Any other upgrades I can do to my G4?

[AmestrisXServe]

A much more economical, and practical solution, if you desire to use larger volumes, and avoid any corruption from drivers under OS9, is to install a simple three-point contact switch, and route the power for that drive to it, as an on/off toggle.

You could use press-button, soft-state switches, or hard contact switches; and add an indicator, if you should so desire, to visually identify what drives have power. As you are not filling your PCI sockets, you could use a basic slot blank, and place the switches on that, to avoid modifying the system shell.

 

[Cox Orange]

That is a good idea! Thank you.

 

[robertdsc]

[robertdsc: Do you get SMART temperature readings for one or more of the drives? You can use istatpro. Would be interesting to know, with your setup.]

I can't get iStatPro to download, so I can't check anything at the moment.

 

[Cox Orange]

If you have 10.5 installed, you can use Volitans SMART Utility. It gives temperatures, too.
If it hangs just hit "ok". (If all drives are IDE drives, you can use it under 10.4, too).

Don't try that utility under 10.4, if you have SATA-drives in it (even with adapter), it will freeze the system.

 

[eyoungren]

What part number is that card? I'm curious, but doubtful, that (because it is a SIIG card), that it may have 64-bit capability, primarily because it is also FW, but FW400 and USB2 are essentially never 64-bit.

I was in error. It's actually an ALI M5271 Rev F Combo card.

Here's my pics of it…

Also, I do have a SIIG card in my PowerMac 9600. USB 2.0, four ports. Here is that card.

 

[Cox Orange]

eyoungreen: did you ever come across a card that has FW800+USB2 and is PCI? I am still searching for such a card, but so far have only seen PCIe.

 

[robertdsc]

If you have 10.5 installed, you can use Volitans SMART Utility. It gives temperatures, too.
If it hangs just hit "ok". (If all drives are IDE drives, you can use it under 10.4, too).

Don't try that utility under 10.4, if you have SATA-drives in it (even with adapter), it will freeze the system.

I'm running Tiger on the 466 DA and the Volitans says that all six(5 IDE and 1 SATA/IDE adapted) drives are between 25 and 29 degrees Celsius.

 

[eyoungren]

eyoungreen:

Just call me Erik.

did you ever come across a card that has FW800+USB2 and is PCI? I am still searching for such a card, but so far have only seen PCIe.

No. But I 've never looked for one. All the cables, cases and whatnot that I have is FW400. I don't own a single FW800 cable or device (other than my PowerBooks). So this has never been a concern. Hence, why I never found one. I never looked.

If I see one though, I will let you know.

 

[Cox Orange]

I'm running Tiger on the 466 DA and the Volitans says that all six(5 IDE and 1 SATA/IDE adapted) drives are between 25 and 29 degrees Celsius.

That is great. How long did you have it on?
I get arround 35-40 with 4 drives... but I have a hot passively cooled 1,2GHz Sonnet CPU in my "AGP".

Back then with the 6 (actually 7) drives I had reached 38, 43, 43°C after 104minutes. (The 120mm fan not activated, which I put between the optical drive bay and the PSU).

Just call me Erik.

OK.

No. But I 've never looked for one. All the cables, cases and whatnot that I have is FW400. I don't own a single FW800 cable or device (other than my PowerBooks). So this has never been a concern. Hence, why I never found one. I never looked.

If I see one though, I will let you know.

Thank you, very nice.

Does Target mode, btw., work with FW800 between two PowerBooks?

 

[eyoungren]

Does Target mode, btw., work with FW800 between two PowerBooks?

No idea. I've never tried it and I don't own any FW800 cables.

 

[Intell]

Target Disk Mode works between two FireWire 800 Macs at FireWire 800 speeds. I'm not sure a FireWire 800 PCI card would be worth it. You'd only be able to use half of FireWire 800's bandwidth with a 33Mhz 32-bit card. Half of 800's speed it as fast as FireWire 400.

 

[Cox Orange]

Target Disk Mode works between two FireWire 800 Macs at FireWire 800 speeds. I'm not sure a FireWire 800 PCI card would be worth it. You'd only be able to use half of FireWire 800's bandwidth with a 33Mhz 32-bit card. Half of 800's speed it as fast as FireWire 400.

Ah, good thinking. I forgot - could have known myself...
FW800-PCI really doesn't make sense (only, if there is a 64bit/PCI-X version, which is even more unlikely to be found).

 

[Cox Orange]

That is a sick, sick, SICK setup! LOL.

My DA 466, Jeanine:
/picture/

The DA and QS both have the top of the drive bay free. I mounted a 500GB SATA drive with IDE adapter screwed to the original drive plate that resides at the bottom of the DA's free drive bays. The prongs that go into the slots at the bottom of the drive bay are latched into the case metal above the optical drive cage for a secure fit.

It looks like you just stacked the drives on top of each other. Were they secured to anything? Four of my drives are bolted to the dual drive caddys that were available for DA and QS Macs. I only hit on using MDD drive cages later. The two drives on the left side of the bottom of the Mac are wedged into the case metal under the speaker housing.

I stuck a 250 GB IDE drive set to slave in the Zip drive slot. The optical drive is a DVD+ burner that I rescued from a malfunctioning Firewire case. I plan on removing that burner and buying a USB 2.0 case for it and installing the SuperDrive I removed from my MDD Dual 1.25.

I just found this. Which gives us another idea http://i1168.photobucket.com/albums/r496/AppleMacIdiot/Graphite_IMG_1752.jpg (source tonymacx86)

 

[robertdsc]

I just found this. Which gives us another idea http://i1168.photobucket.com/albums/r496/AppleMacIdiot/Graphite_IMG_1752.jpg (source tonymacx86)

I wound up inspired by what you found, CO.

The two drives in the MDD drive cage were removed from my MDD Dual 1.25 (and the stock SuperDrive and cage re-installed)and placed onto that space and the rescued DVD+R drive removed. Now the DVD+R drive has a kludge of a USB connection and sits on top of the tower with power and USB connections coming from a separate adapter I had for testing drives. It's far cheaper than buying another external drive, though it's ugly as hell.

I then improved the setup by placing the vertically-mounted drive on top of the MDD drives. The Mac now has seven separate drives for a total of 2.45GB of space.

I wound up using blue painter's tape on the outside of the case to block the gaping hole left by the removal of the DVD+R drive, lol. Don't matter much to me.

By the way, it was a real pain in the ass to get this thing settled. Barring some kind of strange eBay acquisition, I'm not touching this thing anymore.

 

[Cox Orange]

Haha, great!!! Now I want to see you adding two on top of the MDD cage.

If you like to add cheap SATA to it and do not need boot-capability (would give you thinner cables and with PCI-X 62MB/s) I have this one http://www.ebay.de/itm/SATA-Raidcon...29VmEqUkgNqZcwFsZ3vIc%3D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc

You only have to install the SIL3124 drivers. Either way you keep on watching out for it cheaper or take this http://www.ebay.com/itm/PCI-X-SIL31...sk_Controllers_RAID_Cards&hash=item27da470487 (don't know about taxes from Canada to US, though).

I also saw that the US ebay has a lot of these flashable wiebetech cards. Also there are Addonics cards which are said to be very similar to the Sonnet cards and are said to be working, too, out of the box.

This one has 8! SATA ports and is compatible out of the box from 10.4.9 on (no boot) http://www.ebay.com/itm/8-PORT-ESAT...sk_Controllers_RAID_Cards&hash=item1e88dd2514 (though a bit costly)

-----------------
For better price value search for AMCC or 3ware or LSI and PCI-X you get results for 14,-USD and 4 to 12 ports. You have to check which ones are compatible on their homepage, though. I do not know right out of my head (I had found them a while ago).
Edit: ah, found something different, but suitable "Official support for 9750 (3DM2/CLI can be used with all 7000/8000/95xx/96xx controllers)" http://mycusthelp.info/LSI/_cs/AnswerDetail.aspx?sSessionID=&aid=8262 (search the site for Mac in your browser.)
I wonder if this one for 9,99USD works http://www.ebay.com/itm/3Ware-Escal...sk_Controllers_RAID_Cards&hash=item3f3130d1c7 (since they say all 8000 cards, but maybe they consider it as 85xx).
Edit2: here it says only the 96xx and 97xx cards with PCIe (which would be the last G5s) are compatibel http://mycusthelp.info/LSI/_cs/AnswerDetail.aspx?sSessionID=801441007OTSZRCXIUXMKNYPWVSWPSFFMMUSJNH[&inc=8261&caller=~%2fFindAnswers.aspx%3ftxtCriteria%3d9650SE%26sSessionid%3d801441007OTSZRCXIUXMKNYPWVSWPSFFMMUSJNH[
But then again their is a "CLI guide" for Mac for the 95xx cards here: http://mycusthelp.info/LSI/_cs/AnswerDetail.aspx?sSessionID=801441007OTSZRCXIUXMKNYPWVSWPSFFMMUSJNH[&inc=7270&caller=~%2fFindAnswers.aspx%3ftxtCriteria%3d9650SE%26sSessionid%3d801441007OTSZRCXIUXMKNYPWVSWPSFFMMUSJNH[
Addendum for 96xx cards for Mac http://mycusthelp.info/LSI/_cs/AnswerDetail.aspx?sSessionID=801441007OTSZRCXIUXMKNYPWVSWPSFFMMUSJNH[&inc=7292&caller=~%2fFindAnswers.aspx%3ftxtCriteria%3d9650SE%26sSessionid%3d801441007OTSZRCXIUXMKNYPWVSWPSFFMMUSJNH[

Or this for 4USD, if they stated the exact model number http://www.ebay.com/itm/LSI-Logic-6...rnal_Port_Expansion_Cards&hash=item3cde602c96

Hehe, or 3 4port cards for 60,-USD http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lot-of-3-3W...sk_Controllers_RAID_Cards&hash=item565c03817f

-----------------------------
This http://www.ebay.com/itm/Silicon-Ima...sk_Controllers_RAID_Cards&hash=item3f320752b3 card looks like it would run with the SIL3124 drivers I am using with the purple card I posted at the top. No guarantee, though.

There are supermicro PCI-X cards that share chips with the 3ware cards and you might also do a reasearch on Adaptec and Highpoint PCI-X cards.

 

[robertdsc]

Haha, great!!! Now I want to see you adding two on top of the MDD cage.

There are three issues with that:

1) I don't have any more IDE drives to put into the machine.

2) I may not have an IDE data cable that's long enough to reach up to that space and still connect two drives.

3)The space between the top of the MDD cage and the top of the case is very tight. I'm not sure I could fit another drive in there, even with the Digital Audio-style dual drive caddy.

I'm just glad I was able to fit one more drive in there. I had six previously. Now I have seven and that makes me happy.

 

[Cox Orange]

...
2) I may not have an IDE data cable that's long enough to reach up to that space and still connect two drives.

You could open the door halfway.

3)The space between the top of the MDD cage and the top of the case is very tight. I'm not sure I could fit another drive in there, even with the Digital Audio-style dual drive caddy.

...

Ah, I see, it looked different on the picture.
PS: an idea comes to my mind... You can get the PCI-Slot covers with holes in from a MDD, cut them in lenght, so that you can let them stay upright in there, like an "L". Then use the air holes for screws. Not sure though, if the holes have the right position that two drives would fit there and not just "stack" on each other.

 

[robertdsc]

You could open the door halfway.


Ah, I see, it looked different on the picture.
PS: an idea comes to my mind... You can get the PCI-Slot covers with holes in from a MDD, cut them in lenght, so that you can let them stay upright in there, like an "L". Then use the air holes for screws. Not sure though, if the holes have the right position that two drives would fit there and not just "stack" on each other.

After a lot of pain and various issues, I can say this: if I find a SATA card that I don't have to flash, (I don't have, nor want, a PC) I can fit it into this Mac. Two drives do fit above the MDD drives in the optical drive bay. I just have to use either a DA or MDD drive caddy for them.

I went out to the shed and dug out my IDE cable bag. As a proof of concept, this is what I came up with:

The drive at the very top is a SATA 250GB with IDE adapter. It was removed from my G5 today after transferring its files to a larger drive. The Mac recognized it, but I couldn't get the drive underneath it to show up, regardless of how many cables I used.

Further hijinks ensued with mixing and matching various IDE data cables in an effort to get 8 total drives to show up. In the end, I got only 7. That setup has been scrapped and this is how it looks now:

The drive at the top is an IDE 250GB drive. This is how it will stay unless I find that SATA card.

 

[Cox Orange]

Haha, crazy!

On the two new drives above the MDD-cage: you say you also tried using one cable for each of the two new drives or only tried connecting both new drive to one cable? I had tested two SATA-IDE adapters, one big chinese with a green board (and a Jumper for selecting Master/Slave) and one more costly smaller adapter with a red board, with Jumpers, too (It could be that it is the one with a marvell chip, that has been referred to here in the forums in the past).

What happended:
1. green + red: endless boot times, very slow access, sometimes one or two showed up (and it seemed the jumper has no influence)
2. green alone + IDE: see 1
3. red + IDE: both, the SATA-HDD with the red adapter and the IDE-HDD on the same IDE-cable were detected and work great. (Jumper does a difference and is really there for selecting)

Oh and I did not have that connected to my IDE-port on a PCI card, but directly to the stock IDE-cable.

--
On SATA. As long as you have two or three drives that are connected via IDE and are bootable, why not use one of the SATA cards I listed, that you do not have to flash. You can use them just installing a driver and the only minus, is that you can't boot an OS from these.

If you find a card similar to the very first I have posted above, you can install this driver (10.4 and 10.5) http://www.drivers-download.com/en/downloadlist.php?id=72 just like you would download an application and click install.
Other cards with SIL3124 chip with different Board layout would be worth a try, but you do not have the guarantee that it works.

 

[robertdsc]

In noodling through the pictures on this thread, I have a question.

How does one remove the metal AirPort card bracket? I have no real use for wireless on this Mac and during my efforts to fill the Mac with drives, the bracket gave me issues. So I figured that I'd have to remove it.

What do y'all think?

 

[Intell]

In noodling through the pictures on this thread, I have a question.

How does one remove the metal AirPort card bracket? I have no real use for wireless on this Mac and during my efforts to fill the Mac with drives, the bracket gave me issues. So I figured that I'd have to remove it.

What do y'all think?

It's held on with a few rivet. You have to drill them out and it comes right off.

 

[Cox Orange]

In noodling through the pictures on this thread, I have a question.

How does one remove the metal AirPort card bracket? I have no real use for wireless on this Mac and during my efforts to fill the Mac with drives, the bracket gave me issues. So I figured that I'd have to remove it.

What do y'all think?

Before you do that, measure if an additional cage does not interfer with the length of the graphics card.

You might want to keep it though as a mounting point for an additional fan, maybe plus 2,5" drives. (Though with a DA or Quicksilver, you would probably more likely want to add a fan to the CPU heatsink, if you really needed additional cooling, anyway).

 

[BaddestArvai]

When I had my 500mhz G4, the previous owner somehow got Leopard installed. It had a max 2GB of ram, and a 160GB HDD. I remember It had a USB 2.0 card in it, and it had a USB port on the backside of the card that was not visible/useable from the outside. So I got a 4 USB hub and hooked it up to that and put it in the bay below the USB card. I had like 8 USB ports! Totally not needed but was cool lol.