Newbie question for a G4 (Power Mac G4 hard drive)

[gf0012-aust]

I've got a PowerMac G4 Graphite that doesn't recognise the hard drive at start up.

the hard drive is ok as I have tried it in another machine, I also was able to read, write and format the drive.

when I start up with the Max X OS system disk, all I get is a display of the CDrom, the hard drive doesn't appear.

bearing in mind that the drive is OK, are there any other suggestins as to what if could be? (the computer starts up with full graphics etc... when starting from CD - just doesn't go anywhere after that) Without a start up CD all I get is the old blinking Q mark classic mac icon.

any help appreciated.

 

[madmax_2069]

do u got it hooked to the right ide chain on the cable and do u have the right jumper setting on the hdd for where on the ide cable u are putting it on.if the jumper on the hdd is set to slave and its on the master part of the ide cable it wont see it and visa versa. or it could be a bad ide cable or even worse a bad logic board but dont go that far till u have tested all posibilitys out.have u tryed to reset the pram,i dunno how much i left out to go threw but i would do all that first and hope someone else that knows more than me make sugustions.like i say 2 or more minds are better than one.

 

[GimmeSlack12]

I agree on what MadMaxs said. It appears that the HD is not set to master. The HD should have a little label on it that tells how to set Master/Slave.

 

[gf0012-aust]

No, the drive is set to master, and it is the only one on the chain.

 

[Mechcozmo]

Hold Option on startup. Wait to see if the hard drive shows up. You did install OS X onto it, right? If so, it will show up... just wait.

 

[gf0012-aust]

Hold Option on startup. Wait to see if the hard drive shows up. You did install OS X onto it, right? If so, it will show up... just wait.

mate, I waited a good 15 minutes! Its a re-init of the drive, I was trying to install OS X onto it - the system fails to see the HDD - and thus I'm going nowhere in a hurry!

 

[gf0012-aust]

right, well I've done the following tests:

1) zapped the PRAM - no change
2) removed zip drive from chain and connected HDD as slave to CD - no change
3) changed cables - no change
4) connected rounded ATA cable to HDD IDE port and connected it to the CDRom to test port stability - CDrom recognised and Installer disk works - so the HDD port is not at risk
5) tested HDD on other machines (PC's though) and it's recognised and can be written to. SO HDD is stable on other machines but not appearing on this Mobo.

That seems to me to indicate that the HDD doesn't work on this unit and that the mobo is stable (tests 2,3,4)

So, apart from getting another HDD, can someone reccommend an IDE RAID controller that has MAC drivers, or a PCI IDE/EIDE controller with Mac drivers.

Conversely, does anyone know of a cheap (I'm broke) Ultrawide SCSI controller with Mac drivers that I can use on this Mac? I've got a stack of SCSI UW drives which I can use in the interim.

Does anyone know of the onboard memory upper limit on the this model G4? and is there a hard drive capacity limit in the BIOS?

I've got no idea about Macs, but I'm determined to bring this one back from the dead!

 

[wordmunger]

Does your system CD have disk utility on it? You may be able to reformat the HD using that and then install the OS.

 

[gf0012-aust]

Does your system CD have disk utility on it? You may be able to reformat the HD using that and then install the OS.

Yes it does, but the basic problem is that the HDD is not appearing at all. It only sees the CDROM and zip drive.

 

[jeremy.king]

You sure your IDE cable is good and fully seated? What about the power cable?

 

[G5power]

You might try setting the hard drive jumper to Cable Select.

Also I'm not familar with the Zip drives, but does it have any kind of jumper settings that you can check to use as a reference point?

 

[madmax_2069]

ok it sounds like a logic board ide controller failure.
i still would run some test's first to make shure it is that problem cause it would just be a waist of money to buy this and be able to get the other hdd working on the onboard ide controller but dont hold your breath it could be as simply as it being formated in fat32 or ntfs is the problem if there is a way to format the drive into the mac standard format i dunno what its called but id try to do that first if at all posable. if it still wont see it then u will have no other choice than to buy and install this

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempo_ata133.html

its a ide/ata 133 controller that u put into the pci slot to add another ide bus to it if the onboard ide controller is gone with the wind u just might need this

if u want to find somthing cheap look on ebay. but just to warn you stuff for mac is 2x more than a pc. i know cause looking for parts for this G3 AIO in my sig. or try google and seartch for it.

 

[wordmunger]

ok it sounds like a logic board ide controller failure.
i still would run some test's first to make shure it is that problem cause it would just be a waist of money to buy this and be able to get the other hdd working on the onboard ide controller but dont hold your breath it could be as simply as it being formated in fat32 or ntfs is the problem if there is a way to format the drive into the mac standard format i dunno what its called but id try to do that first if at all posable. if it still wont see it then u will have no other choice than to buy and install this

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempo_ata133.html

its a ide/ata 133 controller that u put into the pci slot to add another ide bus to it if the onboard ide controller is gone with the wind u just might need this

Well, if it's going to cost $100 to fix, why not just get an external HD?

 

[madmax_2069]

yea that was just an example of what u need but u can look for referbs or used ones for alot cheaper. do you got an external hdd to use thats in the mac format if the drive is not in the mac format it wont work if not wow are they expensive. and look again at my post above i edited it to add more to it. but u can find prety much anything on e-bay or google but another word of warning make shure they support macintosh and they got the extentions for mac = drivers for pc but are the same thing. damn i cant remember the hdd format name for mac i know the pc format its fat32 or ntfs but yea id cheak to see if u can format the hdd into somthing the mac can read cause that is the only other thing i can think of why its not working

 

[mchendricks]

HD Size?

What is the size of the HD and which model computer are you using? If you are putting in a large hard drive on an older G4, then the computer may not be able to recognize it. For example, a first generation G4 desktop (Sawtooth?) may not be able to recognize a 300GB HD due to the ATA-33 interface. The disk might need to be partitioned into smaller sizes to be usable.

Hope this helps,
Mike

 

[madmax_2069]

lol i know this G3 AIO can hold a 100+ i think its max it can hold is 123 gig hdd or somthing very close and since his is newer it should hold the same size cause i do got a 80 gig hdd in this older rev b gossimer G3 all-in-one i am thinking that if it came out of a pc u might need to find a way to re format from a fat32 or ntfs into the mac standard now that could be the reason it wont see.also im am leaning torwards that the onboard ide might not be working right

 

[Mord]

switch the HD ata cable with the cd and zip ata cable as the cd drive works to see if that IDE channel is dead, if it is then just run the HD in the zip bay, it works fine contary to what most think.

3,000th post w00t w00t

 

[Lord Blackadder]

What is the brand and model of the drive?

Honestly, the cheapest way to solve your problem is to buy a cheap new or refurbished ATA hard drive - it will cost less than getting a PCI card to handle your SCSI drives.

If the CDROM and Zip are working I should assume that your onboard ATA is functioning OK, though I can't explain why the drive works fine on a PC and not the Mac.

BTW, I belive the largest HD that the onboard ATA bus will recognize is 136GB. Any bigger and it won't see the extra space - you'll need a PCI ATA controller. Personally I went around the problem by getting a SATA controller and a 250GB drive.

EDIT: Hector has a point: are you sure that both ATA channels are working? the one connected to the HD may have a problem, even though the other is fine. If that's the case you may be able to get a cable with three connectors and run the HD, CD-ROM and Zip off one channel (anybody wan to confirm this? I've never tried it).

Good luck.

 

[madmax_2069]

i think the ide is limited to only 2 devices per cable or channel if im not mistaken i could be thinking of the older way's of ide. yea thats the easiest way to find out if a ide channel is blown out. if the cd is working on the hdd cable then it has to be cause its formated in the pc format like fat32 or ntfs or the hdd is just not compatable ive seen ide controllers do weird things like work on some things but not work on others and ive seen chanels blow out compleatly where one side still works but the other side is trashed. now if the cd does work on the other channel then what is the problem. if it works in a pc then it has to be either a screwie ide channel or the hdd is not in the macintosh format

 

[Mechcozmo]

What is the size of the HD and which model computer are you using? If you are putting in a large hard drive on an older G4, then the computer may not be able to recognize it. For example, a first generation G4 desktop (Sawtooth?) may not be able to recognize a 300GB HD due to the ATA-33 interface. The disk might need to be partitioned into smaller sizes to be usable.

Hope this helps,
Mike

Semi correct. You would only see the first 128GiB of it, but the rest is there. And that is due to the chipset, happens on ATA-33/66/100/133... but that was 'fixed' in the Quicksilver era.

 

[Mord]

you can get around it with a software patch from owc.

 

[gf0012-aust]

What is the brand and model of the drive?

Its the std 20gig Quantum Fireball Plus KX

Honestly, the cheapest way to solve your problem is to buy a cheap new or refurbished ATA hard drive - it will cost less than getting a PCI card to handle your SCSI drives.

Ahhh, but its the technical principle at stake here! I'm determined to track down the fault as far as possible

EDIT: Hector has a point: are you sure that both ATA channels are working? the one connected to the HD may have a problem, even though the other is fine. If that's the case you may be able to get a cable with three connectors and run the HD, CD-ROM and Zip off one channel (anybody wan to confirm this? I've never tried it).

Good luck.

No, I've done that test earlier. I booted the install CD from the IDE mobo port. I just redirected the cable. I've also done it with a rounded EIDE cable as a secondary test.

It's driving me bananas...

 

[Mord]

i'd get a new HD those quantum fireball HD's are junk they are very very noisy and unreliable.