The brand is ORICO, here's the link to that specific deal: https://www.newegg.com/orico-m200-128gb/p/2CR-000K-00004?Item=9SIA1DS9WA5540
I've used ORICO-branded drive enclosures before and they've been fine, but I had no idea they were in the SSD business. For the price it's probably worth the gamble.
Sorry about that. I meant to include the link in the original posting, but it looks like TDNC covered it.
I'm not sure why you would for a Cube, but if you want something larger, there's a KingSpec 1TB mSATA for ~$60 until 04/06: https://www.newegg.com/kingspec-1tb-msata-ssd/p/0D9-000D-00133?Item=9SIB1V8FMT6918
These kinds of deals make me wonder/speculate whether mSATA might be coming to an end, so I've had an eye out to stock up a bit.
It looks like most of the things for which there's an mSATA adapter, there's also a SATA M.2 adapter, except, perhaps, the PATA ZIF cable type connector used in some iPods and in the Dell D430 and a few other compact laptops of the time. Basically, the PATA connector was a Flat Flex Cable and connector. The kind where you insert the smooth, ~1" wide, blue/white striped cable and then flip the little black flap down or up. The connector was native on some 1.8" (spinny) hard drives.
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DRIVE
Right now, I am seriously thinking about buying that $10 mSATA 128GB drive from NewEgg and getting it shipped to my daughter since she will fly back to Japan at the end of April when her semester concludes.
ADAPTER
I found what appears to be the same mSATA to IDE adapter that @trag kindly mentioned, which has a Master/Slave jumper, and sells for less than $15 USD:
BRACKET
I would then need a mounting bracket. This one seems to be in a similar shape as the one used by @Paolo B:
Thoughts?
Now for those wanting to use 2.5" SATA SSDs, we would need to go back to the page-1 comments, and I remember the remarks from Alf...
The cheapest version of that same adapter @Alf Torp uses is found on Amazon Japan here...
But there is another one without any electrolytic caps on it, and the jumper might be Master/Slave but it's too hard to see...
Right now, I am seriously thinking about buying that $10 mSATA 128GB drive from NewEgg and getting it shipped to my daughter since she will fly back to Japan at the end of April when her semester concludes.
ADAPTER
I found what appears to be the same mSATA to IDE adapter that @trag kindly mentioned, which has a Master/Slave jumper, and sells for less than $15 USD:
BRACKET
I would then need a mounting bracket. This one seems to be in a similar shape as the one used by @Paolo B:
Thoughts?
Now for those wanting to use 2.5" SATA SSDs, we would need to go back to the page-1 comments, and I remember the remarks from Alf...
Just to confirm, Alf, you had varying performance by adapter?
The cheapest version of that same adapter @Alf Torp uses is found on Amazon Japan here...
But there is another one without any electrolytic caps on it, and the jumper might be Master/Slave but it's too hard to see...
@JDW The adapter I use has of course the possibility to select master or slave configuration.
As for the SSD, I just bought the cheapest one I could find on the spot on yahoo auctions, can’t remember, but for sure less than 2k yen including shipment.
Concerning the mounting bracket, get ready to make some small adaptation such as drilling some additional holes for fastening the heat sink, as I’m pretty sure the default orientation of the unit will not be compatible with the fixed position of the connectors.
As for the SSD, I just bought the cheapest one I could find on the spot on yahoo auctions, can’t remember, but for sure less than 2k yen including shipment.
Concerning the mounting bracket, get ready to make some small adaptation such as drilling some additional holes for fastening the heat sink, as I’m pretty sure the default orientation of the unit will not be compatible with the fixed position of the connectors.
My daughter arrived home from college this week and brought me my 128GB SSD ($12 from NewEgg in the US, but now out of stock). I also purchased the two recommended adapters. The photos below show the 12GB SSD installed into the 2.5" IDE drive adapter, which is much cheaper (thankfully) on Amazon Japan than the same adapter on Amazon USA.
QUESTION: Should I set it to Master or Slave or CS?Sadly, the pin pitch of the 2.5" IDE Adapter is NOT COMPATIBLE with a regular IDE cable! I guess 2.5" spinning IDE drives have this smaller pin pitch. That means I need to buy yet another adapter to convert the pin pitch to match that of a normal 3.5" IDE drive. One such adapter, which also includes a standard 3.5" drive power connector, is found on Amazon Japan this...
Once I have that 44-pin female to 40-pin male adapter, assuming it works
, I will connect everything to yet another adapter I have which allows me to attach 3.5" IDE hard drives to Macs via FireWire. That should allow me to clone my G4 Cube's internal spinner drive's contents to the SSD. After that, I can try to boot from the SSD to ensure it works, and then install it inside the Cube.
Yeah. In the PC world, the first IDE drive, the start-up volume, is usually set as the master, while the other drives are slaves.
HOWEVER, I did some research and learned that the internal IDE hard drive in the G4 Cube should be set as a slave IF the optical drive is hard-wired as master. Check this out.
And, @JDW, I see that the jumper settings are "C" or "S." If "C" indicates cable select and the optical drive is set as cable select, then use that and let Apple's firmware in the Cube handle the rest.
HOWEVER, I did some research and learned that the internal IDE hard drive in the G4 Cube should be set as a slave IF the optical drive is hard-wired as master. Check this out.
And, @JDW, I see that the jumper settings are "C" or "S." If "C" indicates cable select and the optical drive is set as cable select, then use that and let Apple's firmware in the Cube handle the rest.
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Whatever is the stock G4 Cube IDE configuration of the optical drive is what it is still set as today. I never changed it. In fact, can you even change it? Is it visible somewhere on the drive itself? (My Cubes are at the office and this is a holiday week, so I can't check that until next Monday.)
If I remember correctly, there’s a jumper in the optical drive, too
According to Apple, there is a switch to set the optical drive to Master or Slave.
On page 9 of the Apple Power Mac G4 Cube Optical Drive Replacement Instructions, Apple says to set the stock optical drive to slave.
So, the stock configuration of the optical drive is set to Slave. @JDW, the new IDE adapter should be set to Master by removing the jumper. See the bottom of the IIDE-MSAT Quick Installation Guide:
I noticed two Amazon customers bought that particular adapter for the G4 Powerbooks and removed the jumper to work.
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GOOD NEWSMy Adapter setup works with the 128GB mSATA SSD as an external FW400 drive.
- mSATA to 2.5" IDE Adapter (red PCB below)
- 2.5" IDE to 3.5" IDE Adapter (green PCB below)
- IDE to FW400 interface (gutted years ago from an old ext. FW drive, and confirmed working with my spinner IDE drives)
- FW400 to FW800 adapter
- FW800 to ThunderBolt Adapter (Apple branded, and confirmed to work with my modern iMac's Time Machine drive)
All jumpers are removed so the drive operates as MASTER.
I was able to mount the SSD in MacOS Mojave's Disk Utility, connected to my late-2015 27" 5K iMac via FW400 to FW800 Adapter connected to FW800 to ThunderBolt Adapter. I was able to format it MacOS Extended Journaled with Apple Partition Map (GUID is only for Intel Macs). It says 127.67GB available. (Why did I format it on my modern Intel iMac instead of my G4 Cube? Because it wouldn't mount in OS X Tiger on my G4 Cube. See below.)
MORE GOOD NEWSIf I connect it to my G4 Cube and boot into OS 9, the drive appears on the Desktop. Intech Hard Disk Speed Tools also sees it just fine.
(As you may expect, it plugs directly in with the FW400 cable. No need for FW800 or TB adapters.)
BAD NEWS 
If I then boot into OS X Tiger 10.4.11, Disk Utility cannot see it, TechTool Pro 4 cannot see it, Carbon Copy Cloner 3.2 cannot see it, and Finder windows don't show it. If one argues Tiger can't see it because I formatted it on my Intel iMac, how then can OS 9 see it?
After rebooting into OS 9, it threw an unrecognized disk dialog at me, so I allowed OS 9 to initialize the SSD, and then it mounted fine. It was after that I made the screen photo above. But when I then rebooted into Tiger, Tiger still cannot see the drive! Ack!
What must I do so that OS X Tiger can see it?
@JDW, did you partition?
In my case, my 128 GB SSD is partitioned into two equal 64 GB volumes. After holding down option the key at boot up, I can choose which OS (OS X Tiger 10.4 or MacOS 9.2.2) at the boot picker screen on my Mac Mini G4.
Both Tiger and 9 will see and mount both partitions on the desktop. By the way, I still have not worked on my iBook G4 for a similar setup.
Check this out: iPartition by Coriolis Systems over at the Macintosh Garden.
You can adjust partition sizes, too.
In my case, my 128 GB SSD is partitioned into two equal 64 GB volumes. After holding down option the key at boot up, I can choose which OS (OS X Tiger 10.4 or MacOS 9.2.2) at the boot picker screen on my Mac Mini G4.
Both Tiger and 9 will see and mount both partitions on the desktop. By the way, I still have not worked on my iBook G4 for a similar setup.
Check this out: iPartition by Coriolis Systems over at the Macintosh Garden.
You can adjust partition sizes, too.
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I know this is not particularly helpful, but that is some impressive adapter shenanigans right there. Congrats on os9 and best of luck with Tiger.
I did not partition.
iPartition is OS X software. When I launch iPartition in Tiger, it cannot see the SSD.
Nothing within Tiger sees the SSD. That is the issue which I don't know how to solve.
OS 9 sees the SSD, however. I am confused about why.
Assuming the drive even works as an internal unit, which I've not tested yet, I suppose it could become an OS 9 ONLY machine since only OS9 can see the SSD. But I prefer to run OS X Tiger with my Cubes too.I know this is not particularly helpful, but that is some impressive adapter shenanigans right there. Congrats on os9 and best of luck with Tiger.
Unfortunately, I've spent a lot of time on this, and I really don't know what to do to make Tiger see the SSD. Makes zero sense to me why OS 9 on the Cube can see the SSD (as an externally attached FW400 drive) while OS X Tiger cannot. I am further confounded by the fact that my modern 2015 27" 5K iMac running Mojave can see the SSD through all those adapters, while Tiger on the Cube cannot even with fewer adapters!
I am going to shelve the project for now. If someone comes along with some good ideas, I can give those ideas a try to see what happens. I must admit thought that it is quite frustrating. I've read stories of other people getting SSDs to work in their Cubes. But as is usually the case, I am the odd man out and can't get it to work.
The drivers and kernel differences between Tiger and Mojave may be pretty much "light years" apart.
Try the IDE adapter with the SSD directly to IDE inside the Cube.
Try the IDE adapter with the SSD directly to IDE inside the Cube.
I can try that, but I didn't do it yet because, logically, it makes the most sense to CLONE my internal SPINNER drive contents to the SSD, then put the SSD inside and use it. Sadly, because I cannot get Tiger to see it, I cannot use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone my internal drive to the SSD.
Not sure why it would work on the internal bus (which is nothing other than speculation at this point) and not on the FireWire bus, especially since it does work on the FireWire bus with OS 9 on the same machine, not to mention also with my 5K iMac too. My guess is that even when connected internally, what I see externally will be true.
I'll have to try the internal connection test later tonight after work, assuming I have time then.
Not sure why it would work on the internal bus (which is nothing other than speculation at this point) and not on the FireWire bus, especially since it does work on the FireWire bus with OS 9 on the same machine, not to mention also with my 5K iMac too. My guess is that even when connected internally, what I see externally will be true.
I'll have to try the internal connection test later tonight after work, assuming I have time then.