Beige G3 internal SCSI nightmare

J

jamespi

Registered
hi, i bought a g3 tower 266mhz, rev a motherboard, no hd, with an eye to upgrading it to run os x.

so i bought an 18gb seagate cheetah scsi hd ST118202LC. its an 80pin LVD drive.

i thought i'd connect it to the internal onboard scsi chain - i have a zip drive (id 5) terminating the chain. nothing is on the external chain. i have no pci scsi card.

i bought an 80 to 50/68pin scsi adaptor widget so that i could plug the 50pin ribbon into the 80pin drive.

i set the jumpers on the drive to scsi id 0 (it has no termination). i also set the jumper to force the drive to operate in Single Ended mode, as required by the beige g3 as i understand it.

i set the jumpers on the adaptor widget to scsi id 0 as well.

the drive has jumpers for write protection and motor start delay, but i left these default.

the widget has jumpers for motor start delay and "synchronous" whatever that means, but i left those default.

there is no ide hd fitted

when i power up the mac, the scsi drive chugs around a bit, then goes silent. jaguar set up runs, and i open the disk utility. the scsi drive is not in the list.

what gives?

if i try to boot the os 9.1 installer, it hangs after the second extension starts loading.

presumably i havent set the drive up properly, but im way of my depth now.

as far as maximising performace, should i go with a pci scsi card, instead of messing around with the onboard scsi?

thanks
 
If I'm not mistaken, isn't SCSI ID 0 the ID for the SCSI bus itself? I know that's the case for my Quadra, but it should be the same for the Power Mac.
 
SCSI ID 0 (zero) has always been used as the default boot drive ID on a Mac, but doesn't have to be zero (The only one that's really reserved is number 7, which has usually been the computer (or the SCSI bus itself), You might want to try changing the device number either on the hard drive, or the adapter. (you said you also set the adapter at device 0) Maybe change the adapter to device number 1. If 2 devices are set on zero, perhaps that is your problem.
SCSI setup 101: Every device on the chain must have a unique device number. That will likely include an adapter with a changeable device number. The device with the lowest number will be checked first for a bootable partition.
SS 102: The SCSI chain must be terminated. An internal boot drive will have a terminator resistor pack or a jumper set for termpower (for example), If there is more than one device, then the first and last devices must be terminated.
However, what Arden said may be relevant about installing OS X to an IDE drive, OSX is full of obstacles to get a booting SCSI drive to work with OSX. Get a bootable system on an IDE, then CarbonCopyCloner to your SCSI drive. That may give you the least struggle.
 
DeltaMac said:
SCSI ID 0 (zero) has always been used as the default boot drive ID on a Mac, but doesn't have to be zero (The only one that's really reserved is number 7, which has usually been the computer (or the SCSI bus itself), You might want to try changing the device number either on the hard drive, or the adapter. (you said you also set the adapter at device 0) Maybe change the adapter to device number 1. If 2 devices are set on zero, perhaps that is your problem.
SCSI setup 101: Every device on the chain must have a unique device number. That will likely include an adapter with a changeable device number. The device with the lowest number will be checked first for a bootable partition.
SS 102: The SCSI chain must be terminated. An internal boot drive will have a terminator resistor pack or a jumper set for termpower (for example), If there is more than one device, then the first and last devices must be terminated.
However, what Arden said may be relevant about installing OS X to an IDE drive, OSX is full of obstacles to get a booting SCSI drive to work with OSX. Get a bootable system on an IDE, then CarbonCopyCloner to your SCSI drive. That may give you the least struggle.
Click to expand...

DoH!!! Sorry for the brainfart. You're correct. I just double-checked and it does show my drive as being on SCSI ID 0.

I have to stop posting while half-asleep... ::sleepy::
 
ok, the chain is definately terminated by the zip drive. the hard drive is in the middle of the chain , and threfore requires no termination. incidentally the hd has NO onboard termination, and i have no terminators. but that doesnt matter because the zip drive terminates the chain.

the "adapter" i mention may be a confusing term - it is merely a pcb with tracks mapping pins on the 80pin socket to pins on a 50 pin socket, so that i can fit the g3's 50 pin scsi ribbon into the the back ofthe drive. it is not an adapter in the sense of a pci scsi adapter card. i don't belive it is a seperate scsi "device" because there are no chips on it. its just simple tracks.

nevertheless, i tried setting the id on the "adapter" to 1 - this stopped the os9 installer crashing, but still the drive was not recognised by os9.

i dont seem to be able to get an installation working on ide either - i put in a 4 gig ide drive, installed os9 on it, but when i reboot all i get is "no bootable hfs partition" printed over and over on the screen.
i cant install osx on the ide drive because when the installer runs, and its asks you to choose a language, the list is empty and the "continue" button is invisible (sometimes bits of them appear.)
and yes, i have legit original installer disks.

anyone got any ideas?
 
do some googleing for open firmware commands, and try and view your scsi buss from the firmware. This will definitively tell you if the drive is connected properly.

If I recall correctly, on my beige g3, when I had 10.1 on it the scsi zip worked just fine (internal OEM scsi). I never could get panther working, even with all the hacks.
 
ok, i sorted out the corrupted lanugage select screen on the jaguar installer - i zapped the PRAM and now the jaguar installer is fine.
(the startup chime happens instantly now, instead of after a 2minute delay, which i had assumed was normal)

now on to the rest of the problems....
 
ok, the PRAM is zapped, the OpenFirmware has had reset-all done to it, i have plugged in a self terminating 50 pin Quantum Fireball TM 32S012, as id 0, terminated, on the end of the chain, with nothing in the middle of the chain.

when i go into the firmware, and type "dev / ls" it shows me a list of device nodes. i have deduced from intense googling that the onboard scsi controller is a "mesh", and lo and behold is in the device tree is under pci@80000000/mac-io@10/mesh@10000

it has two subnodes /sd@0,0 and st@0,0

does anyone know how i can get it to tell me if a scsi device is on the chain? i cant make head nor tail of this gibberish and forth is a very obtuse language.
 
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