Troubles reinstalling OS 8.5 on SSD in G3 B&W

[phunguss]

I have been messing around with bus speeds, and overclocking the G3, and attempting to resurrect the G4 ZIF, so who knows what really is the answer.... These tests were on a stock rev1 motherboard 350MHz G3, bus at 66, multiplier 5.5, so 366MHz. I should put the bus back to 100MHz default and retest all the boards, but I am pretty sure I will get the same results. Three of the four devices make the conversion at the motherboard, rather than on the cable bus. The 4th one was my 2.5 IDE to mSata that I used in the AppleTV gen1, did not work in the B&W.

I have basically 4 different SATA/IDE conversions, I found only 1 combination that seems to work reliably in the B&W G3. The red china board.

This must be placed on the cdrom-bus (towards the rear of the case), and you can put the cdrom on the internal drive bus (center of the board edge). Speed comparison with the 3.5 spinner on the internal bus (assumed faster ATA-4) and the Red Board on the CD-ROM bus (Slower ATA-2).

Yellow/Green (puke) board didn't seem to work in any combination on the B&W, but it works in other G4 machines. Something I found on eBay, a Startech dual board.

And another FreeGeek find, this is the first I have tried this device, so not sure if it works elsewhere, but it did NOT work in the B&W.

It was fun to watch all the blinking holiday lights with the door open.

I will pull a working 2 port raid card from my Graphite and see if that works in the B&W this weekend.

 

[mac27]

Following up on this thread with some further developments:

Someone else also suggested that I try an IDE-to-SATA solution for the G3 B&W, so I decided to give that a try. Ordered one along with an mSATA-to-SATA adapter housing and a 64GB mSATA drive. Put it into the G3, and ... it didn't work either! Because of course not

However, I swapped it into my Graphite G4/400 (Sawtooth) and the thing worked flawlessly and immediately. Had it up and running with a fresh OS 9 install in about 10 minutes. So, very happy about that! Another machine checked off my SSD-swap list.

I guess we've learned that the G3 B&W is just a real PITA when it comes to getting SSD compatibility, for some reason! I am wondering why this IDE-to-SATA adapter didn't work but that red one does ... different chipsets? Not sure ... the specifics of the non-working combo are now on my site at the bottom of the G4 Graphite page. I'll probably get one of the red ones soon if it's worked well in your machine.

 

[phunguss]

Then I must ask one question, did you try both busses? As my red adapter only worked on the outer bus, not the inner on the G3 B&W. Also remember they claim the B&W will only boot from a master drive and not a slave.

Note: I learned my clear case adapter is for on a drive, not the motherboard. It converts an IDE drive to a SATA drive, so not so useful.

 

[mac27]

Referencing the two IDE buses that are next to each other (looking at the machine from the side with the door open), I used it on the one that the original HDD connected to on the left (with the short IDE cable) - is that the "inner" or "outer", I wonder? There were no jumper pins to configure on these adapters.

 

[phunguss]

Referencing the two IDE buses that are next to each other (looking at the machine from the side with the door open), I used it on the one that the original HDD connected to on the left (with the short IDE cable) - is that the "inner" or "outer", I wonder? There were no jumper pins to configure on these adapters.

I call the inner one the one near the center of the board edge, next to the power plug (hard drive bus). I call the outer one the one in the corner nearest the PCIE slot covers (optical drive bus). I am just curious if the green one you have would work on the other bus.

 

[mac27]

OK, pulled out the B&W again and tried this. Unfortunately no dice this way, either. I connected the SSD device to the "outer" bus and the optical drive to the "inner" bus, and I just got a blank grey screen. No cursor or activity on the drives. I tried various configurations of this (both devices on the same bus, etc.) and no luck.

Guessing this may be related to jumper settings as I've heard the B&W G3 is picky about which devices are the master/slave to boot from, but honestly I don't feel like messing with it any further since it's fairly far down a rabbit hole now anyways. I am going to write this one off and wait for the day that someone is able to provide a known-working solution to this, if that day ever comes. Unfortunate but that's the way it goes! I'll reply to this thread in the future if I get something working eventually.

 

[phunguss]

I did some more testing last night on some of my adapters... TLDR: The chinese red board is the only answer for B&W G3.

I started by using a 120GB 3.5HDD and creating 3 equal partitions using Disk Utility on MacOS10.4.11 from another boot drive. I cloned the 10.4.11 to one partition, and then removed the original boot drive. I booted via install CD and did clean install of 8.5.1 on another partition, and 9.2 on the last partition. The G3 boots from either IDE bus with this 120GB HDD in all 3 os partitions, so that is my foundation to clone over to the mSATA drives. Apple Drive Setup in 8.5 and 9 are terrible, so I downloaded FWB 4.5.2 from the MacRepository for further testing.

Many of these adapters are working fine in G4 Flat Panel iMacs, G4 cube, and iMac G3 tray load. B&W does not play well.

This 3.5 to 2.5 adapter is passive in the sense of data wires... there are two LEDs that show power and activity, but those should not have anything to do with IDE/SATA conversion. BUT: I could not get a single mechanical 2.5 IDE drive to reliably show the correct size when using this adapter. And none of the mSATA to IDE adapters worked with it either. So that is out for the BWG3.

I tried this half sized mSATA to IDE adapter. Drive either does not show up, or shows up as the wrong size.

FWB shows that the identity is 128GB but the capacity is only 7.63GB

I bought two of these mSATA to 2.5 IDE adapters for my iBook G3 and PowerBook G4, but now I am wary that they won't work there either. I won't get to those projects likely until January's PPC challenge to confirm.

And with the 2.5 to 3.5 adapter installed:

Wrong size

I tried combinations of different adapters, but nothing worked reliably other than a SATA drive on the Chinese Red Board (on the outer bus, inner bus still has boot issues). Using an mSATA to SATA adapter, it worked fine with the same mSATA drives. I can boot all 3 partitions (os8.5, os9.2, os10.4.11) with the CRB on the outer bus. CRB on the top left here on outer bus, 120GB mechanical 3.5HDD on the inner bus, mSATA to SATA adapter on the lower right.

To verify I was not crazy, I connected various mSATA to IDE adapters to a USB to IDE adapter... most of the time, the drives would show up correctly (the B&W G3 USB-1 port cannot power a mechanical HDD).

Partitions and sizes show up correctly. So my assumption is that there is something really flaky in the B&W G3 IDE controllers.

I even tried a quad conversion... Chinese red board to SATA, clear-case SATA to IDE drive converter (previous post), 3.5 to 2.5 board, and the IDE to mSATA adapters. Of course that didn't work.

Conclusion, for the B&W G3, get a chinese red board to convert the motherboard IDE to SATA.

 

[mac27]

Thanks for testing all of this out, that is interesting. Coincidentally I ordered one of the red boards the other day so I'll try that out in the B&W and hopefully it'll work out.

What models of iBook G3 and PowerBook G4 will you be installing those 2.5" IDE to mSATA adapters in? I've had very good luck with that kind of adapter in almost every model. The ones I used were green, though, and not black, so I can't speak to those specifically. The only model I am still having trouble with is my 14" iBook G3 Snow, which refuses to install/boot OS X properly on it for some reason. Other than that they've been great.

 

[phunguss]

They are both 12" and I have ordered some generic LED backlights for them, and these mSATA adapters will go in. The iBook likely needs a display cable repair or replacement and I have spare display hinges for the G4 (case is pretty banged up). I assume the iBook G3 is a Snow, while the PowerBook G4 is Aluminum.

 

[croissantking]

I’d really suggest that anyone serious about using an SSD drive in a Blue and White get hold of a SiI3112 based PCI SATA card and flash it with the firmware modded by @dosdude1 and available here.

I say this because these cards are cheap to pick up (about $10 on eBay), will avoid having to deal with the troublesome onboard IDE and will increase performance.

 

[phunguss]

I’d really suggest that anyone serious about using an SSD drive in a Blue and White get hold of a SiI3112 based PCI SATA card and flash it with the firmware modded by @dosdude1 and available here.

I say this because these cards are cheap to pick up (about $10 on eBay), will avoid having to deal with the troublesome onboard IDE and will increase performance.

I have a single Sil3112 dual flashed, and many Sil3114 quads that I need to flash. The 3112 is in a G4, I will have to test it in a B&W and let you know.

 

[croissantking]

I have a single Sil3112 dual flashed, and many Sil3114 quads that I need to flash. The 3112 is in a G4, I will have to test it in a B&W and let you know.

As far as I know there is an issue using the 4 port 3114 in a Mac… I don’t remember specifically what it is but I don’t think the full support is there.

EDIT: Ah yes, it’s not OS 9 compatible. If you’re just using OS X then no issues.

 

[mac27]

Success at last! Fourth time's the charm...

Picked up one of the IDE-to-SATA adapter boards with the red PCB (StarTech brand), and that finally did the trick. Was able to get OS 8.5 restored from CD and then upgrade to 9.1 from there. It has been reliably booting from the SSD every time (and pretty quickly, too).

I've documented this here and also added a section about it on the G3 B&W page on my site, so it may hopefully be a bit less painful for future enthusiasts. There don't seem to be any specific forum posts/guides/resources detailing that this adapter is *absolutely required* for the B&W, at least that I can find. What a supremely picky machine ... glad to be finished with this project.

Many thanks to you @phunguss for your experimentation and recommendation.