SATA SSD on a Power Macintosh G3

[VicNor]

Introduction
My usual setup:
IDE bus 0: the original hard drive (cable select/master)
IDE bus 1: the original CD-ROM (master), passive IDE to CF adapter (slave).

I’ve got the StarTech IDE2SATA adapter that I just pulled out of my iMac G3 (2nd gen), together with its Sandisk SSD. It works flawlessly on my iMac. The idea is to replace either the hard drive or the CF card on respective bus, so the computer boots up on a something else than the SSD to make life easy. I'm doing this swapping because I some files on that SSD that I want to transfer to my Power Mac.

Half the point with a Power Mac G3 is to use it as a bridge machine between the new and the old, since it has both SCSI and IDE, can run both Classic Mac OS and Mac OS X, do AppleTalk via RS-422 & Ethernet and expanded the computer via PCI cards (USB, Firewire etc).


Problem
First try: I put the SSD on IDE bus 0 where the original hard drive usually lives. Before the swap I had set the CF card as the boot disk before turning the computer off. After connecting the SSD, the computer just gave me a black screen when I turned it on and it wouldn’t even enter Open Firmware.

Second try: I instead replaced the CF card with the SSD. I had booted the computer to make sure it worked just fine, which it did. And set the hard drive as the boot disk. I set the StarTech adaptor to slave, as it sits after the CD-ROM in the chain. This time I got the grey start screen and a mouse pointer but nothing else happened. Not even a ?-floppy.


Thoughts and suggestions
I wonder is the only way to use a SSD on a Power Macintosh G3 to install a SATA PCI card? Or are there other IDE-to-SATA adapters that work better on the Power Mac? I thought that the StarTech adapter was the most compatible adapter out there?

 

[Fizzbinn]

Not sure I’m totally following your test cases, but could this be a Rev A Beige Power Mac G3 issue?

Beige Power Macintosh G3, Rev. A

Beige Power Macintosh G3, Rev. A, a Limited Mac.

lowendmac.com

Rev A only supports a single device (I believe set as master) on each bus.

 

[VicNor]

Not sure I’m totally following your test cases, but could this be a Rev A Beige Power Mac G3 issue?

Beige Power Macintosh G3, Rev. A

Beige Power Macintosh G3, Rev. A, a Limited Mac.

lowendmac.com

Rev A only supports a single device (I believe set as master) on each bus.

Maybe I could be a bit clearer, but what I do is that I replace the harddisk or CF card on respective bus and set the StarTech card as the same (master/slave) as the drive it replaced. That is, I swapped the drives. Also, the CF-card is set to slave and boots normally.

The ROM is $77D.45F2 (rev 3).

 

[VicNor]

[Update] I think I've figured this one out.

According to the documentation the Star Tech supports "IDE/ATA 33/66/100/133 motherboard", and according to Low End Mac the Beige G3 has a 16.67 MBps IDE bus. Even if the G3 technically supports UDMA, it's still the more uncommon "slow" mode 0.

Hence, the computer needs a dedicated IDE PCI card that supports faster standards of IDE to be able to connect with devices that expect more modern implementeations of ATA. Also, a SATA PCI card might be the way to go as well. I've seen some combo IDE ATA133 and SATA PCI cards on ebay - might be worth splurging those €10 for a NOS.

 

[speakers]

I've tried various SATA-IDE adapters with G3 DT and MT, and they're either unusable or at best unreliable.

The best and fastest way to hook an SSD onto this class of machine is to use a PCI-SATA adapter -- see Xodium's thread: https://tinkerdifferent.com/threads...ci-power-mac-impossibru-updated-9-21-22.1494/

Another option I use is a HYPERDISK SSD (e.g https://www.ebay.com/itm/223092199627) on the IDE bus -- but this is subject to the first 8GB boot limitation.

 

[Patrick]

I think for an iMac G3 i just used a IDE SSD. this one specfically

KingSpec 64GB 2.5 inch PATA/IDE SSD

and it seemed to work. .. idk if that was the best solution ...

 

[VicNor]

I think for an iMac G3 i just used a IDE SSD. this one specfically

KingSpec 64GB 2.5 inch PATA/IDE SSD

and it seemed to work. .. idk if that was the best solution ...

I've completely forgotten about these! I got a regular SATA SSD (connected with adapter) in my iMac G3. But I'm afraid that this beast might be too fast for a PwrMac G3 Desktop as the computer only supports UDMA mode 0. I suspect that these fast devices only go down to 33 or 66 MB/s in compability mode.

As long as the hard drive is keeps being reasonably quiet and works, then I'll probably keep it. The bus tops out at 17 MB/s, and the top read speeds on the built in hard drive is around 15 MB/s.

 

[VicNor]

By chance I've found an IDE to SATA adapter that works with the Power Macintosh G3's slower IDE bus, ie an adapter that supports UDMA mode 0.

It's a cheapo adapter from Amazon. Most of the time the information on Amazon about the adaptor boards are subpar at best - and inaccurate at worst. The important thing is that it has the JM20330 control chip that - according to the data sheet - supports IDE buses ranging from 17 Mb/s to 150 Mb/s. It was purely out of curiousity that I googled the control chip and found out that it supported UDMA 0. The experiment cost me €10 and some change.



Also by accident, I found a cheap ADATA SU650 120 GB SSD on sale on Amazon. OS 9 found the drive without issue and allowed me to format and partition it. I haven't had too much time to do a in-depth test with the setup, and won't have until the holidays are over.

 

[speakers]

I tried a similar version of that adapter on my Beige G3 and it proved unrelable under load; the machine would hard-hang. Perhaps the issue is that the IDE bus on this class of machines is too slow for this controller. It may be fine in B&W and other faster G3s, but I've not tried.