Mac OS 9 Discussion > Mac OS 9, Hacks & Upgrades

Sawtooth Hell (SSD)

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aBc:
SUCCESS!
Well sorta anyway.

450 MHz SP Sawtooth running and booting both OS
9.2 and Tiger 10.4.6 from a dual, equally partitioned
120 GB Inland brand SSD, with a StarTech SATA
adapter bridge.



Last night and into the early morning hours here, the
Sawtooth seemed to almost make it through the
complete boot sequence with OS 9.2. Right up to
when desktop icons would normally begin to appear…
and then the monitor would simply go dark. (With an
occasional pair of audible “dings” soon thereafter.)
And that was with a Shift-key boot to disable
extensions. Tiger always booted fully and without
problem.

Updated the Sawtooth’s Firmware from 3.2.2f1 to
4.2.8f1 and it still pulled the same stunts under 9.2.
Actually a few times, suspected some ATI extension
problem. So after chasing and testing various ATI
extensions off and on, I gave up early this morning.

This afternoon… (in a Quicksilver) reformatted,
partitioned and re-installed both OS 9.2 and 10.4.6 on
the 120 GB Inland SSD and found a suitable nVidia
video card. Re-placed the StarTech + SSD and the
nVidia card in the Sawtooth and Option-key booted
the thing into the then visible OS 9.2 partition. No
problems. Quickly turned off all of the ATI extensions
and then selected Tiger for a reboot. Again, no
problems.

Only when I selected the OS 9.2 partition then for a
reboot from within Tiger… ooops. It booted right back
into Tiger as if OS 9 didn’t exist at all. The OS 9
partition didn’t even appear as a selection when
Option-key booting after that. So then, loaded the OS
9.2 “Universal” installer into the tray and booted that.
From there, using the Startup Disk control panel,
selected the OS 9.2 partition for reboot and it then
rebooted right back into the OS 9.2 partition. AND that
is repeatable, as long as using Option-key booting
between the two partitions. AND it does exactly the
same when using a green “Bribge” (EVB-002-3) SATA
adapter. (Both the Bribge and the StarTech jumpers
set to Master.)

Ahh, the lowly “Bribge”. ;)

Now I haven’t tested it as a Slave with a conventional
HD in place as a Master - but if the SSD was entirely
devoted to OS 9.2 AND that would work, I could
accept that. BUT not going to test that right away. But,
may do so before I use Tiger’s Disk Utility to reformat
the OS 9.2 partition (with OS 9 drivers checked) and
then re-install OS 9.2… as if the different formatting
might allow Tiger to actually reboot into a newly
reformatted (Extended) partition with OS 9.2… again,
freshly re-installed.

I do prefer formatting OS 9 partitions with Drive Setup
2.1 as it yields slightly better benchmark results and
all ‘round better performance. I’m definitely OS 9 -
centric.

And this current result is kind of funny… in the sense
that Tiger may really prefer OS 9 operating and linked
to it, under “Classic” mode?

It was killing me last night, as I’ve never had such
problems using an adapter and SSD, even in a G3
Blue & White!

And I haven’t tested this yet in the other (400 MHz)
Sawtooth with its’ current resident Boot ROM of 1.3f1.
[There is a 2.4 Firmware Update too.] Suppose I could
try the 2.4 AND the 4.2.8f1 updaters?

Good night!

Where this all began:
https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/any-suggestions-on-ide-to-sata-adapters-for-a-g4-mdd.45940/#post-535900

Jubadub:
I miss having a room looking like that... Beautiful.

thecookfamily:
I am using the Starteck SATA interface with a SanDisk and has the same issue (Blue and White G3). I swtched between master and slave. Was equal partitions. The only way I fixed it was to keep 10.4.11 and 9.2.2 on the same partition. This allows me to select and successfully boot both OSes.

aBc:
I’ll have to check… but IIRC - none of my Blue &
Whites here have, or had this problem. They’re all now
setup with OS 9.2.2 and Tiger 10.4.11 on two different
partitions (on the same SSD) and now always capable
of booting back and forth between both, without using
Option-key booting.

Which is why it now seems very odd to me that this
Sawtooth currently requires it in its’ current, similar
configuration.

I’ve avoided both on the same partition since the early
days of OS X and all of the crashes and freezes that I
experienced “back then” when Apple first advocated
installing early OS X right over and on HDs with OS 9
already present / resident.

(Wish I had all of that time back from all of those B&W
crashes and freezes.) ::)

But yes, thank you very much for the input. I will look
into this further. ;)

There’s always an addendum…

Seems that I’d remember - or at least retain some of
this; as much as I’ve posted about the G3 B&Ws over
the years.

Well, I just booted the closest B&W that I have here
and it still has an original 40 GB conventional HD in it
as well as a 120 GB Inland SSD (with 3 partitions)
connected with a Bribge EVB-002-3 SATA bridge
adapter (jumpered as Slave). AND it boots back and
forth between all partitions on all drives without using
the Option-key boot. (Perhaps because that approach
is unavailable with the Blue and Whites anyway.)

@mustagcoupe has a solution / workaround for that
which I’ve never used because I’ve not needed it. PM
him with questions.

AND all B&Ws here have the Rev.2 mobos with the
CMD 646U2-402 IDE controller (which might have
some possible bearing here as well). More info? See:
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=6127.msg45792#msg45792

That post also covers the Seagate HD and the jumper
settings for “Master with non-ATA compatible slave”
settings. *Of some possible importance if one intends
to use both an original HD and an SSD with a bridge
adapter of some sort… instead of just running with a
solo SSD alone, jumpered as a Master.

The Sawtooth has its’ original 20 GB IBM Deckstar HD
which also notes a double jumper option for “Device
1(SLAVE) Present”. So I may try that later too.

Anyway… here are some pics from the B&W’s ASP:



Blue colored HD icons in the inset above are from the
Inland SSD, while the “uncolored” icons are from the
Seagate (and the partition entitled “PowerMac” has
Tiger OS X / 10.4.11). Don’t ask what “OB” signifies,
as I don’t remember. But likely, these were all
formatted from within a 1.42 GHz MDD.



So it seems that whatever I use to pre-format, partition
and install on any SSD may have some bearing on
whether or not partitions are individually bootable?

AND as far as the ATI video card vs. the nVidia (and
extensions)… the Sawtooth's Extensions Manager
reveals the following from the B&W's SSD:



So I may try the ATI card back in the Sawtooth with
the above two ATI extensions off. The above
screenshot taken from the B&W’s SSD, now in the
Sawtooth, which now boots back and forth from all
partitions on the SSD without the need for Option-key
booting.

Maybe I should just clone the B&W’s SSD for use in
the Sawtooth? ::)

And hey @thecookfamily, check out
this (former) Blue and White G3:
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=6215.0  ;)

 

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