Kris Tilford wrote:
On Oct 30, 2011, at 12:55 PM, Bruce Godfrey wrote:
Can any of you think of any reason why having drives on the ATA66 bus
is incompatible with having a SCSI drive?
No, there shouldn't be any interference between a SCSI bus and an ATA
bus. Some ATA100 & ATA133 HDs have problems with ATA66 speed and won't
be recognized on an ATA66 bus. Older Maxtor drives had a special drive
utility to change the firmware on the HD to support either older
slower ATA66; or faster ATA100. One Maxtor utility was called
"66to100.exe", but this was a DOS-only program, and it's doubtful you
need this, and even if you do, better to get a new HD than mess with
this.
I don't understand why you're using the ATA66 bus for a HD? Normally
the ATA66 bus would be the optical drive bus, and the ATA100 bus
should support two HDs. Since there are 4 bays total, I'm assuming the
OEM optical drive occupies one, the SCSI drive another, this would
leave only two open bays, and that happens to be just the right number
for two ATA100 HDs, so that leaves no open bays and no reason to use
the ATA66 bus for a HD. If this is correct, connect the HD to the
ATA100 bus and leave only the optical drive on the ATA66 bus. Should
work.
It is a matter of space and the interior layout of the G4 MDD. At the
front of this computer there are two ATA66 headers on the MB. One has a
long IDE cable in it that is routed up the opposite side of the case to
the two optical drive bays located behind those mirrored drive doors.
The other has an IDE cable in it that is exactly the right length to
reach two HDs which can be placed in the dual drive carrier under the
optical bays. There is a matching two plug power cable right there as
well. Apple clearly planned for us to be able to have some extra
storage there. My MDD came with two drives mounted in the front
carrier, I just hadn't used them yet.
The only other place you can put hard drives in this machine is at the
back in another two drive carrier adjacent to the ATA100 header on the
MB. I had one IDE drive and one SCSI drive there. With just those two
together everything was peachy. I am going to look for a longer IDE
cable and see if I an route it up to the front to put two drives in that
front carrier onto the ATA100 bus and just not use the second header on
the ATA66 bus. Maybe things will work better then.
Still, what happened is pretty mysterious, don't you think?
Bruce
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