Install issue

[nd2003grad]

Hello!  New here. After much frustration with my new g3 bw I  I am trying to install a new hard drive. It is 80 GB versus the lousy 16 GB one that is there now. I’ve got the universal installer desk and I can make it all the way to the end of the install and I receive a error message. Does anybody know how to get around this?

I have rev a so no ide 2 drive for me.  Tried 133 ata and realized only a couple of now rare cards work.

Error is problem calculating checksum. Starting results in booting to floppy image with question mark.

Thank you so much. I love this computer but need more than 16 gb.

[macStuff]

if you are talking about a REV A B+W g3.. i would highly reccommend an alternate mac-bootable hard disk interface, such as a pci sata card + new sata drive; at the very least get a PCI IDE ATA addon card, because its going to be leaps + bounds faster than the original IDE interface on the motherboard.. it just sucks!! its not very fast at all. like u will be lucky to get 20MB/s consistantly, its a waste to try to run any hard drive thru that ide interface! i used to use an Acard 6880M card that was also a raid card... has 2 IDE ports on it that can each take 2 devices..

theres a huge performance jump between going from Ultra ATA/33 to Ultra ATA/133 (or SATA/150)
like do the math:
133-33= 100
thats how much MB/s you have to possibly gain.. which modern hard drives can do just fine
get a sata/ide adapter, and a pci-ata or pci-sata card.. and enjoy your awesome macintosh at its best

it wont actually do 133 but itll do a whole lot more than 33! (otherwise your g3 will be stuck struggling to maintain 20MB/s)

[nd2003grad]

I appreciate the input.  At least I can type now since I'm on a computer and not my phone!  I got a PCI IDE ATA and it was the wrong one.  I can only find three compatible ones that were ever made, and they are scarce or quite expensive to say the least.  I play to upgrade more eventually, but at this time this is all I have to work with.  I've actually been pretty pleased with the CPU's speed; it's so much better than I expected and it's quite a capable machine for my main purpose (retro gaming and emulation).  At this time I really just need to know how to get OS9 onto my 80 gig drive for a start...

[devils_advisor]

Did you try to install it on the 16gb and then move it to the 80gb? Use the cdrom ide for that and see if it works. Before anybody gets fuzzy about it yes the cdrom ide will be slow. Hook the 16gb to the rom ide.

[nd2003grad]

Wait, so let me get this straight...you're telling me I could have just hooked my HD up to the CD-ROM IDE and taken the folders I already have on my 16G drive and copy them over to the other disk, and have a fully working disk that way?  I'd just swap them after that.  If I'm hearing you right, that sounds completely awesome.

[macStuff]

yea as long as u initialize the drive properly u should be able to drag entire folder structure to the other drive no problem, one of the perks of mac os 9 being so vintage

[devils_advisor]

yes that can be done, i believe nobody would recommend it because of the speed and you have to unhook the cdrom for that but yeah go ahead and do that and give it a try see if it boots up normally. for better compatibility hook the smalles drive the 16gb to the cdrom port.

[nd2003grad]

Since the goal is to actually swap drives (since I have REV A I can only have one HD without a compatible ATA/133), this is a fantastic help and I think I will achieve my goal with it.  Thanks for the help; I'll report back when finished.  Would this work equally with the HD hooked up to the Zip spot?

THANK  YOU ALL.

[nd2003grad]

Incidentally, I didn't mention that the previous owner installed MOS9L's 9.22 on the 16 g drive, so straight copy will do EXACTLY what I want!

[nd2003grad]

I would like to say that this was not only easy, it was fast and successful and the new drive is also much faster!!!  Now I can enjoy my B/W G3!  We had these in my college computer labs and I always loved them...stupidly, there was never a wait for the mac lab.

[macStuff]

glad u got your drive sorted..
your machine is still seriously gimped without adding an addon PCI Storage controller to bypass the faulty corruption-prone crappy implementation on the first G3 B/W

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/566397
read what grant has to say about it, he goes as far as to suggest that the firewire implementation is also flawed on the rev A B+W!

i will quote for everyones convenience:

Without the 646U2-402 chip on your motherboard, you have the "Heartbreaker" Blue & White G3. When upgraded to a Hard Drive faster than the original 4, 6, or 8 GB drives that shipped with the units originally, they become flaky -- producing crashes, freeze ups, and eventually disk corruption. But never repeatable enough to diagnose a firm problem.

The solution for most users has been to install a PCI Hard drive Controller, IDE or SCSI at your option, and live happily ever after. (Recently, the cheapest Mac-specific IDE Controllers have been new at NewEgg.com. The cheapest bootable SCSI is the used Apple/ATTO UL2D).

"Happily Ever After" that is, until you try to transfer large amounts of data over FireWire. At which point you may be forced to install a controller for FireWire to get satisfaction in using that Bus. Oh, and the Blue & White can not share its drives over FireWire using FireWire Target Disk mode, either.

still despite all these shortcomines, i still own a B+W, but mine is the 450mhz model, produced in june 1999, 6 months following the initial introduction, which i guess gave them time to circumvent their previous failures. (for more info: http://www.oldschooldaw.com/forums/index.php/topic,389)

[nd2003grad]

Appreciate the extra input.  I was disappointed to find out that the board is a Rev. A and what exactly that meant, but I think it's going to meet my needs (which are few)...at least I hope so!