are Open Firmware hacks and special drivers to get 48-bit addressing for older ATA versions:
https://nanchatte.wordpress.com/200...dd-lba48-support-on-the-g4-cube-with-leopard/

Yes, but the article also says:
"We have tested the following Macs and they can see hard drives of up to 500GB within Mac OS 9.2.2: Power Mac G4 QuickSilver 733, 800, Dual 800, 867, 933, and Dual 1 GHz with logic board 820-1342-B (QS logic board 820-1276-A will NOT work and peak out at 128 GB), and all Power Mac G4 MDD models are a go (except for the FW800 models since they will NOT boot to OS 9 directly)."

I wonder, if they refer to what you were saying, that ONE of the TWO controllers will see the drives larger than 128GB. I don't have an MDD here, so I can't test it for us.

 

[organicCPU]

I don't have an MDD here, so I can't test it for us.

Neither me. First, I was thinking of a hardware limitation of ATA/66 in 48-bit addressing, but then I discovered the Open Firmware hack for Mac OS X and the drivers for Mac OS 9 that can make ATA-5 controllers see drives larger than 128 GiB. So you could be absolutely right, that both controllers do have native support for larger drives!

 

[Cox Orange]

Ah, ok now I understand. I didn't connect the Firmware thing to the HW as contradicting the HW as the reason.

 

[bebo94]

he should get one with a NEC chipset then. They work the best. When buying, mind they don't have to be advertised as "Mac" cards, PC-cards work as well.

If he wants SATA ports, every card with a Silicon Image SIL3124 (and SIL3132) chip will work. PCI-X is preferred (max. 65MB/s throughput) over PCI (35MB/s throuput). Drivers need to be installed from here http://www.drivers-download.com/en/downloadlist.php?id=72 - No flashing needed. Drives will only work as storage, no boot capability. For Boot capability you will need to flash a Mac firmware by Seritek/Firmtek/Sonnet to them (not the system firmware!). Cards can sometimes be found for 10,-USD.
[doublepost=1494622998][/doublepost]

The old apple knowledge base article and download has gone. Here is an alternative source https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/10773/apple-g4-firmware-updater-x
But you might want to first click on the apple (left corner), "about this Mac" -> "more info", if your's already has 4.4.8

So I have a PowerPC 466 Digital Audio and I picked up two of the PCI-X SIL 3124 SATA cards. It installed and I "thought" I had the correct drivers for it, but the machine hard crashes every now and then and then refuses to boot even though it's booting from original IDE drives. As soon as I remove the card from the board the Mac will boot.

So I'm thinking I don't have the correct driver and I see the link above no longer works. Does anyone know where I can get this driver? I "thought" that I wouldn't need to flash this card as long as I was not trying to boot from it. I bought two cards so I'd have a spare but would like to make sure I have the best driver in place first.

 

[weckart]

So I'm thinking I don't have the correct driver and I see the link above no longer works. Does anyone know where I can get this driver? I "thought" that I wouldn't need to flash this card as long as I was not trying to boot from it. I bought two cards so I'd have a spare but would like to make sure I have the best driver in place first.

A bit of searching through archive.org suggests that this package is the one previously linked to. It is hosted on a few different sites

SiI3124_2.1.4.0_Sil_Pkg.zip

 

[bebo94]

Thanks. Weckart.

So sadly that appears to be the same version of driver that I already had installed before having these problems.

So I also had drivers for SIL3124 Raid and Non-raid options. I installed both figuring it would give me options. But do you think I should have only the non-raid installed?

Also I may have a problem on the card or with the motherboard entirely. I had the power supply rebuilt by that guy on Ebay that rebuilds G4 power supplies. It's possible the motherboard took some damage while the power supply was going out.

 

[weckart]

You're basically in troubleshooting territory. The slow but systematic way is to isolate and remove all possible causes and reintroduce them one by one until you get the error. It may be a driver, in which case remove all or a combination of hardware components. You can run the Apple Systems Diagnostic disc for your hardware, which will highlight any clear Logic Board problems but even that is not 100% guaranteed to detect every issue.

https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/apple-mactest-pro