Thanks to all who read my post three years ago about this issue.
Thanks to Reader 50 who responded.
The issue is still not resolved. "All" I want, is to be able to save /backup projects to an external hard drive, and thence to a PC for further development and ultimately to the outside world via The Internet.
This seems on the surface a simple issue, but it drove me barking mad three years ago and my Mac G3 (bought new in '99 as a University student) project ground to a halt and I gave up.
There was but one reply to my "The PCI / USB1 / FW400 / ATA100 issues" post in March 2018 despite it being read 2680 times. Perhaps I was trying to solve a range of issues and the topic/s was too broad.
Lat week I re-re-resurrected the G3. It seems to be running OK, three partitions on a HDD totalling 120GB. There's a video editing partition with Premiere 6, an old favouriute, and a Cubase 5.1 partition plus a larger storage partition.
If I can try and describe the issue, just to be absolutely clear, not being funny etc:
The G3 has FW 400 built-in, I have an external LaCie 20GB FW drive, just FW, no USB
The G3 has built in USB (retrospectively, USB 1) - two ports, one for KB & mouse, one spare. Transferring files this way is obviously painfully slow, but at least it's an option.
Back in the day I would burn three-minute video projects onto CD along with project files. These days, I'd like to create bigger projects on this machine.
So, my "simple" solution, was, and possibly still would be, an external drive that had both USB 2 and FW 400, so I could swap files easily - and quickly - between the G3 and PCs.
Looking through my collection of "stuff" I discovered that back then I had sourced an OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual RAID enclosure, which has USB 2 and FW 800, a FW 800 to 400 cable, and a Sandisk 120GB SSD.
(I also found a Seriatek 1eVE2+2 PCI 4-port SATA controller (also has 2 internal cables) card, imported to the UK at an alarming cost. This was presumably to address internal speed issues, so as far is this post is concerned is I think a herring of the scarlet variety.)
So yesterday I did this:
Plugged the drive into my PC (W10) via a USB dock. It didn't appear, but Windows knew it was here as it gave the merry "I see you" sound and again on disconnect.
Now, I can't recall if Windows can "see" Mac-formatted drives so they appear as folders. I thought it could but I'm not certain, so I followed OWC's instructions and inserted the SSD into
the RAID enclosure and set the selector to "independent", booted up. It didn't appear, tried a couple of times, nada.
My questions are! -
1) am I on the right track with this solution? Anyone tried it?
2) maybe the drive is toast (not "Toast" the CD-burning program), should I try to source one of MacTron's "known SSDs that work with OS9"?
3) have I missed something? Am I being a numptie?
4) with a new SSD do I need to do anything else, can I format the drive through FW, or do I have to insert the PCI card, connect the SSD/s, format, remove, etc etc - it appears I only need to do this if I'm partitioning the drive. I'm not worried at this stage about formatting a large drive to "only" 120 GB. It's a small price to pay.
5) Is there now a dedicated USB 2 + FW external drive? That would be like, oh I don't know, very cool.
6) really don't want to do that 4) internal formatting etc stage thing above. I nearly went mad three years ago.
7) Final thoughts as I'm typing this - is this all a sledgehammer to crack a nut? I have access now to a relatively new PC which seems to have a spare PCIe slot. You know what I'm thinking, sling a cheap FW card in there and my problem is solved. Could it be that simple? Am I missing something?
if 7) above, can I install a bigger drive - say a 120GB SSD or HDD in the LaCie? It is held together with screws,
9) Anyone come up with a way to run USB 2 on OS9 yet? Just kidding ...
I have of course read DieHard's Guide to creating a portable external drive but this doesn't address my issue. I have yet to find (apart from the OWC RAID box) an external drive that has both USB and FW.
I have, of course searched this Board, it seems most are concerned with booting from an external drive, speeding up internal storage etc. At this point I'm really not too concerned about speed issues, the G3 seems fast enough currently. Apart from this one thing.
After only two weeks into the re-re-resurrection shuffle, all this seems to be like wading through treacle. Please bear with me, I'm trying to re-learn many things what I have forgot.
I know a lot of you guys have bene doing this a loooong time and this problem may seem trivial, but someone could make an old man very happy if this wee problem were to be resolved.
I have spent a lot of time getting the G3 to this stage, within minutes of booting up for the first time in three years I remembered what it was I liked about it. How can a 400MHz single core be so ... snappy?
Fingers crossed - and, thanks. In any case, it's good to be back.