[drewprops]

Just uncovered my bitchin' G3 tower last weekend and was dismayed to find my external SCSI CD burner was dead... actually it was just the power supply that was dead. I tried finding a replacement power supply, so far to no avail (manufacturer was bought by LaCie, who were apologetic about not being able to supply me a replacement for an 8 year old cable!

Can any of you hoodlums give me some solid recommendations for external drives that might work with this older machine? Device driver info would be appreciated, or advice on good keywords to use in searches (which I'll be attempting in the next few days). I found an article on barefeats.com that shows HOW to replace the drive INSIDE the G3 itself but I'd kind of like to leave the machine stock if possible. Yes, it DOES have firewire if you think there's a chance that existing firewire drives would work with an OS 9.x machine sans drivers.... or if you think there are still drivers for it.

I *do* have Toast on that machine, not sure if it's engineered to push a DVD writer or not... but that would sure be keen to be able to write DVDs from that old monster.... which practically SCREAMS on OS 9.2

[Luca]

External case + DVD burner. DVD burners are so cheap these days... they're barely any more expensive than CD burners.

Toast should work with just about anything. And remember, Apple first introduced a DVD burner in early 2001, a few months before the official release of OS X and a year before OS X became the primary booting OS for Macs.

If you want to know which drives are compatible with what, go to xlr8yourmac.com and look at the drive compatibility database. Generally, drives from Pioneer are your best bet, but it's been quite some time since I've read anything about this.

[drewprops]

I think I'll try your advice Luca...

First I looked at the database (which I'd seen yesterday) and found this particular review:


Reviewer's Name: Stanley Potopa
Date Submitted: 2/15/2006
Drive Type: CDRW
Drive Interface: IDE
Drive Brand: Lite-On
Drive Model Number: SOHR-5239V
Driver Used: Apple Standard
Mac Model: Apple BW G3
Mac OS Version: OS 9.2
Reader Comments: Bought this unit from Buy.com for $23.95. Works GREAT! Boots ok from Norton and System disks. Burns in Toast 5.2.1 flawlessly. Installed in 5 minutes. Can't find a hack, though, for use in iTunes. Oh, well, ya can't have everything!!
Mac B&W G3/400; 1 GB RAM; OS 9.2.2


Next I went to NewEgg and found these two things:

The Drive:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827106997

and an Enclosure:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817145360

At the end of the day I'll have a firewire CD burner and am assuming that it will work with my machine, which is configured exactly like Mr. Potopa's, though I'm not sure whether he installed his into his tower or into an external enclosure. Since Firewire hard drives work with the old Blue & White I figure that there's a good chance this will....

Any last minute suggestions before I pull the trigger on this one?

[edit: damn, he's over in Chinois right now!!]

[beardedmacuser]

Originally Posted by drewprops Since Firewire hard drives work with the old Blue & White I figure that there's a good chance this will....

Just checking, do you know that the onboard Firewire ports work on your B&W? The Firewire ports on my B&W have never worked (which may be a B&W Rev.A issue like the onboard IDE), but thanks to a USB2/Firewire PCI card everything's fine.

[drewprops]

Good question!
Yes, I can confirm that they work as I have several external Firewire drives already operating on those ports.

[copland]

Well my firewire works too, but it's flaky and I ruined many cds because of a dropped connection. I put in a firewire/usb2 combocard + external dvd writer from LiteOn -> now everything works perfect. Plus I can use usb2 devices (digital camera, ipod anyone?).
Besides my B&W Rev.A tower is humming along happily!!

[drewprops]

Very cool! And a good idea if I'm going to this trouble...

What brand card did you install?
I'm assuming that it shipped with drivers.... (?)

[drewprops]

Update.
I did in fact order the two components listed above and assembled the drive last night. For those of you who have never assembled a drive on your own it is very simple. I was concerned about how to set up the jumpers for the CD burner, electing to leave them set up in the "slave" configuration as marked on the rear of the burner mechanism.

I tried it out first on my Powerbook running OS X (10.4.8) and it worked like a charm with no need for drivers. Next I hooked it up (remember this is via Firewire) to the Blue & White G3, opened Toast, chucked in over 500Mb of data and hit the big fat red button.....

and it worked.

Like a charm.

At 32x speed as a matter of fact.

Very happy!!! Hope this helps somebody else when they go looking through our fora