G4 Cube and hard drive problems

Hi everyone,

I've been going through the slow process of upgrading my G4 Cube and thought I'd try to install Tiger on it, just to see if it would work. I didn't expect it to with 128MB of RAM, but I was too impatient to wait for the new RAM to arrive in the post, yet it worked fine, if a little s-l-o-w, unsurprisingly.

However, the stock HDD is 20GB, and since I had a 160GB drive, I thought I'd try to put that in the Cube and use it. The drive has probably been formatted on an old XP computer, if that has any bearing. I put the HDD in the Cube and tried to boot off the first Tiger CD. It booted to a grey screen and that was it. It also swallowed the CD and wouldn't give it back with the Boot + Mouse button. I gave up and put the 20GB HDD back into the Cube and it all works fine.

I haven't tried everything I could, but it was late and I just wanted to be sure I hadn't messed up the Cube so put the old HDD back in.

Do I need to reformat the larger HDD? Would the original OS9 restore disks do this? I don't get the impression the Tiger CD was working (I tried 'C' on start-up). Anything else I could try?

Do the jumper settings need to be specific?

As much as the challenge of guessing my way through it would be fun, any help would be great!

David

Take it the 160GB HDD has its jumpers set to master? If so it does need to be formatted to Mac OS Extended (Journalled) but that is no help if you cannot boot from the Tiger CD. Is the CD set a full retail install, and not a silver grey set from another machine? These are extremely model specific. Keep us popsted?

Thanks for the quick response Harry!

I'll have to check about the jumpers. I'm not at home at the moment. I forgot to check. Can I format the HDD with the Tiger CDs?

The CDs are copies of the retail version I got off a friend and worked absolutely fine to install Tiger on the Cube in the first place. But I also have the grey Cube-specific OS9 restore disks if that could be a problem.

Cheers!

David

Ooooh we do not discuss piracy here. Suggest you purchase your own full retail install discs.

I absolutely agree Harry, although finding Tiger retail CDs is probably akin to gold dust. It won't happen again.

Installing OS 9 with the original restore CDs then, if the jumpers weren't set correctly to Master, could the HDD and Optical Drive not play ball together?

David

The Cube will only recognise 128GB of the HDD when you install it and do not worry about the HDD and optical drive as they are on different IDE cables. The HDD if it is installed in position one needs to be master ~ do not know if multiple HDD fit in a Cube but suggest probably not due to space limitation.

Then boot from your Classic disc and format the HDD and install. When you do get Tiger you may have to again update the firmware prior to installing Tiger. Both will run on the Cube side by side no problem.

Thanks for all your help!

Turns out the 160GB Hard Drive is dead. Typical.
But with the jumper settings correct, I was able to get far further than I thought. It'll be far easier with that knowledge next time. I'll just have to go out and buy another HDD!

Cheers

David

Just a small update.

I installed a 160GB, 7200rpm drive with a single partition of 128GB last night. The difference in speed is definitely noticeable between it and the stock HDD.

Thanks for all the help!

David

Pleased to be able to help and well done you got her up and going.

As a matter of interest there are a number of Cube Owners Forums on the 'net which may be of interest to you 613. Here is one:-

CubeOwner Forums

Thanks Harry,

Yep, I got help from them as well. Now a matter of RAM and a PRAM battery. Whenever they arrive in the post from the US.

Cheers