[G4] nonexistent drive problem solved

[Ronald Steinke]

On 6 Jul, 2007, at 6:40 AM, Roxylee wrote:

>  I think my daughter is going to get the ATA HighCap driver instead  
> of partitioning the HD. Has anyone used this instead of partitioning?

I used a Sonnet brand ATA IDE controller card (the Tempo ATA 133  
model) to be able to install high capacity drives. I use the plural  
because I eventually used four drives in the same case; two 80Gb and  
one 160Gb and one 240Gb. I did have to buy an extra cable to be able  
to use the second ribbon socket of the card to do this. The card came  
with only one cable and it only reached to the double-drive bracket  
mounting place.

I was pushing the power envelope, I think, because one drive or  
another would sometimes fail to mount on boot. If a drive failed to  
boot, I would use Disk Utility to mount it and go on about my  
business. Eventually, I was able to buy a PowerPC G5 and that card  
became redundant because it was not compatible with the G5. It now  
sits in the old G4 case in the garage as my emergency backup machine.