G3/350 B&W Server SCSI OS question

Picked a a B&W G3/350 with SCSI card and 9Gb drive today at a yard sale. He said it wouldn't boot and we settled on $25. Well, I got it home and he was right, the hard drive has gone south. Noisy and cyclic rythmic whirring along with a folder flashing a question mark on the screen.

Now my questions. This is my first Mac and I would call myself a medium skilled home computer person, I've built my own pc's since '99 staying current every year but I have no Mac or SCSI experience. First thing .. will this drive work as a replacement? ... Ultra2 SCSI drive on eBay. I'm not a gamer or a music nut so I don't need massive storage. 2) Can I put two of these drives in? 3) What OS should I buy. 4) and where can I find an install procedure page on a Mac G3 with a new unformatted drive?

Thank you for your time,
Frank

Wow, you have got yourself a very nice deal at $25.

Getting a right SCSI drive is somewhat tricky. You sound like you know about the computer hardware so I don't think it's a big problem for you though.

The drive you listed, 10K RPM SCSI LVD drive for $8 is insanely cheap. I've bought the same drive about five-six years ago for $200 I believe.

I don't think it's going to work for you though, because it's LVD. LVD stands for low voltage differential. What you are looking for, I believe, is single ended, which is what most older SCSI cards supports. Without knowing the details of the SCSi card in your computer, it's hard to tell.

What you want to do is open up the computer, and try to find marking indicating the model number for the card. then look it up on google and find the spec. It'll tell you what kind of connectors it has, and what are the supported SCSI protocol. I bet it's narrow SCSI II Ultra, supporting 20-40Mbps transfer rate. Then you should look for drives supporting that protocol.

You _can_ get a differential drive like the one you listed, and buy a separate converter for single ended connection. Maybe that's the path you want to take, because most cheap SCSi drives on eBay will have differential or SCA connectors. Plain SCSI II may cost more than those specialty drives, GB per GB.

Another obvious option is to get an IDE drive. I'm pretty sure the motherboard supports IDE natively, and SCSi host adapter is added on. In that case you can just get a cheap IDE drive and forget about SCSI. Check the motherboard to be sure.

For OS, I'd recommend buying 10.2, so called Jaguar, on eBay for ~$10-$20. You really don't need Panther (10.3) especially when Tiger (10.4) is coming out within a year. Plus, it'll cost you extra $50 or so, which I don't think is worth spending when you bought your computer for $25.

The install procedure that I know of is insert the OS CDROM in the drive, boot up the computer while holding "S" key or something like that. Then it'll boot to CDROM drive and you'll be able to install the OS. The instruction is usually written on the CD. The knowledge base on www.apple.com is pretty good. Click support, and you can search based on your hardware.

I was just reading the Seagate spec linked from the auction page which says

Seagate LVD drives are backward compatible with single-ended Narrow and Wide SCSI devices

Click to expand...

Get it while you can! Heck, get two of them at that price. But be sure to check your computer and make sure it's at least 16 bit SCSI 2. Older 8bit type controller won't work.

Good morning,
Thank you for the reply. The original hard drive (I believe it to be as it has the black plastic holder for the small cable end terminator card) is a Quantum p/n PX09L011 Viking II 9.1Gb drive. The SCSI adapter is an Adaptec AHA-2940U2B that is marked "ultra2 - lvd / se".

Thank you,
Frank

OK .. for the time being I have removed the SCSI card and drive and installed an IDE drive. I put in the CD OS 9.2.1 and held "C" down as it booted but I just get a blank screen. I figured I could get it stated that way and then do a format on the drive and then a clean OS install.

The drive is a used 60Gb IBM ATA-100 and it does have Windows on it .. does that have something to do with the no-boot from the CD? And if so is there anything I can do to use this drive? Am I using the correct startup procedure?

Trying to cram up on Macs but I have yet to find anything on re-using a used windows drive.

Thank you once again

Next you need to Initialize the drive, prep it for Mac OS 9. You can't have a Window's drive as your startup drive.

After booting from the Mac OS 9 Installer CD, look for a folder called Utilities, in there you'll find another folder Drive Setup ƒ and application called Drive Setup.



Use this to format and prep your drive for OS 9 install. No need to Zero Data or do any advance operation, if you know this drive is fully working. Just select the drive and click Initialize. Next Quit and continue with the installation.

If you have more than one device, then make sure you choose the correct drive. I hate to think you erased the OS, assuming your already using your Mac.