4x IDE Drives in PowerMac G4 (Dual 1GHz QS)

[eyoungren]

Erik has a big CPU upgrade and other PCI cards in there, so his call for more power is somehow justified. But, if my Sawtooth can handle it (with 3 SATA-PCI cards and 6-7 drives and a low CPU Upgrade) your's might stem the load. On the other hand a Dual 1GHz might be different and coming nearer to Eriks set-up. Though Erik, still will have more PCI cards, than you.

Yeah. My major draw is the CPU card of course.

But the other hit is the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro. That particular card takes the max power that the AGP slot can give it AND has a Molex connector for additional power.

On top of that I have an ATI Radeon 7000 (flashed PC card) PCI, a USB 2.0 PCI card AND my PCI SATA card. I did have the ATI Rage 128 card in at one point, but I removed it because the two video cards I have now give me four monitors already. I don't have a spare fifth monitor so the Rage would be drawing power and not contributing anything.

On top of that I have the ODD, one IDE drive and two SATA drives.

Other things drawing power are my PSU and case fan upgrades which are signifigantly higher CFM and draw more power, one fan on top of the CPU fans and another case fan drawing air from the bottom (I removed the IDE drive caddy). Finally, I have an iSight drawing power from the FW400 bus. I also have a bunch of other stuff plugged in via USB, but those are drawing power from external sources.

It's a pretty big power hit on boot all the way around I think. And once I finally add in the third video card (six displays!) it'll draw even more.

 

[sarthak]

The IDE drive is using the ZIP drive bay and I have no drives connected to the main IDE drive cable.

Mind I did this with an AGP G4 (aka Sawtooth, that has only 237W!!!).

I installed the 80GB Maxtor in the zip drive bay. Unfortunately, the screws wouldn't fit so I used some tape to secure it instead. That made it easy to plug-in the IDE and Molex connectors.

ODD IDE
- SuperDrive (DVD Burner)
- 80GB Maxtor in ZIP Drive Bay

Main IDE
- Samsung 160GB (OS)
- 80GB Maxtor Secondary

Doing some testing and hopefully it continues to work just fine. Just checked, PSU says 355W maximum. Even with (extremely) aged capacitors, it should be able to handle ~280-300w 24/7.

On that note, I have G4 733MHz, has 355W power supply, without drives, 3 ram slots, zip drive and superdrive and GeForce 2mx installed already. I have (few of each) 512mb / 256mb / 128mb sticks that should work to amp up the RAM. Though I am not too sure how useful the G4 733 would be at this point.

 

[eyoungren]

I installed the 80GB Maxtor in the zip drive bay. Unfortunately, the screws wouldn't fit so I used some tape to secure it instead. That made it easy to plug-in the IDE and Molex connectors.

At the suggestion of one of the MR members here in relation to another issue I bought zip ties a few months back and I used those.

I made a band through the front holes of the bay cover and wedged the front of the drive through the band. It forces the top front of the drive up which prevents it from moving forward when pluging in the cables.

Just my solution for it.

 

[sarthak]

At the suggestion of one of the MR members here in relation to another issue I bought zip ties a few months back and I used those.

I made a band through the front holes of the bay cover and wedged the front of the drive through the band. It forces the top front of the drive up which prevents it from moving forward when plugging in the cables.

Just my solution for it.

The screw holding the ZIP drive to the chassis was extremely difficult to unscrew. I don't think I have ever removed it on this unit hence, the years of dust in the zip drive bay. Until I attempted to install a drive in there, I didn't realize the hard drive mounting screws are a few millimeters misaligned otherwise, it would've fit.

I think clear tape suffices for now as I only used a small piece to prevent it from sliding around. Once it's in there, it's not visible.

That allows me to use the ODD DVD Burner and the 80GB Maxtor IDE. I've also installed (and now have) 2 bay hard drive mounters in the 1st and 3rd caddy slots. Unfortunately, the 2 bay tray does not fit in the middle hard drive slot if you have another 2 bay in the 3rd slot.

 

[robertdsc]

Unfortunately, the 2 bay tray does not fit in the middle hard drive slot if you have another 2 bay in the 3rd slot.

Not only won't it fit, the connecting cables for the drives will impede the hinge mechanism and prevent the door from closing properly.

I was mentioned upthread and I have to make a small clarification to what Cox Orange wrote above.

My G4 is a Dual Audio 466, not a Quicksilver. At this moment, I have seven drives inside, rather than 8. I supply power through a sleeved 5 station molex power cable.

Two drives, an 80 GB and 500 GB are stacked in the original dual drive caddy and go in the first slot to the back of the machine. The Mac boots off the 80GB. Their power and data cables are provided for via the stock connections.

Two 300 GB drives, stacked in a MDD drive cage, take the place of the ODD and the Zip drive slot and the connections are provided via the natural places for them. The caddy for the ODD and Zip drive was completely removed.

The other three drives (2x 500GB and 1 250GB) are connected to a Sonnet Tempo IDE-133 PCI card with ribbon cables and the sleeved molex power cable. The 2 500GB drives are in the same type of dual drive caddy that the boot drive is in. I actually paid for that specific caddy before discovering MDD drive cages, lol. They sit wedged under the speaker housing. The 250GB drive sits on top of the drives that are in place of the ODD/Zip.

I may actually be taking this Mac apart tomorrow, depending on how things go with a couple of G5s I have an eye on. If you need details, let me know.

 

[Cox Orange]

(...)

(...) Unfortunately, the 2 bay tray does not fit in the middle hard drive slot if you have another 2 bay in the 3rd slot.

I don't know about the DA and the roughly similar QS, but in my AGP G4 I don't use a drive caddy in the middle, because even with SATA-cables I had the problem that the cables have very few room next to the PSU-chord connector on the Mainboard.
I have the drives stacked. That is not the best solution of course, so if, you want to save them from laying on one another, you can put rubber O-rings on four places between the drives.