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| What CD-ROM Drive for Beige G3? |
Posted by: AC Rempt on 2024-09-29 22:06:28
I'm very new to Mac restoration, and I've come into possession of a beige G3 desktop running at 233 Mhz. The CD-ROM drive that came with it is dead slow and seems like it's dying, so I ordered an internal SCSI, but now it looks like the CD-ROM drive is on the IDE bus. Does that sound right? If so, any suggestions for a good replacement drive? Any brands to avoid?
OS 9.2 is installed if that helps.
Thanks for any assistance! |
Posted by: chriscarruthers on 2024-09-29 22:21:51
24X IDE (ATAPI) drive is standard: https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g3/specs/powermac_g3_233_dt.html
So one like this: https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/3873973...3kWbFfiTDG&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
If it has an Apple logo on it then you’ll definitely be safe. |
Posted by: Byrd on 2024-09-30 01:29:42
... anything Pioneer IDE branded, CD/DVD will also work well. |
Posted by: AC Rempt on 2024-09-30 08:01:17
24X IDE (ATAPI) drive is standard: https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g3/specs/powermac_g3_233_dt.html
So one like this: https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/3873973...3kWbFfiTDG&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
If it has an Apple logo on it then you’ll definitely be safe. Thank you! This is perfect. I don’t know how I missed that on everymac.com. |
Posted by: chelseayr on 2024-09-30 08:23:44
@AC Rempt to put it mildly, anything thats a g3 or says 'performa' by default are routed to use ide for cdrom's (clones are another matter as by default some would route this to scsi and yet many routes this to ide instead) .. although in theory you could still use a scsi one if you reroute things (abit the beige g3 and particular clones would need a scsi pci card installed to manage that) |
Posted by: AC Rempt on 2024-09-30 08:40:29
So I couldn’t add a CD-ROM to the internal SCSI the hard drive uses? I noticed there were two IDE ports, as well. I assume if I wanted to add a ZIP Drive, it would also be IDE, correct? |
Posted by: chelseayr on 2024-09-30 16:41:31
you probably could, you'll just have to see what kind of flexibility your current case setup has tho re rerouting the ribbons. as for zip drive, as far as I know it indeed is likely ide (as the non-beige towers later on provided it as a factory option too and they have no scsi controller onboard in the first place naturally) |
Posted by: croissantking on 2024-09-30 17:34:40
anything thats a g3 or says 'performa' by default are routed to use ide for cdrom's I think most (all?) PowerPC Performas have SCSI CD-ROM drives. At least I'm sure the 6200/6300 series do.
So I couldn’t add a CD-ROM to the internal SCSI the hard drive uses? I noticed there were two IDE ports, as well. I assume if I wanted to add a ZIP Drive, it would also be IDE, correct? You can use a SCSI CD-ROM drive, though you might have a bit of trouble with cable management. The Zip can also be either IDE or SCSI, both will work. In fact early Beige G3s that came with Zip drives were SCSI, and later switched to IDE. |
Posted by: chelseayr on 2024-10-01 05:01:50
sorry @croissantking good thing this wasn't a pm conversation, I guess I had a bit of brainfart at night after a tiring day regarding the 'hardwired' ribbon-to-slotconnector setup the performas had. and either way interesting regarding the mid-life swap with re the beige g3 zips |
Posted by: croissantking on 2024-10-01 15:57:25
sorry @croissantking good thing this wasn't a pm conversation, I guess I had a bit of brainfart at night after a tiring day regarding the 'hardwired' ribbon-to-slotconnector setup the performas had. and either way interesting regarding the mid-life swap with re the beige g3 zips Yeah, the earliest Beiges didn’t have slave IDE support, so had a SCSI Zip drive since the primary and secondary ATA buses were used for the HDD and CD-ROM. But then they added in slave support with the Revision B ROM and switched the Zip drives to ATA. |
Posted by: chelseayr on 2024-10-02 03:18:42
and @AC Rempt just in case you ever think of them i'll mention this for now..
the zip drive is basically in three generations with variations in each
100mb
both internal (scsi or ide) and external altogether were somewhat equally common,
you have to be a bit cautious with external ones tho due to the way that apple scsi is confusingly physically same as pc parallel [but obviously electrically absolutely incompatible] so one simple way to tell that apart is that the parallel zip drive simply just had the two rear ports alone with no visible slider switches down the middle but the scsi or "plus"(hybrid) variation had two small slider switches on rear to set the scsi bus itself]
250mb
can read/write 100mb medias as well,
there were both the 'classic' alike-to-100mb shell in matte sort of blue and modern more curvy shell in glossy sort of blue and the latter often is confusingly listed as eg "usb&scsi" online but that is *not* so as it is only a usb drive!
I don't know a lot more but others here would be happy to help in a new topic if you ever ask
750mb
someone else will have to check this for me but I think I recall that they could read 100/250 but had some kind of compatibility issues with writing to them,
and by now I somewhat certainly believe that scsi was completely dropped leaving you with just ide internally or usb and firewire externally |
Posted by: Franklinstein on 2024-10-18 08:14:47
I think most (all?) PowerPC Performas have SCSI CD-ROM drives. At least I'm sure the 6200/6300 series do. The only pre-G3 desktop Mac I know for sure uses an ATA CDROM is the 4400 (and clones based on the Tanzania board).
For a beige G3, depending on configuration (i.e., is it a low-end model with the Whisper personality card, or a high-end model with the Wings A/V and/or DVD decoder) I'll put in a 24x or better CDROM, a DVDROM, or a CD burner (all usually Sony or Matsushita to better fit the bezel). If you have a third-party 5.25" bezel that allows the use of other styles of optical drives (or you just throw the bezel out entirely), you can use whatever brand you want, though you may have to use third-party extensions to get the Mac to use it, and it may not be bootable.
Honestly if you want a CD-R, Gigamo, DVDRAM, Jazz, or something else that needs speed I'd recommend getting a FireWire card and use an external one because you'll get much better throughput than an internal drive on a beige G3 (their ATA bus tops out at 16MBps where FW400 is 50MBps) |
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