Mac Noob - Can you use any harddrive in a mac?

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Scaa

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 8, 2002
Messages
208
So my gf's dad got a blue tower G3. He claims the harddrive can't work because it doesn't have drivers. I took it away from him and am going to turn it on tonight.

Supposedly he pulled the harddrive from an imacG3, and put it in the G3 tower.

I assume no drivers are required for the harddrive. Can a mac G3 tower use any hard drive? Or are there Mac specific Hard Drives. Does what he say about drivers make any sense? I am thinking that the jumper on the drive is not set to master, just asking some questions before I jump in tonight. I will probably have more tonight.

I have never turned on a mac before in my life...so that is why the questions are so basic.

Is this the best place for Mac help or does anyone have any forums they reccomend? Thanks.
 
Scaa said:
So my gf's dad got a blue tower G3. He claims the harddrive can't work because it doesn't have drivers. I took it away from him and am going to turn it on tonight.

Supposedly he pulled the harddrive from an imacG3, and put it in the G3 tower.

I assume no drivers are required for the harddrive. Can a mac G3 tower use any hard drive? Or are there Mac specific Hard Drives. Does what he say about drivers make any sense? I am thinking that the jumper on the drive is not set to master, just asking some questions before I jump in tonight. I will probably have more tonight.

I have never turned on a mac before in my life...so that is why the questions are so basic.

Is this the best place for Mac help or does anyone have any forums they reccomend? Thanks.
Click to expand...

Most any standard 3.5" PATA hard drive will work in the B&W G3. However, any drive larger than 120GB will be formatted down to only 120GB. You don't need particular drivers, but you will need to format the drive. You'll use either Drive Setup in OS9 or Disk Utility in OSX. If you don't have a bootable drive, you'll need restore/utility disks (of some form) to boot the machine to format the drive.

The B&W G3s don't boot to FW or USB hard drives, so you'll need CDs.
 
Early revision Blue and White G3 towers had a chipset problem which caused issues with hard drives larger than 6GB. They were known as "Revision A" logic boards. If the Hard drive you are putting into the computer is larger than 6GB, and the computer happens to be Rev A, that could be your problem.
 
OS8 has a drive setup application in the utilities folder. It's been a LONG time since I've used OS8 though.
 
felix88 said:
OS8 has a drive setup application in the utilities folder. It's been a LONG time since I've used OS8 though.
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Yeah. . .name of the app is Drive Setup.

The B&W G3 was definitely not one of Apple's finer engineering achievements.
 
So creative Mac, I just put in the disk it should boot form it and provide me with a drive setup utility somewhere in there, and I can use that to format said harddrive and install OS8 on it?

Sounds easy enough.
 
Scaa said:
So creative Mac, I just put in the disk it should boot form it and provide me with a drive setup utility somewhere in there, and I can use that to format said harddrive and install OS8 on it?

Sounds easy enough.
Click to expand...

Pretty much. You'll need to hold down "C" to boot to the CD. Then once you're booted to the CD, look in the Applications/Utilities folder and it should be in there.

Like felix88, it's been quite a long time since I've worked on OS8.x.
 
Ok awesome, this is for an older man who is afraid of the internets, and he just wants to get on, and needs nothing else really the mac would be good for him to use, he has convinced himself he will be mostly safe with a mac.

Should I be installing OS9? Or something newer? Can a G3 handle newer OS? Or is OS8 good for someone just on the net mostly.
 
I might catch a little flack for this, but honestly, the Pre-X Mac OSes were pretty crappy in their own time and now when compared to OS X, they just suck. Stick 10.2 or 10.3 on there (my friend's BW G3 runs 10.2.8 just fine) and go to town. Besides, the Pre-X OSes can't really run any modern browsers, leaving you with a crippled browsing experience at best.
 
CEpeep said:
I might catch a little flack for this, but honestly, the Pre-X Mac OSes were pretty crappy in their own time and now when compared to OS X, they just suck. Stick 10.2 or 10.3 on there (my friend's BW G3 runs 10.2.8 just fine) and go to town. Besides, the Pre-X OSes can't really run any modern browsers, leaving you with a crippled browsing experience at best.
Click to expand...

I agree. I'd go with 10.3 and load up on the RAM.
 
If the computer has 256megs of RAM or less and you don't want to put any more money into a system that old, I'd stick with some sort of classic (OS8 or 9). It will run fine and be a lot smoother than OS X. You just have to download an internet browser like iCab that can actually run on the older OS.
 
I will check on the RAM when I get it started, lets see if I can get it up first, and then we will install OS8 on it and go from there. Thanks everyone.
 
felix88 said:
I agree. I'd go with 10.3 and load up on the RAM.
Click to expand...

I can't possibly suggest putting ANY money into a B&W G3. These are machines that are generally being given away for the cost of shipping. Considering that a 450-500MHz G4 tower can be had for <$150, by God don't throw any money into a fossilized G3.

If he wants internet, definitely do NOT go with any "Classic" (pre-OSX OS). Most current web sites require more capabilities than OS9-compatible browsers can deliver. i.e. Flash player, security capabilities, etc. I mean 9.2.2 was the last update to a "Classic" OS - and that's been dead for 3 years now.
 
CreativeMac said:
I can't possibly suggest putting ANY money into a B&W G3. These are machines that are generally being given away for the cost of shipping. Considering that a 450-500MHz G4 tower can be had for <$150, by God don't throw any money into a fossilized G3.

If he wants internet, definitely do NOT go with any "Classic" (pre-OSX OS). Most current web sites require more capabilities than OS9-compatible browsers can deliver. i.e. Flash player, security capabilities, etc. I mean 9.2.2 was the last update to a "Classic" OS - and that's been dead for 3 years now.
Click to expand...

Well Ill get it up and post back and then we will see about an OS upgrade.
 
OK all i get when I turn it on is a folder icon with a ? and then switched to a mac logo and back to the ?
 
Ok, it has to be either the Keyboard, the ribon from the CDROM to the board, or the ATA slot on the board for the CDROM, because I tried a new CDROM and it still didn't work, I could try another ribon between the CDROM and the board, and see if that works...ill try that next.

Any other ideas.
 
Did some further research, I have a B&W Revision 2.

It seems to have 512MB of RAM. 128X4 at 100mhz

The info I found says it required Mac OS 8.5 or greater. So would that be the reason for the boot failure off of OS8.0 disk? Or should it still boot and then tell me it won't work?

So if I was to buy OSX what would I buy and can this G3 run it?
 
Scaa said:
So if I was to buy OSX what would I buy and can this G3 run it?
Click to expand...

Yeah. Get 10.2 or 10.3. Licenses go fairly cheap on eBay.

EDIT: Also, if you know someone with an older Mac that would have had either of those OSes on it, ask them if they need it anymore. If you upgrade, you still retain the license to your older version of the OS and many people no longer have a use for it.
 
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