A few problems with my new PowerMac G4
Hi,
I recently replaced my iMac G3/250 with a brand-new PowerMac G4 1.25 MDD Tower.
Last October I had to retire my iMac due to performance/issues issues following an accident with condensation. To put a long story short - the inside of the machine got wet and once it dried out, it was just never the same. So after about 2 months of the machine freezing up and overheating, I decided to retire it. I had been using a PC (which I hated) running Windows XP to get me by until I was able to buy a new Mac.
Anyways, I bought the new machine last week. I have installed the 100GB HD (with Jaguar) from my old iMac in the empty slot below the HD that shipped with the PowerMac and I also installed a third HD in the bay below the Optical Drives, which is a Seagate 60GB drive which was formerly in the PC. I erased the HD and formatted for HDSF+. The drive seems to be running fine, but when I attempt to copy data from one of the drives to the third drive, the copy process freezes a few MB into the transfer and the machine becomes unresponsive, causing me to have to manually shut down (by pressing and holding the power button).
Now, I have read through the ATA installation instruction in the operating manual a few times and I have noticed that Apple recommends setting the drives to "cable select". I was forced to use this drive as a "slave" due to a missing jumper (Seagate has it set so "slave" is jumperless) and this is how it was used in the PC where it once resided. I was able to get a jumper from the IT dept. here at work and I hope that setting it as "cable select" will fix this problem, but someone told me that the issue might have to do with that drive bay being ATA 66 and all 3 drive being ATA 100. He suggested that I install another ATA 100 card to support the 3rd drive.
Also, I installed a 2nd Combo drive (Philips) in the lower Optical drive compartment. If I set it to cable select, the machine only recognizes the lower drive. If I set it as a slave, the machine recognizes both Combo Drives without any problems. Again, Apple recommends using cable select for these drives, too.
Now when attempting a Disc to Disc copy (Audio) in Toast, using the upper drive (which shipped with the computer) as the source and the lower as the burner, the disc burns about half way before ending in a fatal error saying that there was a problem with the CD-R. If I switch it so the lower Combo drive is the source and the upper drive is the burner, the CD burns, but the tracks are incorrect. For example, song #2 will begin at the end of track 1 and track 2 will begin a few seconds into the 2nd song.
If this helps, I am running Panther (v10.3.2)
Any help is appreciated.
I recently replaced my iMac G3/250 with a brand-new PowerMac G4 1.25 MDD Tower.
Last October I had to retire my iMac due to performance/issues issues following an accident with condensation. To put a long story short - the inside of the machine got wet and once it dried out, it was just never the same. So after about 2 months of the machine freezing up and overheating, I decided to retire it. I had been using a PC (which I hated) running Windows XP to get me by until I was able to buy a new Mac.
Anyways, I bought the new machine last week. I have installed the 100GB HD (with Jaguar) from my old iMac in the empty slot below the HD that shipped with the PowerMac and I also installed a third HD in the bay below the Optical Drives, which is a Seagate 60GB drive which was formerly in the PC. I erased the HD and formatted for HDSF+. The drive seems to be running fine, but when I attempt to copy data from one of the drives to the third drive, the copy process freezes a few MB into the transfer and the machine becomes unresponsive, causing me to have to manually shut down (by pressing and holding the power button).
Now, I have read through the ATA installation instruction in the operating manual a few times and I have noticed that Apple recommends setting the drives to "cable select". I was forced to use this drive as a "slave" due to a missing jumper (Seagate has it set so "slave" is jumperless) and this is how it was used in the PC where it once resided. I was able to get a jumper from the IT dept. here at work and I hope that setting it as "cable select" will fix this problem, but someone told me that the issue might have to do with that drive bay being ATA 66 and all 3 drive being ATA 100. He suggested that I install another ATA 100 card to support the 3rd drive.
Also, I installed a 2nd Combo drive (Philips) in the lower Optical drive compartment. If I set it to cable select, the machine only recognizes the lower drive. If I set it as a slave, the machine recognizes both Combo Drives without any problems. Again, Apple recommends using cable select for these drives, too.
Now when attempting a Disc to Disc copy (Audio) in Toast, using the upper drive (which shipped with the computer) as the source and the lower as the burner, the disc burns about half way before ending in a fatal error saying that there was a problem with the CD-R. If I switch it so the lower Combo drive is the source and the upper drive is the burner, the CD burns, but the tracks are incorrect. For example, song #2 will begin at the end of track 1 and track 2 will begin a few seconds into the 2nd song.
If this helps, I am running Panther (v10.3.2)
Any help is appreciated.
Comments
You might want to try shuffling the order of the disks on the controllers etc.
Dobby.
Grab a jumper from somewhere (your neighbours PC will do
Dobby.
Anyways I switched the optical drive (lower) back to cable select and this time, both drives are functioning normally. Weird. Last time I had it set to cable select, the computer made the lower drive, the main optical drive and the upper drie was not accessable.
Dobby.
Originally posted by chych
Sounds like the ATA controller is screwed. Swap the cables on the motherboard and see for yourself.
Screwed? The machine is less than 1 week old! The HD functions (reads & writes) without any problems. This (freeze) only happens when I attempt to copy data to it from one of the other 2 drives that are attached to the ATA 100 controller. I am beginnning to think that because this HD is attached to the ATA 66 controller, the drive isn't able to write fast enough to keep up with the data being transfered from one of the drives on the ATA 100 controller. So, the progress bar on the copy status window freezes. It's cool though, as long as I am able read and write to it without any problems, I'm happy.
Do you still get hangs?
What about copying data to the drive now on the ATA66 controller?
Dobby.