There seems to be a notch (about a 1/4" long) taken out of the short Primary IDE cable in my dual 500 mhz G4 tower. I tried using another ordinary PC IDE cable but the Primary Slave drive wasn't detected. Can I just notch out the same wire in a PC cable to replicate this? It sure would be nice if Mac could just follow the crowd sometimes.....
G4 Tower Ide Cable Question
- Thread starter charles1
- Start date
Could you please tell us which pin is the nc (no connect) '... of the short Primary (?) IDE cable ...' of your '... G4 tower'? Note: the red lead is pin 1.
Can you explain what you mean by 'Primary Slave drive'?
Why was the Apple provided cable removed?
Did you actually set the (slave, second) hard disk drive as a 'slave' and not attempt to rely on 'cable select'?
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Tower Macs come with two ATA/IDE buses; the CD / DVD player / burner is a master - on one bus; and, the boot drive is a master - on the other bus.
Can you explain what you mean by 'Primary Slave drive'?
Why was the Apple provided cable removed?
Did you actually set the (slave, second) hard disk drive as a 'slave' and not attempt to rely on 'cable select'?
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Tower Macs come with two ATA/IDE buses; the CD / DVD player / burner is a master - on one bus; and, the boot drive is a master - on the other bus.
"Could you please tell us which pin is the nc (no connect) '... of the short Primary (?) IDE cable ...' of your '... G4 tower'? Note: the red lead is pin 1."
Since I have to shut the machine down to answer that question, please see if everything else seems ok below.
"Can you explain what you mean by 'Primary Slave drive'?"
I have a second hard drive connected as a Slave on the same cable as the Primary Master (where the OS is).
"Why was the Apple provided cable removed?"
I'm still using it - but its really short (only about 6") and totally useless when I want to add a second hard drive (unless I want to cook the bottom hard drive and stack them - rather stupid.) But if I had a normal IDE cable (the local Mac shop wants $25 for this infernal cable with a notch) I could just put each drive on the bottom of the G4 tower (side by side) and they would stay cool.
Right now I have them both on their side - with the short cable split about 10 times with a razor so I can twist the cable. They run cool now. But they are just standing vertical with no means of support. I'd like to get them screwed down, you know? And screwing them down on to the coolest part of the case (the bottom) sounds good.
"Did you actually set the (slave, second) hard disk drive as a 'slave' and not attempt to rely on 'cable select'?"
Ah...I've been through this about 20 times. I'm rather persistant and thorough. I've tried different jumper settings, about 5 different hard drives and 4 different IDE cables. Believe me....I think that the Primary IDE cable just has to have some sort of notch taken out of it for the slave drive on the Primary channel to be recognized.
Since I have to shut the machine down to answer that question, please see if everything else seems ok below.
"Can you explain what you mean by 'Primary Slave drive'?"
I have a second hard drive connected as a Slave on the same cable as the Primary Master (where the OS is).
"Why was the Apple provided cable removed?"
I'm still using it - but its really short (only about 6") and totally useless when I want to add a second hard drive (unless I want to cook the bottom hard drive and stack them - rather stupid.) But if I had a normal IDE cable (the local Mac shop wants $25 for this infernal cable with a notch) I could just put each drive on the bottom of the G4 tower (side by side) and they would stay cool.
Right now I have them both on their side - with the short cable split about 10 times with a razor so I can twist the cable. They run cool now. But they are just standing vertical with no means of support. I'd like to get them screwed down, you know? And screwing them down on to the coolest part of the case (the bottom) sounds good.
"Did you actually set the (slave, second) hard disk drive as a 'slave' and not attempt to rely on 'cable select'?"
Ah...I've been through this about 20 times. I'm rather persistant and thorough. I've tried different jumper settings, about 5 different hard drives and 4 different IDE cables. Believe me....I think that the Primary IDE cable just has to have some sort of notch taken out of it for the slave drive on the Primary channel to be recognized.
ElDiabloConCaca
U.S.D.A. Prime
Unless you're using 10k RPM drives that operate at 175 degrees F, stacking the drives is the preferrable solution. There is plenty of cooling inside the G4 towers to support 3 or 4 hard drives, even with them stacked.charles_atlas said:
I currently have 2 Western Digital drives that run pretty warm stacked in the lower-right-hand bay of my G4 tower and cooling is not a problem. The bottom drive does not get "cooked" and temperatures inside the case are warm, but not warm enough to do any damage.
Stacking regular IDE drives down there on the bottom of the case does not pose any kind of danger to the drives.