The 250/5500 powermac that Kim and Darryl have threw me a curly one
recently:
The specs for this machine say it uses IDE and I can confirm this as
I installed a 10gb IDE HDD after they bought the machine from you.
However when I supplied them with an IDE Burner, the Sony unit you
put in our G3 prir to selling it to us, they were telling me
v.strange things over the phone about its connector.
I couldnt believe what they were reporting so I had them bring it
around.
Shock Horror!!
They said 'told ya!' and indeed it was true, the Existing CD is a 50
pin SCSI unit, sheesh.
Is that a 'real' scsi channel or does it merely have an inline
IDE/SCSI converter (the specs at apple.com mention only an external
SCSI port (DB-25) for this model)?
If so can it be bypassed (with possible butchery) to enable the IDE
Sony CDRW to be used?
<snip>
yes and yes
yes it's IDE and Yes it's SCSI
Hard disk runs of a single IDE bus - and if I recall correctly it's
non master/slave which means you can't daisy chain a second drive on
to it.
other drives like CD & ZIP (if installed) still use scsi
the 5500 has PCI expansion
with a PCI card you can:
Add extra (up to 4) drives using an ATA (ide) interface card
Add USB which will support an external burner and any other usb 1
device you wish
add Firewire card for faster burning and for other firewire devices
you have one ide slot in this unit so choice well young padawan (sp?)
My choice would be the USB card because
1 the cards are dirt cheap - generic cards are under $30
2 external drive housings are cheap - can be picked up for under $150
3 other fun stuff can be plugged in to the one port - or even just
upgrade to an Apple Pro USB keyboard and a real 5 button Microsoft
mouse;)
you will have to upgrade to 8.6 or better if your not there already
--
~
Mark Secker [EMAIL PROTECTED]
ph#9380 1855 (ECEL)
ECEL Computer Support Officer, University of Western Australia.
CRICOS Provider No. 00126G
~
"present day
present time "
