Mac OS 9 Discussion > Hardware

FireWire 400 drives will not mount on my iMac G3 (DV). Please help me if you can

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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 ?

ยป)

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.

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