I'm now the proud owner of a previously abandoned Beige G3/233. It was left
pretty much stock with 32MB RAM and a 4.3GB HD. I scrounged up a total of
320MB RAM and installed OS 9.1. Using the system profiler, I discovered
that it contains a Rev B ROM which, based on what I've read here, means I
can add a slave hard drive. Now is where I need some help.
It appears that I can mount the hard drive (physically) in the space next to
the floppy drive. There's also an extra connector coming from the ribbon
cable that's attached to the CD. My question is, is this where I should do
this? I come from a PC background, and I thought I remember reading
somewhere that it was a no-no to put a CD-ROM drive and a hard drive on the
same IDE because the I/O speed is somehow limited by the CD-ROM. However, I
don't see any other options; at least with the cables included with this
Mac. Any help (before I screw something up :-) would be greatly
appreciated.
You're right Dan, you should not connect a HD and a CD-ROM on the same IDE bus.
There is two IDE port of the G3. One for your internal HD and one for the CD-ROM. Therefore is you want to add another HD, your first option is to install it next to the actual HD as a slave on the same IDE port. Yes I know there is no specific mounting rail for it, but unless you plan to move your G3 around it will be OK. Put a piece of duct tape or any insulating material at the bottom of the casing just put your new HD on it with another piece of tape to hold it place. Sound cheap, but it will work forever. The other option is to instal it on top of the ZIP drive (I'm assuming you have a ZIP drive). There is a lot of room there and there is a mounting bracket. The only problem is you need to route the IDE flat cable from the original drive to your new drive. You will need a long IDE cable, but coming from the PC world, you know those are cheap and easy to get. If I can suggest, while you're at it, why don't you install a CD burner on top of your existing CD-ROM drive. Again they are inexpensive and easy to install. Power cable are there, IDE cable for one of the drive in slave mode and voil�.
You will have to leave the cover off or make a cutout on the front of the cover. All these solutions are obviously intended for the smallest cost. But it works great !!!
Good luck and welcome to the other world (the good one !)
Pierre Boivin
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