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hard drive beige g3 transplant
- Thread starter mr tom
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If it is just an IDE / ATA hard drive, then I'd just put it in an external firewire or USB enclosure and plug it into your USB or Firewire ports to copy the data.
My old G3 desktop used IDE drives. So, you should be able to do that just fine.
You can get external USB enclosures for $20 to $40 at most computer stores.
This is exactly how you'd do it. I've done the exact same thing with PC's multiple times for rescuing data.
I've seen mention of SCSI to USB adapters. I've never used one, but you might search the Internet and see what you find.
I guess the absolute simplest solution would be to ebay another Beige G3 from eBay (they're dirt cheap), and use the SCSI port on that..... I suppose you could also try buying a SCSI card. I don't know much about SCSI, and I'm not sure if the 5 MBps SCSI bus your drive connected to on the Beige G3 is the same type you'd get if you bought a SCSI card....
If SCSI is like ATA (in terms of backwards compatability) that might be the best solution. Or at least the easiest one, assuming you can find a reasonable SCSI card for your G5.
If SCSI is like ATA (in terms of backwards compatability) that might be the best solution. Or at least the easiest one, assuming you can find a reasonable SCSI card for your G5.
SCSI has a ton of different standards. Each with their own connector. So, getting a card for a newer machine would require understanding which type of drive you have to begin with, and then understanding terminating your Bus properly.
Getting an external adapter will still require knowing which connector you have. But, likely will have termination built in. Probably more plug and play.
Find someone (check with your local independnet Apple service shops) with a functional G3 and pay them to transfer it for you - to CDs or to an IDE hard drive.
If their machine has a Firewire card in it (Firewire was not standard on these machines) then so much the better, you can provide an external FW drive to copy it onto.
You do not want to start making SCSI work on a modern Mac. And no USB/SCSI adaptor I tried was worth it.
Trust me on this.
If their machine has a Firewire card in it (Firewire was not standard on these machines) then so much the better, you can provide an external FW drive to copy it onto.
You do not want to start making SCSI work on a modern Mac. And no USB/SCSI adaptor I tried was worth it.
Trust me on this.
That would be a good route if you do know someone with such a computer.
I must admit surprise at a G3 having a SCSI drive though. I thought they all had IDE. I got one of the very first G3's, and it came with IDE.
There were two main versions of the G3 - both have both SCSI and IDE connectors on the motherboard, but Apple supplied some models with SCSI hard drives and/or SCSI CDs and/or SCSI ZIP drives. One issue was that the first gen models only supported one IDE drive per bus rather than the conventional 2, because of a shortcoming in the IDE controller. That meant that you couldn't have multiple drives without some of them being SCSI.
It was actually a shortcoming in the Revision A ROM ($77D.40f2).... lucky for people with first generation Beige G3s, as they could find a Rev. B or C ROM later and add slave support for up to four ATA drives (vs. 2) but yeah, I never realized the SCSI would be a viable workaround for that. Hm.
It was the higher-end models that shipped with SCSI drives.. I think they were 7200 RPM drives, and they shipped only in (I think) the minitowers like the G3/300 and 333 MT.
Sucks about all the SCSI standards.... I had a sneaking suspicion that might be the case, but wasn't sure.
The on-board SCSI in the beige is 5 MB/s (both the internal and the external SCSI port) if that helps identify it.
It was the higher-end models that shipped with SCSI drives.. I think they were 7200 RPM drives, and they shipped only in (I think) the minitowers like the G3/300 and 333 MT.
Sucks about all the SCSI standards.... I had a sneaking suspicion that might be the case, but wasn't sure.
The on-board SCSI in the beige is 5 MB/s (both the internal and the external SCSI port) if that helps identify it.