>OK, suppose I pull it from the PB and plug it into my G4 tower as a >secondary drive. What will happen when I boot the G4. Will it know it isn't >the startup drive? >
You'd have to buy a IDE 3.5" to 2.5" cable converter for sure- no big deal, $4 online from Computer Geeks or $10-14 from a local computer store. That will let you hook up a laptop drive on a desktop IDE bus just fine- in fact it's the easiest way to install a Windows OS on an empty laptop drive for many PC laptops (if DOS drivers don't exist for their Cd-ROM, for example if you only have a PC Card IDE/CDROM that doesn't have DOS drivers). Bigger Q is whether on your G4, did Apple get around to finally using a "real" IDE controller or their half-umm...way desktop implementation that only allows one IDE device per channel and not a true master/slave combo like all other ATAPI/IDE controllers on the planet. It might have started to be implemented with the later revisions of the B/W G3 but that's a subject for another list (I'd say if I knew for certain, but I don't). The B/W G3 had a IDE HD, ZIP, and CD-Rom but there was something funny IIRC and replacing the zip or adding a 2nd drive I think was still an issue at least with some versions of the B/W G3. Maybe LEM web site has some info here, those things are old now... I think by the 2002 G4's they finally were using 1995 IDE technology and you could put a master/slave drive combo on one cable, but that's a lot newer model Mac than I have had to work on at this point. >What if I rename the HD in my PB, then do the above? Would that prevent the >G4 from mistakingly booting it as the startup drive? I would think that the boot disk on the G4 would retain it's "blessed" system folder and be able to keep track of which drive was which via PRAM. Regardless of the name. There's more to ID a drive's location than name (bus, position, etc). >If that would work, then I can pull the CD ribbon and plug the newer drive >into it and use Disk Copy to drop the old drive onto it, right? I find it unlikely that the internal IDE ribbon (CD or HD) of a G4 would match the 2.5" 1400 laptop HD connector, you need the aforementioned adapter. Unless they are doing something weird with G4 desktops IDE bus anyway and running slow, hot (in comparison) laptop drives on them... I was going to reply earlier and ask if you had a desktop Mac that you could try the IDE laptop cable adapter thing with, but I refrained, thinking that someone who was putting up with a 1400 would not have the later model Macs that this might work on :) Like I said the cable adapter trick works a treat on Windows installs, I've done this a few times, but as much as I like some things about Apple, they have broken "standards" in the past and it might be a royal pain or just impossible to do this with their IDE implementation, for no logical reason whatsoever. The one good thing about Macs is that if you can just figure out a way to copy the files across to a new HD, even via a localtalk printer cable file copy, it will be bootable when done, something which certainly isn't true for Windows. Anyway, with an adapter it COULD work. you might have to pull off the internal CD or ZIP on the G4 to make a place for the 1400 drive but it would be fun if it all just worked once you got the cable adapter. Brian -- PowerBooks is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Enter To Win A | -- Canon PowerShot Digital Cameras start at $299 | Free iBook! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> PowerBooks list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/powerbooks.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/powerbooks%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
