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[JohniMacG4]

Hello Mac OS 9 Lives community. 

I need some advise and help getting firewire drives to mount on my (new)old iMac G3. 

A sweet little old lady gave me her iMac G3 (DV) that was still in it's original box these past 23 years.  It is sage green and it's absolutely stunning.  It fired up and has OS 9.0.4 installed, and iMovie 2.  I put iTunes version 1.0 on it and plugged in a Harmon Kardon iSub.  It's a rockin' little vintage Mac music machine!  But I have bigger plans for it.

Unfortunately I can not get a FireWire drive to mount.  I have an older Lacie F.W. Porsche hard drive, FW400, 160gb.  I am formatting the Lacie using my iMac G4 running Tiger.  I always choose to install OS9 drivers, and I have tried different formats and as well as partitioning it into smaller pieces.  Nothing.

I am using a little old 512mb USB-1 stick to transfer files to it for now.  But I really need to be able to mount FireWire drives.  I want to clone this system to an external drive before I mess with it anymore.  I also want to set it up with an OS 9.2.2 system and run Pro Tools LE 5.2 on this sweet little machine. 

I'm concerned that perhaps the FireWire (card? circuitry?) may have fried a capacitor or something. And I'm kind of terrified by the idea of taking this giant fragile egg apart to repair it.  But I can find the personal courage if I can find the guidance from a worthy Jedi.

Any experience based advise and insight would be very welcomed. 

Thank you!  Sincerely,  -John M.

*Image below, cropped and re-sized for display. - aBc

[DrNo7]

Hi John,

Before going Jack-The-Ripper on your iMac G3, some silly questions:
* does the FireWire extensions activated on your OS 9.0.4 ?
* What is the feedback from the system info application (in the apple menu) when you plug the FireWire drive ?

[JohniMacG4]

Thanks for chiming in DrNo7.

I would like to avoid going Jack-The-Ripper on this sweet little Apple Egg. 

It appears that yes, the FireWire option is enabled.  Also, when looking at the System Profiler without the FW Drive plugged in, and with it plugged in, it does see something when it's plugged in.  But it does not mount onto the desktop, nor does it show up anywhere else that I can see.  It also doesn't complain when I unplug the FW cable without performing the usual "Dismounting" or "Ejecting" before unplugging. 

I took a few screen shots, and will attach them for you to look at:
1. Showing FW Enabled, 2. Showing no drive plugged in, 3. Showing when the drive is plugged in. 

I was pleased to find the familiar screen shot key commands in place way back here in Mac OS 9.0.4.  But I did have to convert it from the "QuickDrawPicture" format that the iMac G3 created, to a "PDF" to be able to upload them for you here.

Do you have any other ideas?  Thank you again!

-John M.

[DrNo7]

Thanks for the screenshots. At least the most obvious problems have been ruled out. And the FireWire port seems alive so no surgery needed.

I wonder if the enclosure detection yet no disk shown could not be a partition table incompatibility. Could you please check and screenshot Tiger's Disk utility to see if the partition table is GUID (recent and maybe unknown to OS 9) or if it is the Apple format ?

»)

[JohniMacG4]

I like your thinking regarding that maybe the enclosure is identifying it's self, but maybe the drive is not.  I have tried a different FireWire Drive, with the same result. 

Currently the drive that I'm testing with is formatted as Mac OS Extended... but I've tried Journaled, non-journaled, even FAT-32.  neither drive nor any format has successfully mounting over the FireWire ports. 

Another thing worth noting is that I have an old SanDisk Cruzer 512mb USB stick, and it is formatted as Mas OS Extended, and it pops up on the desktop lightning fast.  This little USB stick has been how I've made progress in lieu of FireWire drives. 

But I want to build a bootable 9.2.2 partition on a FireWire drive.  And then I'll need FireWire drives for Audio when messing with old OS9 versions of Digidesign's Pro Tools, or Video files for iMovie 2. 

... and again, thank you for sharing your thoughts and giving me some of your time.  I appreciate it. 

-John M.

P.S.  This is new information...  So, I have an iMac G4 that I recently did a bunch of work on.  It currently has a 500GB SSD installed, and it's partitioned into 5 equal pieces, for experimenting with different OS versions.  I started my iMac G4 up in Target Disk Mode, and plugged it into my iMacG3, and powered her on.  All 5 partitions mounted on to the desk top.  So that's good news.

[FBz]

IF one of the partitions on your G4 iMac has a
bootable version of OS 9.2 installed AND you have a
copy of Drive Setup 1.9.2… then attach your firewire
drive to the G4 and attempt to mount and possibly
reformat the firewire drive with Drive Setup 1.9.2. from
the booted OS 9.2 partition.

IF the above is possible for you… then - attach the
newly reformatted firewire drive to your G3 and see if
it is then recognized / mounted?

There’s also another route using FWB’s Hard Disk
Toolkit(?) for firewire drives with G3’s [if I remember
correctly] but it doesn’t work as well when moving the
firewire drive(s) back and forth between different G3
and G4 machines.

[JohniMacG4]

If only I could do exactly that.  You have just touched on the other deeper issue. 

I have not been able to get a bootable 9.2 partition on the iMac G4 yet.  Not for a lack of trying either.  I've been trying to make that happen for 2 months now.  I've tried so many different variations of the attempt that I've lost count.  I've tried using the 9.2.2 Universal Installer, the 9.2.2 Bad Machines installer, the For Unsupported G4 image, the 2013 OS9Lives image build, ... I've tried Restoring the images partitions using Disk utility, I've tried using Disk Set Up from Classic Mode, I've tried installing on the internal drive, on FireWire drives, on USB sticks, target disk mode, option boot, Booting from the CD holding "C".  When I swapped out the 80GB IDE drive for a 5-way partitioned 500GB SSD drive, I first installed the SSD in a FireWire enclosure so I could partition it and have the option in Disk Utility to "install OS9 drivers", so that I would be sure that the drive and partitions have OS9 drivers on there when I put it in the machine.  That has not made a difference yet either.  (the "Install OS9 Drivers" option in Disk Utility does not show up when addressing the main installed system drive or partitions on that drive.)

It's bonkers.  Or at least, it's making me bonkers. 

I was hoping that getting this G3 iMac would ultimately help me to get OS 9.2.2 up and running on the G4 iMac.  But I have not figured it out yet. 

What is it telling me about the situation that it will successfully mount the 5 partitions of the iMac G4 when plugged in as a Target Disk Mode, but not simply a properly formatted and powered external FireWire Drive.  There is a clue in there, but I can't decipher it yet. 

-John M.

[aBc]

Sorry… I missed the fact that you’re using a G4 (Flat
Panel) iMac - which evidently requires the use of the
Unsupported G4 installer (and some other “little
tricks”). See MacMan56’s comments: http://
macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?
topic=4366.msg38822#msg38822 … as well as other
commentary peppered here throughout the Forum.

I’ve a 20” G4 iMac and it cannot use the Unsupported
to run OS 9… so I’m not much help there.

Sooo…
You might try installing Hard Disk SpeedTools
https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/hard-disk-speedtools-36
 on your G3 iMac and use that to format the firewire
drive. Then if that works and you are then able to
eventually complete the OS 9 install on the G4 Flat
Panel - you might be then able to *reformat that FW
drive using Drive Setup 1.9.2 (from / on the G4 FP?).

*reformat - in case the FW drive doesn’t play nice with
the G4 FP iMac, as formatted by SpeedTools.

Really, it would be sooo nice if you had a Quicksilver,
MDD or other G4 machine to approach these little
hurdles. Might help with your sanity? Your current
“pair” of machines simply don’t complement each
other very well. (Currently)

[aBc]

ALSO...

Most of the difficulties I have had attempting to mount
FW drives on earlier G3 models (and even some G4’s)
have all seemingly been attributed to the actual
formatting of the FW drives themselves - and I (among
others) have found that using Drive Setup 1.9.2 to
format / reformat these external firewire drives has
provided the solution.

Now, I don’t know which version of Drive Setup is
included with OS 9.0.4. (on your G3 iMac) BUT if
whatever version it might be, actually allows
reformatting of an unmounted Firewire drive… I’d try
that. If no success, then you could simply try adding
Drive Setup 1.9.2 to your G3 iMac to see if that might
work? (DS 1.9.2 attached below.)

Drag it to your Utilities folder under OS 9.0.4’s
Applications folder, reboot and then try it out? No joy,
then delete it.

Note: I’ve also had to resort to “PRE-re-formatting”
some external drives, USB sticks (etc.) to “MS-DOS
File System” before I could then use Drive Setup 1.9.2
(under OS 9) to final format such media for use.



If all of the above doesn’t work… then maybe using
Hard Disk SpeedTools (mentioned in the previous post
above) will at least allow you to drag whatever it is
from your G3 iMac that you might wish to save before
updating to 9.2.2 / in a sort of stopgap approach?

Formatting with HD SpeedTools might even help to
also mount the FW drive on your G4 iMac too?

As for your G4 iMac and OS 9.2…
I’ve searched the Forum for the definitive guide /
threads concerning that OS 9.2 installation and have
been unsuccessful. (I know this exists, just can’t find it
at present.) But I did find this… which may be helpful?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GW0KOk2LREY

Best of luck to you!

[DrNo7]

On a side note, waking up today I realized that PRAM zapping was not mentioned :p

Does not cost much (commad + option + P + R pressed and maintained pressed at startup until you heard 2 startup chimes) and might help if it is due to some weird configuration in the PRAM.

[JohniMacG4]

Well, I got a bootable OS 9.2.2 installed on my iMac G4.  Finally after 2 months of trying.  So now I can at least try formatting the FW drive on the G4 in OS9 and see if my G3 will mount it. 

I wrote a much longer reply than this but I guess I got logged out before sending it and I lost it all.  It was probably too long anyway. 

The important part was the big "THANK YOU" to users DrNo7, and FBz, and aBc, for your responses and ideas and your help.  I really appreciate it. 

Sincerely,
-JohniMacG4