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G4 Sawtooth won't recognize new hard drive

Javelin Dan

Javelin Dan

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 22, 2012
28
5
Akron, OH. USA
I am trying to install a Samsung SATA hard drive in my powerpc G4 Graphics “Sawtooth” powermac. I bought the drive used but declared in good condition from a large, reputable, on-line dealer. With the aid of a IDE to SATA adapter, I had no trouble connecting everything up, and assuming the drive had been wiped, I booted a live CD without incident. Everything works – GUI, sound, internet, various software programs – all works just as it should running a live CD.


However, when I tried to install the OS (in my case, various flavors of Ubuntu), I couldn't get past the second window of the installation guide. There's a check beside connected to power, another check next to connected to internet, but a red circle with a line through it next to “at least 4 GB of memory available”. I decided to open Gparted to see if or how any partitions might exist, and it simply says “No devices Found” at the bottom. I then opened “System Monitor”. Under the first tab “System” System Status says “Available disk space: 0 bytes.” Under the tab "File Systems" I got the info shown in the screenshot below.


As far as I can figure, the hard drive is working flawlessly, but somehow isn't being recognized by the OS. I've run the live CD's for Lubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 12.04, Kubuntu 10.10, and Ubuntu 10.10 (all for powerpc, of course) and they all had the same result. Is there some way to coax the OS to recognize the new drive?
Attached Thumbnails
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Post the screenshot in a imagehosting service, I can't see anything.
DOn't you have a spare computer?
Usually new hardrives come not formated, you must format it.
It can be the adapter that is dead, but under gparted doesn't the harddrive appear?Take care because usually gparted shows first the media you are using for install.
 
Intell said:
What size is the drive? What SATA-PATA adapter are you using?
Click to expand...


are you thinking about the 128Gb limit?
I had the 500Gb Samsung with an sata to ide adapter (chinese one ,about 2dollars shipped) and I guess I always was able to see the hdd, only I wouldn't see it with more than 128Gb (until I installed the intech special driver and then partition it), but I might be wrong, it was a couple years ago.
Read more here: http://lowendmac.com/macdan/05/1024.html

Javelin Dan I don't know about any trick to past the 128Gb limit in the powermac for linux, the intech driver is only for mac os x, if there isn't any trick/software solution guess your only option is the sata pci card.
 
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The 128GB limit may be causing a problem, but the drive should still be seen at the very least.
 
Sorry, I'm not currently signed-up with any image hosting service. If you want to give me an e-mail via a private message, I'll be glad to send the screenshot.

The hard drive is a Samsung model HD083GJ (SATA) 80 GB, 8 MB cache, 7200 RPM. The adapter really never showed a brand name either on the (ebay) ad or on the piece itself. It does have a model or part # of HSXP-107. I've seen many identical to this advertised on ebay and in several how-to videos on Youtube. It has a red circuit board, and a red multi-plex cable going from the adapter to the SATA drive.

I want to stress that the computer boots and works normally with the live CD. When I open Gparted, the page is NOT highlighted, there are NO partitions showing, the table is not active. It simply says "No devices found." This is what's odd to me. I would understand it more if the thing just didn't boot. If it boots and works properly, shouldn't it show up somewhere? Please expand on the formating thing - all this is new to me. I do have an install disk for OS 10.3 Panther, would that make any difference?

Just for the record, I do have another computer - four others in fact. This one is a $20 garage sale refugee which is just a learning tool for me. This was my first inexpensive step to learn more about swapping hard drives and the possible performance gains from same. If it doesnet pan out, I've only got about $25 (US) invested in this experiment. As I've said before, every time I fail, I learn something and so far I've learned a lot!
 
Javelin Dan said:
Sorry, I'm not currently signed-up with any image hosting service. If you want to give me an e-mail via a private message, I'll be glad to send the screenshot.

The hard drive is a Samsung model HD083GJ (SATA) 80 GB, 8 MB cache, 7200 RPM. The adapter really never showed a brand name either on the (ebay) ad or on the piece itself. It does have a model or part # of HSXP-107. I've seen many identical to this advertised on ebay and in several how-to videos on Youtube. It has a red circuit board, and a red multi-plex cable going from the adapter to the SATA drive.

I want to stress that the computer boots and works normally with the live CD. When I open Gparted, the page is NOT highlighted, there are NO partitions showing, the table is not active. It simply says "No devices found." This is what's odd to me. I would understand it more if the thing just didn't boot. If it boots and works properly, shouldn't it show up somewhere? Please expand on the formating thing - all this is new to me. I do have an install disk for OS 10.3 Panther, would that make any difference?

Just for the record, I do have another computer - four others in fact. This one is a $20 garage sale refugee which is just a learning tool for me. This was my first inexpensive step to learn more about swapping hard drives and the possible performance gains from same. If it doesnet pan out, I've only got about $25 (US) invested in this experiment. As I've said before, every time I fail, I learn something and so far I've learned a lot!
Click to expand...


So if you have another computer do it this way:

Put the HDD on a sata port (if the computer have one), format it (on windows, linux,mac whatever).
If the computer has an IDE port test the HDD with that adapter, that way you can diagnose wich part is dead.
Don't worry about the adapter being from ebay or whatever, only issue may be that it may be dead.
As I said I had one of those with my Samsung 500Gb with no problems.
Test this and say something.
If you want boot the 10.3 cd and go to disk utility and see if it sees the hdd
 
Skinniezinho - I didn't want to go too far afield, but my other computers are as follows:

1.) emac G4 (Wife's computer. No experiments allowed. I can only touch it if I make it better.)

2.) emachines T1090 (older than dirt)

3.) Dell Inspiron 8000 laptop (just about as old as the T1090)

4.) Compaq Presario dual core laptop (Modern and wicked fast. I save this for all my heavy duty computer needs.)

Of all these, only the T1090 would qualify as a candidate. I didn't mention it, but the first thing I tried was to boot the emachines with the new hard drive. It wouldn't boot a live CD (in this case, Puppy Linux) and I got a message that no hard drive was found. When I tried it on the G4 and the live CD booted, I was pumped thinking my troubles were over. Now I see it could be two different symptoms of the same problem. Other suggestions?

P.S. - Thanks to all for being patient and polite. You don't often get that on other forums.
 
Javelin Dan said:
Skinniezinho - I didn't want to go too far afield, but my other computers are as follows:

1.) emac G4 (Wife's computer. No experiments allowed. I can only touch it if I make it better.)

2.) emachines T1090 (older than dirt)

3.) Dell Inspiron 8000 laptop (just about as old as the T1090)

4.) Compaq Presario dual core laptop (Modern and wicked fast. I save this for all my heavy duty computer needs.)

Of all these, only the T1090 would qualify as a candidate. I didn't mention it, but the first thing I tried was to boot the emachines with the new hard drive. It wouldn't boot a live CD (in this case, Puppy Linux) and I got a message that no hard drive was found. When I tried it on the G4 and the live CD booted, I was pumped thinking my troubles were over. Now I see it could be two different symptoms of the same problem. Other suggestions?

P.S. - Thanks to all for being patient and polite. You don't often get that on other forums.
Click to expand...

IF you hear the hard drive sipping, and if you trust the seller, it's the adapter that is dead.
This adapters don't need any drivers or so, it is direct, and should work on the emachines.
Puppy is a great distro, but you don't even need a live cd, connect the hdd on the emachines,go to the bios (maybe hit the DEL key), and see if the hard drive appears, if it doesn't you have something dead.
 
The other issue is, not all adaptors are recognized by all OS's.

I would suggest trying it out in the eMachines machine, and see if it is picked up there. That would at least suggest it can be seen in Windows, it won't guarantee anything else.
 
blesscheese said:
The other issue is, not all adaptors are recognized by all OS's.

I would suggest trying it out in the eMachines machine, and see if it is picked up there. That would at least suggest it can be seen in Windows, it won't guarantee anything else.
Click to expand...

Sorry but I don't believe that, some years ago when I bought my adapter (generic, cheapest on ebay:maybe 2dollars shipped) all sites claimed that the OS doesn't matter, all the conversion is made by a chip without need of drivers.
The user said he tested on the emachines with puppy linux.
In emachines, if isn't detected by the the bios, you have a problem (considering that the powermac doesn't detect it too).
Ask someone with a tower with sata port to try the hdd.
 
Sorry about not responding last night - life happened and I had to log off.

To respond to your last suggestions...yes the hard drive DOES make whirring noises as it spins up at boot. I should also say that in both cases, the Mac and the emachines, I had to plug the adapter directly into the motherboard so that the old hard drive is completely disconnected. The ONLY way the Mac could be booting is via the Samsung drive. I will take skinniezinho's advice and check the Bios and see if anything's there. By the way, how do you access the Bios on a Ppc Mac?

The hard drive was said to have been checked out and certified to be in perfect working order and has a 90 day warranty. Assuming that it is working (and right now I sort of believe that since it boots the Mac), that leaves the adapter. I should mention that when I watched the how-to videos on Youtube, they always took the adapter out of a blister pack that had an instruction sheet. Mine came in a small zip-lock bag with no other packaging and no instructions. Used? - Who knows! But right now, I suspect the adapter more than anything else. Since it's cheaper and easier to order a new adapter than anything else, I think I'll try that and see what happens before I turn my attention to the hard drive. I'd really like to try that drive on another SATA box, but I'm the only mad scientist I know. It'll take me a few days to get this done, but I'll come back and post on this thread to report what happens. Thanks again for all your help.
 
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Javelin Dan said:
Sorry about not responding last night - life happened and I had to log off.

To respond to your last suggestions...yes the hard drive DOES make whirring noises as it spins up at boot. I should also say that in both cases, the Mac and the emachines, I had to plug the adapter directly into the motherboard so that the old hard drive is completely disconnected. The ONLY way the Mac could be booting is via the Samsung drive. I will take skinniezinho's advice and check the Bios and see if anything's there. By the way, how do you access the Bios on a Ppc Mac?

The hard drive was said to have been checked out and certified to be in perfect working order and has a 90 day warranty. Assuming that it is working (and right now I sort of believe that since it boots the Mac), that leaves the adapter. I should mention that when I watched the how-to videos on Youtube, they always took the adapter out of a blister pack that had an instruction sheet. Mine came in a small zip-lock bag with no other packaging and no instructions. Used? - Who knows! But right now, I suspect the adapter more than anything else. Since it's cheaper and easier to order a new adapter than anything else, I think I'll try that and see what happens before I turn my attention to the hard drive. I'd really like to try that drive on another SATA box, but I'm the only mad scientist I know. It'll take me a few days to get this done, but I'll come back and post on this thread to report what happens. Thanks again for all your help.
Click to expand...

Macs don't have a bios.
Adapters don't usually have anything complicated to assemble, it basically:
Plug the HDD on one side, plug the ide cable on other side and maybe some kind of power cable (either a 4pin molex or a floppy power cable), it depends on the adapter.
Sorry to say, but if you don't get either a usb to sata adapter , a computer with a sata port or another sata HDD you will never know what is wrong there.
 
Understood. I'll take all of that under advisement. Maybe my next purchase should be the SATA - USB adapter so I can test the hard drive? Does it matter whether it's USB 1.0 or 2.0 that it's connected to?
 
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Javelin Dan said:
Understood. I'll take all of that under advisement. Maybe my next purchase should be the SATA - USB adapter so I can test the hard drive? Does it matter whether it's USB 1.0 or 2.0 that it's connected to?
Click to expand...

for transfer speed it matters, but to test is ok.
I don't know the prices of those things there,here they are about 10-25eur+ the price of a second adapter for ide-sata, you almost paid the price of a sata-pci controller.Unless of course, you need the sata to usb adapter to make an external drive.
 
I debated whether to start a new thread on this or not, but since this is all part of a continuing saga, I'll go ahead and tack this post on to the existing one. In the last month I have bought the afore mentioned Samsung hard drive, three different IDE – SATA adapters, a USB – SATA adapter, and a Legacy 64 GB SATA SSD I scored used from ebay. Here's where I am with all this...


As best as I can determine, the Samsung was D.O.A. As it could not be seen in any computer I tried using the USB – SATA adapter. The Legacy SSD could, however, be seen any time I plugged it in the USB adapter. My first experiment was to see if I could get the SSD to boot on my ancient emachines T1090, so using the USB adapter plugged into my Compaq Pressario dual core laptop, I installed Puppy Linux on the SSD using a Linux ext.3 partition and installing GRUB. (NOTE: The Compaq has a dual boot of Ubuntu 12.04 and Puppy Lucid 5.28. Installing GRUB on any new installation annihilates the bootloader(s), so I had to reinstall GRUB Legacy to Puppy – no big deal, and install and run “Boot Repair” off a live CD for Ubuntu – a real pain in the _$$. If you try this, be forewarned!) This made it like a bootable flashdrive, and using Plop on the old T1090, I could boot it and run it normally out of RAM. But any attempt to connect it to the motherboard or directly to the hard drive ribbon cable with any combination of the three adapters failed with a message “No hard drive found”. It didn't even show up in the BIOS.


I then turned my attention to the Graphics “Sawtooth” G4. I plugged the Legacy into the G4 booted up and installed with Lubuntu 12.04 Ppc. I was apprehensive that the Puppy installation on it might gum up the works, but I ran the command “lshw” and scrolled down and found the Legacy SSD and the Linux partitions on it (there was also a SWAP file). But I wondered if it would allow me to install any powerpc software on it with the non-Ppc linux formatting, so I tried to install Ubuntu 10.10 Ppc (so I could easily tell which drive was booting). The installation process went undramatically, and when it came time to partition the hard drive, I chose “automatic” and it properly formatted and put the Mac partitions on the SSD. The installation finished normally, and I was told to reboot.


Here's the weird part – I've often read that it's complicated and difficult to get a powerpc Mac to boot from a USB drive. My only goal at this point was to reboot the native install of Lubuntu, enter the “lshw” command, and see if my hard drive had been properly formatted. To my surprise, the damn thing booted directly into Ubuntu 10.10 from the USB! I really couldn't believe what I saw until I realized that the little blue LED on the USB adapter was flashing like crazy while this was going on. It booted slow and ran sluggishly through the USB as I had come to expect from my research. I shut, down, rebooted without the USB adapter, and booted normally into my Lubuntu 12.04. I did then run “lshw” and found my formatted Mac partitions on the Legacy drive, so Ubuntu took care of this for me.


I then tried all manner of combinations with the three IDE – SATA adapters and could NOT get the SSD to boot. There are two IDE sockets on the ribbon cable; a black one on the very end of it, and a gray one upstream of that. No matter what I tried it just wouldn't boot. The closest I got with the original hard drive unplugged and the SSD plugged into the black socket via an adapter was a black boot screen with the following script:


Press 1 for GNU/Linux, C for CDROM

Stage 1 boot

loading second stage bootstrap...

Apple PowerMac 3, 1 2.2f1 BootROM built on 01/28/00 at 17:50:30

Copyright 1994-2000 Apple Computers Inc. all rights reserved

Welcome to Open Firmware.

To continue booting, type “mac-boot”and press return

To shut down, type “shut down” and press return

Default Catch!, code=_

At this point, the computer is locked up and I can't enter anything. I have to do a hard shut-down and reboot. The way I have it right now is with the black socket (the last one) plugged into the original hard drive, and the SSD plugged into the gray socket via a IDE – SATA adapter. The second hard drive shows up in “lshw” and I already know it's bootable because of the previous USB boot, but my native hard drive takes control and always boots into Lubuntu 12.04. Here's one more wrinkle; the speed I was hoping to pick up with the SSD suddenly showed up with this arrangement – the thing runs like the wind on the old hard drive!


I obviously have no formal training or experience with any of this – it's all on-the-job-training for me. I'd like to know a couple things:

1.) Why did it boot up via USB without any coaxing?
2.) Why did I pick up the extra performance?
3.) Is there a “GRUB – like” bootloader that I can install to give me a choice which hard drive I boot? If so,
how do I do it?


I feel like I'm on the verge of learning something important here, but I need some help filling in the blanks. Sorry for the exceedingly long post, but I felt the detail was necessary. Thanks in advance.
 
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