G3: hard drive & start-up issue

[n370]

I am not very Mac-savvy as I have mainly used PCs in my time, however my co-worked who uses a Mac is having some technical troubles...

After getting a new G5, he wants to take his old G3 home and use it there. The G3 originally came with an 8GB Quantum Fireball SE (3.5 Series) hard drive, but has since been update with a 40 GB drive. However, the 40GB drive completely died and is no longer in the machine. When he starts-up he receives a blinking question-mark symbol and it will not start. I believe in technical jargon, this is called "bad". Yet, when the IDE cable is removed from the CD, and Zip drive (the only other devices in the system), his OS starts-up fine.

What I am hypothesizing at this point is that the 8GB drive (which he has since reinstalled the OS and system files onto) is still set to be the slave drive since the now-dead 40GB was the master, and the 8GB was never reverted back to master. If this is the case, would it make sense that having other drives on the IDE loop cause the system to not recognize the 8GB as the master/primary drive? I believe they are all connected to the IDE cable in the proper order (from motherboard: hard drive first, then to CD-ROM, then to Zip).

I had planned to simply switch the master/slave pin setting on the 8GB drive, but no where on the hard drive are the master/slave pin settings shown. I've tried to find the info online, but haven't had much luck. Is there a good resource out there for that info. I went to Quantum's website, but dead-ended there as they don't seem to provide that info. Bummer.

Any thoughts or help would be appreciated. If I'm way off base let me know. Thanks.

 

[Impera]

Hi

If there are 3 devices on the computer at this time plugged with the same cable, i suppose that you are using SCSI interface, not IDE.

If SCSI: check for the hard drive to be set to ID0 (I-D-zero). This is the default ID for master hard drives. You can check on the drive physically for any jumpers on it, can be on the cable end or on the bottom part of it, where the green silicon tablet is. There can be a very small jumper in wich are printed some numbers, tipically 0,1,2,3. Make sure the jumper is set on the 0.

If IDE: The drive HAS to have jumpers for master/slave configuration, as well as the CD and the ZIP drive. On the hard drive, try locating the jumpers and try different configurations. The worst thing that can happen is for the computer not to boot at all.

Hope this helps ! =)

 

[n370]

thanks for the reply. I'll look again at everything and see if I can resolve this issue.