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

[Randy B.Singer]

Michael Elliott said:

>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.


A blue and white G3 has neither the ability to boot from a FireWire drive:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58238#faq10

or the ability to start up in FireWire Target Disk mode:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58583


External FireWire hard drive cases are so inexpensive now, that it 
doesn't really make sense to go for a kludge to house your external hard 
drive(s)  e.g. for $28:

<http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=103&cp_id=10316&cs_id=1
031602&p_id=2532&seq=1&format=2&style=>

And FireWire cases can be daisy-chained (assuming that you get one with 
two FireWire ports.)  So you can attach several to one computer.


Randy B. Singer

Co-Author of:
The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th and 6th editions)

OS X Routine Maintenance
http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html