Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Beige G3 Tower 2nd Hard Drive Question

L

livingfortoday

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Nov 17, 2004
2,903
4
The Msp
Hey, I recently got ahold of a 300Mhz beige G3 tower that I've been trying to add a second hard drive to in order to use it as a music server/bitorrent machine. I took out the old drive, and the ATA cable that was hooked up to it had only one end for the mobo and one for the drive, so I tried to put in a new cable that can take two drives, but it won't fit on the motherboard. It has a quare blocked out where the motherboard needs a hole for a pin. It is a ATA 100/133 cable, is the PM using maybe an ATA 66 cable that doesn't have the same connection?

Anyways, is there a way around this, or do I need to find another cable? I have a zip drive and floppy drive in the PM that I'm not using, I suppose I could take their slots with the extra drive, but I'd rather keep it all together. Is this possible?

Any suggestions, tips, past experiences would be really helpful, thanks!
 
I found the following on a different web site:

"Can I use more than one IDE drive on my G3?

Rev 1 G3's only support ONE IDE drive. If you try to use 2 (Master/Slave) you'll have problems. You *could* remove the CD-ROM and have 2 IDE Busses for drives, or you can buy a Promax? Turbomax ATA-33 dual ATA card (see http://www.xlr8yourmac.com) and connect as many as 4 additional drives at twice the speed of your internal ATA bus. -Egz"

This information seems old, BUT the principle is the same: for multiple drives, it seems you need an ATA card (get a 133 if you can which allows accessing drives over 128 GB.)
 
Well, I actually removed the Zip drive and hooked up the second drive on that, as a slave to the CD-ROM, and the computer sees it now. I did upgrade to Jaguar, though, it wouldn't see it with system 9.2.

I guess I could go the ATA card route if I wanted to reinstall the Zip drive or install a second CD drive, but for now I think I'll leave the computer the way it is.

Thanks for your help, though! Could I ask what page you found that info on? I could only find info on replacing the existing hard drive, no one seemed interested in adding multiple drives to old beige G3's.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back