Help Please - I've confused my Beige G3 trying to setup SATA

[ComputerCompulsive]

Hello,
So having watched Action Retro Shenanigans with SATA cards in Beige Macs I recently decided picked up a SATA controller card off ebay for use in my G3 minitower. I plugged the card into the tower and added a SSD, booted into MAC OS 9.2.2 and could see the drive no issue. I initialized the drive and separated it into 4 partitions with the first partition being about 7GB for a MAC OS 9.2.2 installation. I then removed the IDE drive from the tower and proceeded to install MAC OS to the new SSD. Unfortunately this is where the problems began.

For a start I was unable to boot the new drive up, oh it would start to boot up but then it would always end up with a System Error 11 and say it needed to restart. Upon restarting I would go into the utilities and verify the partition with MAC OS on it only for it to tell me MountCheck found Serious errors with Volume Bit Map and Volume Header. I tried multiple SSDs and even an old Spinning Disk but they all had this issue. When I contacted the vendor he suggested doing a Mac OS 10.3 install rather than a 9.2.2 directly and install Classic Mac later.

So I burned a Mac OS 10.3 disc and popped it into my G3 Beige Mac (768MB of Ram, 32MB video Card, and 400Mhz processor) but the installer never launched. The Apple logo popped up but it just had the spinner going on and on forever. So, feed up, I powered off the machine and consulted the forums for more information on the SATA card. I found the thread here on Tinker Different stating that these cards can be pretty finicky and decided I should just revert to my IDE drive for now until such time that I can diagnose the issue more.

So I pulled the card out, put the original IDE drive back in and now on startup I get a message "Can't OPEN" repeated over and over again on the screen. Eventually Mac OS 9.22. launches but it takes a while before I get to that point. I tried tossing in a 9.2.2 Install disc while the "Can't OPEN" message repeats and I get a "No bootable HFS Partition found". If I toss the 10.3 CD back in it goes back to the apple logo and spinner again....

Not sure what to do at this point, Should I zap the pram with the button on the logic board? (Do you take the battery out when you do this?) Or is there something else I need to do to get my system back to normal. I've really been enjoying this G3 so any help getting it back to normal would be appreciated

 

[VicNor]

Fascinating problems. I got a SATA card coming soon for my G3, so I'm following this with great interest.

Also, I believe that OS X 10.2.8 is the latest version that the Beige G3 will accept without any XPostFacto mods due to Open Firmware limitations. Installing OS X on these machines seems to require IDE drive set to Master and an Apple IDE CD-ROM set to Master. If you can't fullfill these requirements, you can always image your drive and install your OS onto the drive in an emulator like QEMU (which emulated the IDE bus as well). Not sure how that helps you since SATA is seen as SCSI by OS 9.

Whenever I got issues booting I go into Open Firmware and type bye which makes the machine boot into OS 9. Then, when I've booted into OS 9 I make sure to set Startup disk - or I have to go into Open Firmware next time I start the machine. Also, HFS+ partitions seems fairly easy to mess up. My Jaguar partition is beyond repair after the computer froze.

 

[ComputerCompulsive]

Fascinating problems. I got a SATA card coming soon for my G3, so I'm following this with great interest.

Also, I believe that OS X 10.2.8 is the latest version that the Beige G3 will accept without any XPostFacto mods due to Open Firmware limitations. Installing OS X on these machines seems to require IDE drive set to Master and an Apple IDE CD-ROM set to Master. If you can't fullfill these requirements, you can always image your drive and install your OS onto the drive in an emulator like QEMU (which emulated the IDE bus as well). Not sure how that helps you since SATA is seen as SCSI by OS 9.

Whenever I got issues booting I go into Open Firmware and type bye which makes the machine boot into OS 9. Then, when I've booted into OS 9 I make sure to set Startup disk - or I have to go into Open Firmware next time I start the machine. Also, HFS+ partitions seems fairly easy to mess up. My Jaguar partition is beyond repair after the computer froze.

Yes I wasn't sure if 10.3 was supported or not so I figured it would tell me on the screen if it wasn't compatible. Instead it just sort of hung there at the Apple logo with the spinner going on and on forever.

I managed to resolve the "Can't OPEN" error with CMD + OPT + P + R holding it down until the machine chimed three times. Now it's acting perfectly normal again using IDE only.

I might try the SATA drive again with XPostFacto and 10.3 but first I might look into the drive image option you mentioned and see about installing 9.2.2 to an image, writing that back to the drive and see what it does. I was able to copy my games directory to the drive when it was connected in tandem with the IDE drive so it seems like the card "works" but for whatever reason I cannot get a normal installation to work on the SSD.

On the other Forum thread they suggested that if you have a "mostly working" card it might be fixable with some resoldering. I took a quick look but honestly I don't see any bad solder joints.

 

[ComputerCompulsive]

In speaking with the seller he informed me that he has a note in the listing about "Some Beige G3's with different revisions may need older firmware at this adaptor"

Unfortunately I did not see this note at the time of purchase or I would have asked if my 820-0991-A board is "one of the revisions" that requires the older firmware. Now I'll just have to see if I can do an exchange sigh...

He did offer to walk me through re-flashing it but I'm just not equipped to do that at this time.

 

[speakers]

There so many ways to hork a G3 doing this stuff! I've often had to resort to an OFW init-nvram command or to pull the battery to a while!
There's so many variables... but in particular:

1. what firmware is flashed on the SATA card?
2. what version of OpenFirmware does your bootrom have?

You should be using XPostFacto to apply the OFW patches etc, and I'd recommend Tiger (10.4) over earlier versions of OSX. I'd also advise retaining the IDE drive as a lifeboat.

Also refer to Xodium's epic thread: https://tinkerdifferent.com/threads...ci-power-mac-impossibru-updated-3-21-23.1494/

 

[croissantking]

I would have asked if my 820-0991-A board is "one of the revisions" that requires the older firmware.

Hi! The firmware issue has to do with the Rev. C ROM card. It has nothing to do with the version of the logic board installed and you could fit a Rev. A or B ROM if that were a problem. I know that Sonnet has an incompatibility warning about using their Tempo Trio with a Rev. C ROM, but theirs is a combo USB/FW/SATA card, not a basic SATA one. I’m not sure if the incompatibility issue applies here. You can find out your ROM revision in Apple System Profiler. If it ends in 45F2 (iirc!) it’s a Rev C.

You never mentioned your process for flashing the card with Mac firmware, so I wonder if there is an issue here?

Another possibility is that the card is just faulty - I recently bought a generic one off eBay - probably the same one as yours. And I’ve been having the same kind of issues as you in my Beige G3, with Rev C ROM. However, the card doesn’t function properly in my G4 (PCI Graphics) or in my AthlonXP PC either. Quality control could be an issue and I wonder if reflowing the main IC would be worth trying. However, I have bought an Adaptec 1210SA to try in the meantime.