[X4U] OT: using old tower Mac as a Firewire case?

[Michael Elliott]

I have several bare ATA/IDE drives.  I have had a failure of another  
external case, but the drive appears fine.

I purchased an external 2-drive Firewire case years ago, but it  
failed after a year.  Another case did the same.

As I was scouting eBay today, I noticed that old G3 Blue/White (and  
even older beige) tower Macs with on-board firewire were going pretty  
cheap.

I know that if I mount a Mac as a Firewire device at startup that all  
of the attached devices to it will also mount on the host computer.

I was wondering if anyone could comment on the plausibility of  
purchasing a beatup G3 (specifically Blue and White), pulling out the  
CD-ROM and/or Zip drive, putting IDE drives in all the slots, and  
then restarting the computer with the command-T (or just T) key held  
down, and then connecting to my Intel iMac by Firewire cable?  That  
way, I would still have a large case with a fan, and one power supply/ 
power cord to worry about.

Thoughts?

Michael