Second HD in a PMG4 MDD Questions

A

anerki

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I recently purchased a Powermac G4 MDD Dual 1.25 Ghz because I was told it was the fastest machine I could get that would still run OS 9. I want to add a second, OS 9 disk (I use it for one specific application I can't miss and can't do on OS X).

So what I did was format the original HD inside it, 120 Gb one that came with it (I presume) to Mac OS X Extended (or something similar) and installed Panther on it. I inserted an official OS 9.2.1 CD in it (those are a disaster to try and get) assuming it was the latest version that was released on CD and that would boot the, of Classic, modern Mac.

The HD isn't recognized ... At all. I don't plan to reformat the HD to Standard or anything like that. Instead I dug up an old iMac I owned that had a 6 Gb drive in it. A drive I _know_ to work with OS 9.

I opened up the Powermac G4 MDD and noticed several things, and here is where the questions start ...

How do I physically get the HD in there? There seems to be a metal section specifically for it, attached by a plastic lever of some sorts, I tried pushing pulling and shoving it around a bit but I didn't figure out how to remove it so I could add the second HD and set jumpers.

What do I set the jumpers too? I found this gif of jumper settings and I was going to use "Dual Slave" and "Dual Master" but I read elsewhere on the forum (when I was searching for answers) that the PMG4MDD uses the "Cable Select" option?

The image with the jumper settings I found

How dose this Cable Select option work? I assume automatically taking into account which drive comes "first" on the cable ... Is there anything specific I should pay attention to when attaching the second drive? (concerning cables, etc.)

Thanks in advance!
Frederik-Jan Roose

Edit: Forgot to add the image
 
I found out that the PMG4 has an ATA 66 and an ATA 100 bus. Err, the HD I'm using comes from a computer that had ATA 66 so I'm assuming the HD has ATA 66? Does this sound remotely sensible at the least?
 
Found the Powermac MDD Manual. Installed the second drive into the ATA 66 slot. Set the jumpers to Cable Select (as the manual told me) and it ...



doesn't work. Obviously. System Profiler doesn't even recognize anything is in the bay ... *sigh*
 
Have you tried diskutility? Does it see the HDD? Maybe try that with booting from the OS X DVD/CD as well.

Are you certain that the jumper on the HDD is set correctly?
 
The jumper is set correctly, Disk utility doesn't recognize the drive (it won't be default when System Profiler doesn't physically detect anything in the slot). I'll try booting from the Panther CDs after I try installing the drive into the ATA/100 slot. Maybe it's something to do with "skipping" a slot and going straight to slot 3, the first of the ATA/66 slots.
 
I finally managed to remove the HD in the "rear" slot. The Manual forgets to mention you have to enscrew a hard to see screw before you can "gently" slide the carrior up. Anyway, pried it off and didn't hit the motherboard too hard in the process ;)

First thing I did was check the jumper settings on the original HD and they're set to "Single (Neutral Position)" from the image I provided in my first post. Do I try setting this to cable select?
 
So I tried adding the HD to the "rear" slot and setting the jumper settings of both HDs to "Cable Select". That didn't work too well, or at all I should say. It did however disable one of my RAM slots as I'm down to 512 Mb.

Edit: I added the drive to the "front" slot again on the ATA/66 cables, connected the HD, left the settings of both HDs on "Cable Select". That didn't do much, except re-enable one of my RAM slots, I'm back at 1Gb now. Neither System Profiler nor Disk Utility show the second, small, HD.
 
anerki,
I'm no Mac Guru, but I do have an MDD 1.25GHz (Single processor) and can pass on some experiences I've had with adding HD's and running OS9.

I have two HD's on the ATA 100 bus and one on the ATA 66 bus...all are set for cable select and I had no problems seeing and formatting any of them...I think all are ATA 100 HD's.

My Mac came with OSX and OS9 installed and I could boot from either system. My memory is fuzzy, but I think it was probably OSX.2 and OS9.1...don't bet on the X version...I have upgraded both as newer versions became available.

One key element was I found when I installed OS9.2.1(Retail version) on a partition by itself, it would not boot...By fiddling with it I could make it bootable by replacing a System file in the System Folder with one that came with the computer.

It sure sounds to me like something is not set correctly on the 6GB HD or the power and/or ribbon cable have a problem...make doubly sure these items are okay...Disk Utility should see the HD unless something is set or connected wrong...or the HD is bad.

Matt
 
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