Unco-operative G4 Sore Tooth

[roker]

I recently got myself a 400Mhz G4 "Sawtooth", running 10.3.9, & have been looking into SATA controllers etc. At the mo I have an 8gb drive, a 320Gb & a 40Gb one which it boots off. If I put the boot drive in the slot below the DVD it won't start-up at all. If I have it in its' usual place on the bottom of the case it works fine, until I put in the 320, when it doesn't boot at all unless I have the install disc in & it will go to the install menu then freeze. It also works fine with the 8gb drive under the DVD & 40 in its' norm place.

Just wanted to ask, is this normal, & is there any way to make it work? I don't really want to spend too much time or money on this thing, endlessly buying RAM, SATA cards, hdd's etc if it isn't going to work.

Thanks!

 

[FJ218700]

on my 500 MHz (orig.) "toof", I have a 40 GB drive under the optical with 3 partions, 9.1, 10.2, and 10.3. Each system can be booted from. On the floor I've got 2 120's one for 10.4/5 and one for storage.

Each drive is set to cable select, with the boot drives in the master position. Start there.

I don't suggest having the boot drive under the optical, the system will run very slow. Also, that 320 is going to give you problems with the stock configuration, as a stock toof isn't supposed to recognize drives over 128 GB

 

[roker]

on my 500 MHz (orig.) "toof", I have a 40 GB drive under the optical with 3 partions, 9.1, 10.2, and 10.3. Each system can be booted from. On the floor I've got 2 120's one for 10.4/5 and one for storage.

Each drive is set to cable select, with the boot drives in the master position. Start there.

I don't suggest having the boot drive under the optical, the system will run very slow. Also, that 320 is going to give you problems with the stock configuration, as a stock toof isn't supposed to recognize drives over 128 GB

Thanks for that, I wanted to do with this a similar kind of thing to what you have, with a couple of big drives (maybe 500gb) on the floor, connected to a 2 Port SATA controller, & have the 40Gb drive under the optical as a boot drive, or if the SATA ones are much quicker, I would use them.

I thought the 320 would at least show up 128gb though, as it did on an older B&W G3 I had, would it be because the drive is about 90% full?

Also, how do I "set them to cable select with the boot drives in the master position" & why would mounting it under the optical make it slower, since you've said that's how you have yours?

Sorry for all the Q's!

 

[FJ218700]

you're right, the 320 will be recognized as 128.

to set the drives to cable select, you will have to manually set the jumpers on the back of the drive to the manufacturer's specs (most drives state on the drive itself the correct settings). This will allow the board to know which drive is the master and which is the slave. I like to boot from the master position (middle connector on the ribbon) and keep my media files on the slave drive (end position).

You can in fact also boot from the slave, which will be your only option when you put a drive below the optical (unless you get a longer ribbon). Make sure that the jumpers on the optical drive are also reconfigured to cable select for this to work. The optical/zip controller has a slower bus speed than the floor positions, so your system will run slower if you are booting from this position. I only have my 9.1, 10.2, and 10.3 systems on that port, which I don't boot into very often.

I don't know why, but in the past I've tried to set one drive to master and one to slave with the jumpers, but I've had better luck with cable select.

be careful with your power supply. 300 Watts should be fine with 3 drives until you drop in dual processors and start fillling up PCI slots. then (like me) you'll start having trouble (Kernel panics)

someone correct me if I'm wrong or if there is an easier way.