Moving backwards G5 to G4

[Patth9]

I have no choice but to move from a G5 using e-sata HDs to a G4 using ATA serial HD. I've done some Googeling, and I can find what I think is the power plug for ATA to e-sata, but I can never find the adapter for the ribbon cable. I'm thinking the HD adapters would be internal with a PCI card to plug in the external esata backup.

Sorry if my choice of word selections are a bit shaky, I haven't had a Mac die on me in many, many years, so I'm out of practice.

 

[CYB3RBYTE]

One way of doing it is to see if you can just use an ATA drive that has all of your things on it already. If not, that would mean you need a SATA PCI card if you don't already have one. The PCI card would power the drive. Most of them are eSATA compatible, but I think the drive in your G5 was just SATA, and not eSATA.

 

[Patth9]

Ha, I didn't realize esata and sata weren't the same thing. In that case, I correct myself and replace esata with sata. Do you mean the sata drive would be connected externally by being plugged into the PCI card?

Am I understanding you correctly?

I cleared off one of the G4 HDs and was going to copy the G5 HS (G5 on external HD over using CC=Copy Clone (something like that), but the copying stopped and refused to continue pass about 1/2 inch (on monitor), though the timer was moving.

P

 

[robertdsc]

The PCI card will connect a (usually) red data cable to the drive. You will need to find a mechanism that will provide power to the drive to get it to spin. Some SATA drives have the legacy Molex 4-pin connector and you can use a free Molex connector within your chosen Mac for that.

Other SATA drives, however, require a special power plug that goes right next to the data cable. That power plug converts power from the 4-pin Molex to 15-pin SATA.

This is what the converter cable looks like:

and this is what SATA drives look like when connected to a PCI card inside a Mac. The Mac is a G4 466 Digital Audio that functions as a server.

 

[CYB3RBYTE]

To clear things up, SATA is an internal connection for drives.

As shown above, a molex to SATA connector would solve the problem of powering the drive. Don't worry, molex and SATA both use 5v power and are completely compatible power wise.

For data transfer you need a PCI SATA card, because the G4 has no SATA ports built in. These can be found on ebay and can be expensive. Once you have one though you can use your drive just fine and most likely you will have faster disk speeds as well!

Hope this helps!

 

[Patth9]

If I have the picture correct, the pata to sata (been studding) card will totally be inside the Mac.

The Molex 4-pin connector(s) male connects to the G4 female Molex 4-pin.
The black end of the Molex 4-pin connects into the sata HD




The SATA Data Cable attaches one end to the card, and the other end attaches the sata HD


How am I doing so far? The picture of the cable above is incorrect, the cable goes to e-sata>

The picture of the G4 you sent was really scary, but so true.

If I may beg one more thing from you, what card would you suggest?

I can't tell you much about the G4 at this moment, as it is unconnected in almost every way, but if you need further information, I will certainly get busy and return the G4 to it's proper condition and turn it on for further information. Since I've been using the G5 mostly, I just don't remember the fine points.

Thank you so much for the help!

Patt

 

[weckart]

That SATA cable has an eSATA connector (with a metal shield) on one end. Both should be identical for internal SATA connections.

 

[Patth9]

I was doing some digging, and since so many of these cards are no long are available, I dug hard.

I found this card Vantec 6-Port SATA II 150 PCI Host Card with RAID on Amazon for $25.44. It doesn't mention Macs. Sorry, couldn't seem to get the link to work.

I can also get the StarTech 6in 4 Pin Molex to SATA Power Cable Adapter (SATAPOWADAP). from Amazon. I already have several short SATA cables.

Please give me your opinion?

 

[Patth9]

That SATA cable has an eSATA connector (with a metal shield) on one end. Both should be identical for internal SATA connections.

Image

So what your saying is I have the wrong picture representing sata.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

Ha, that's why when I purchased, a long time ago, longer cords they didn't work, I bought esata instead of sata. Live and learn (hopefully).

 

[CYB3RBYTE]

Hope we helped to clear up all of your issues. So sorry to hear about your G5.

That card seems good and will do fine. I would look for a Sonnet Technologies card though, as they are fully compatible with Macintosh.

 

[Patth9]

CYB3RBYTE, weckart, and robertdsc, Thank you all very much.

Finally the light came on today when I realized that I have a sata pci card. I thought it didn't work anymore, because when I tried to run my external HD, nothing happened. Now that I know the difference between esata and sata, I'm thinking that was my problem, WRONG CABLE! I'm going to give this a try as soon as I order a Syba SY-CAB40007 Molex 4 Pin to 2x 15 Pin SATA Power Cable (5.5 Inches). There are three connector two internally and one externally, but I'm sure only two can be used at a time

I could never have done this without your help(s), because I didn't know the language.

Isn't there somewhere on this forum where I can give points to those who helped me???

Patt

 

[Patth9]

Well, I'm back at this problem. I ordered the $25 PCI SATA card (pictured above). One of the people reviewing the card replied:

"I was looking for a PCI SATA card to upgrade my older G4 mdd Mac from IDE to SATA and this Sonnet card did the trick perfectly. It comes with two SATA ports, cables, screws, etc. I installed it in an open PCI slot on my mac, attached two new SATA drives, and OS X saw everything the first time, no drivers needed. The Sonnet card showed up in system profiler just fine, and my two new SATA drives were staring at me from the desktop just as I expected. I used OS X's built-in software RAID feature to stripe the two new drives for faster performance, and everything has been rock solid since."


But, I am not having such good results. It's not hard to plug in the cords, after all, if it doesn't belong, it won't fit, right? Is it possible that the SATA HD has to be in a particular holder (4 available)? Nothing shows up on my desktop, though the G4 does boot.

Any help would be most welcomed.

 

[weckart]

When you say boot, I assume you mean your G4 boots from an IDE drive but cannot see any of your SATA drives attached to the SATA PCI card, right?

This would not be surprising since Macs are inherently different from PCs in that the latter have a BIOS controlling internal hardware whereas PPC Macs have Open Firmware. You would therefore need a SATA adapter which is Mac compatible - i.e. it already contains the firmware needed for the SATA card to communicate with the Mac's Open Firmware. The same with graphic cards or any other peripheral that needs to interact with Open Firmware.

There are some PC SATA adapters that are hardware identical with Mac compatible SATA adapters and can be flashed with existing Mac firmware extracted from those Mac adapters so that they can work in a Mac. There is an existing thread on that here

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1690231/

 

[Patth9]

When you say boot, I assume you mean your G4 boots from an IDE drive but cannot see any of your SATA drives attached to the SATA PCI card, right?

This would not be surprising since Macs are inherently different from PCs in that the latter have a BIOS controlling internal hardware whereas PPC Macs have Open Firmware. You would therefore need a SATA adapter which is Mac compatible - i.e. it already contains the firmware needed for the SATA card to communicate with the Mac's Open Firmware. The same with graphic cards or any other peripheral that needs to interact with Open Firmware.

There are some PC SATA adapters that are hardware identical with Mac compatible SATA adapters and can be flashed with existing Mac firmware extracted from those Mac adapters so that they can work in a Mac. There is an existing thread on that here

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1690231/

And yes, to your question "G4 boots from an IDE drive but cannot see any of your SATA drives attached to the SATA PCI card, right?

The manual from the PCI reads, "Features: Silcon image Sil3114 STAT controller chip" and more... You mentioned a SIL3112 are we still on the same page?

You also list the following:
• A PC that is able to boot from a floppy disk and has a spare PCI slot.
• 2 blank floppy disks.

I'm assuming that since I have installed the PCI in a slot, I'm good to go there.

You say 2 blank floppy disks, Sorry, is this the same as a disk? Haven't seen the word floppy in a long time; I remember the first ones very well, and I mean the BIG ones.

If you don't mind, I'll stop here until I get a go-ahead.

Thanks weckart for lending me a hand.

Patt

 

[Patth9]

Well, I gave it a lot of tries, and I am totally lost. I don't know how a Non-Mac file would be able to open a file with .exe ending on Tiger OS. I am so far out of what is trying to be explained.

Patt

 

[robertdsc]

Well, I gave it a lot of tries, and I am totally lost. I don't know how a Non-Mac file would be able to open a file with .exe ending on Tiger OS. I am so far out of what is trying to be explained.

Patt

First, forget anything about flashing cards or using a PC.

Buy one of these:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Silicon-Ima...sk_Controllers_RAID_Cards&hash=item3f3e7f176c

Then download the driver here:

http://www.drivers-download.com/en/downloadlist.php?id=72

Choose the Mac OS v2.0.5.0 driver from the "Silicon Image SIL3124 RAID" category.

Once the card arrives, install it into the PCI card slot, connecting drives and power to the drives as you see fit. Then install the software. Reboot your Mac. Once you log in again, the drives will show up on the desktop.

I've done this precise setup on three different Macs, 2 G4s and 1 G5. It works exactly as I've described, with many thanks to Cox Orange for providing the way forward.

 

[Patth9]

First, forget anything about flashing cards or using a PC.

Buy one of these:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Silicon-Ima...sk_Controllers_RAID_Cards&hash=item3f3e7f176c

Then download the driver here:

http://www.drivers-download.com/en/downloadlist.php?id=72

Choose the Mac OS v2.0.5.0 driver from the "Silicon Image SIL3124 RAID" category.

Once the card arrives, install it into the PCI card slot, connecting drives and power to the drives as you see fit. Then install the software. Reboot your Mac. Once you log in again, the drives will show up on the desktop.

I've done this precise setup on three different Macs, 2 G4s and 1 G5. It works exactly as I've described, with many thanks to Cox Orange for providing the way forward.

Whoa! Can't beat that ebay price with a stick! I've bundled up the PCI from Amazon and tomorrow it goes back. I've been searching for hours and never did run into this one on ebay. I just ordered! I'm assuming that this PCI goes where other PCIs go, just doesn't have the long metal piece, right?

Boy, this is swell. Thank you so much for your help/suggestion. I just hate having to give up several programs I still use which will only work on the powermac. I have an up-to-date Mac Mini I use a lot! When using the G4 I only use the internet to email myself items from the internet, or I can use the flash drive.

I sure appreciate your last minute rescue. I will post again once the PCI arrives and I get it going.

Thanks a BUNCH!

Patt

 

[robertdsc]

Whoa! Can't beat that ebay price with a stick! I've bundled up the PCI from Amazon and tomorrow it goes back. I've been searching for hours and never did run into this one on ebay. I just ordered! I'm assuming that this PCI goes where other PCIs go, just doesn't have the long metal piece, right?

Boy, this is swell. Thank you so much for your help/suggestion. I just hate having to give up several programs I still use which will only work on the powermac. I have an up-to-date Mac Mini I use a lot! When using the G4 I only use the internet to email myself items from the internet, or I can use the flash drive.

I sure appreciate your last minute rescue. I will post again once the PCI arrives and I get it going.

Thanks a BUNCH!

Patt

You're welcome.

That very same card is the card I used in the images shown in the #4 post in this thread.

 

[Patth9]

You're welcome.

That very same card is the card I used in the images shown in the #4 post in this thread.

Ha, never claimed to be quick, just determined. 🙂

I'm determined to make this old G4 work. I will be posting again today to asked for help with the main plug-in that turns the whole G4 on. Feel free to jump in, I can use all the help I can get.

Patt