Powermac G3 Question

[CrackedButter]

I have an original G3 300mhz Powermac.

Now I know about an issue these have with the ATA controller when using 2 drives at the same time. But I also heard there is a hard drive limit and I want to put a new hard drive in it. What is that limit, is it 120GB? I was going to buy a 40GB to be sure and have it as the only drive.

Anybody want to clarify this for me?

Thank you in advance.

 

[Lord Blackadder]

Low End Mac is a good site for this kind of info. According to them 128GB is the maximum size the onboard controller supports.

Be careful not to spend too much on that G3 - used G4 towers like the Sawtooth with much higher performance potential are pretty cheap these days.

 

[zami]

You need a Sonnet PCI card that lets you run big drives. I have it in my old G4 and it makes these machines worth it.

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempo_ata133.html

 

[CrackedButter]

I've had the thing ages, its only got a 6GB HD in it and I don't want to spend money on a new machine.

Sorry I didn't mention this but I don't want to buy the external sonnet controller card either.

But thanks for confirming the drive limit for me.

 

[princealfie]

I put in a 200 GB Seagate drive and it only recognized the first 128 GB of HD space. Apparently the Powermac G3 doesn't have 48-bit addressing and of course one needs to modify the IDE port or use an additional program such as http://www.lowendmac.com/macdan/05/1024.html where this issue is mentioned.

Personally, the fact that the Powermac G3 can read any size of firewire HD external is big for me. That's more important indeed!

 

[CrackedButter]

Good page thanks for the fast queries as well guys. I'm having trouble playing video on the G3 and I was wondering if it was the rpm of the drive but now i think its to do with the 33mps bus speed.

 

[Heb1228]

Good page thanks for the fast queries as well guys. I'm having trouble playing video on the G3 and I was wondering if it was the rpm of the drive but now i think its to do with the 33mps bus speed.

If its an H.264 clip, then there's no way a 300MHz machine will handle it. Some videos just require substantial processing power to run smoothly.

 

[CrackedButter]

No they are simple .avi or .mpegs.

It seems to be a size issue this is why I thought the hard drive was the problem, feeding all the information and whatnot.

For example, I have some episodes of family guy and they play okay but something like stargate just stutters.