carnage

2-Drive RAID enclosures.

I bought a 500 GB LaCie Big Disk a couple of months ago, but I didn't do enough research: it's two 3.5" 250 GB IDE drives, inside a nice aluminum case with a circuit board that makes the appear as a single volume on my desktop. The problem? I haven't really solved my redundant data issue. I'll be able to store a bunch of information to it, but it'll still be just one copy of the data. Worse yet, since the drives are written to randomly, I now have two sets of drive hardware that can fail. I've basically made my system no less fault-tolerant, and twice as fault-prone. Back to the drawing board.

I'm now in the hunt for a cheap, true RAID case. At this point, I'm still open to software (OS-level) versus hardware (in-case circuit board) RAID control, and I've found a couple of options.

Link: MINI 3.5'' SATA Dual Drive Aluminum Enclosure with SATA Output.

Link: DUAL DRIVE FIREWIRE 800/400 OXFORD 912 ALUMINUM MINI RAID ENCLOSURE .

Installing OSX on a Blue & White G3.

I went through the full gamut of installation strategies, in order to install Tiger on my mildly upgraded (DVD drive, 500MHz G4 JoeCard, 1GB RAM) Blue & White (Rev. A "Yosemite"). Apparently the Rev. A motherboards have all kinds of special needs, which are documented on a thoughtful page written by Bob at Headgap.com, a Mac resale store.

Link: Installing OSX on your Blue and White G3.

Specifications: Blue & White Power Macintosh G3 ("Yosemite")

Link: Blue & White Power Macintosh G3 specifications at LowEndMac.com

Specifications: PowerBook G3 Series ("Wallstreet").

Link: PowerBook G3 Series specifications at LowEndMac.com

Installing Tiger if you don't have a DVD drive.

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger now comes on a single DVD by default. While this is more convenient than the disc-swapping required by the 3 Panther CDs, it's tricky if you're trying to install Tiger onto an older machine that does not have a DVD drive.

I found an article by Jaharmi describing FireWire Target Mode (which I've also gone over) and a new technique involving using an external FireWire drive to create a dedicated partition that is a Tiger DVD disk image. Basically, you use Disk Utility to Restore the DVD to a spare partition you don't mind erasing. Handy if you have an extra FireWire drive lying around. I tried it this morning, and discovered a few things:

• The process requires you to erase a partition on your FireWire drive. This may require some thinking ahead.
• If you create a new partition, make sure you're generous in allocating space. Disk Utility will select the next lowest convenient number (based on the 1k = 1012 bytes formula, I expect) even if you try to get clever with your partitioning. The Tiger DVD takes up around 2.5 GB, so I tried to allocate just above that. The Restore process failed partway through, saying that there was some kind of file error. Giving the partition a full 4GB did the trick.
• If the Restore process does fail, both the source and destination volumes will remain unmounted. The visual indicator for this is pretty subtle (the volume names are greyed out in the list on the left, generally where you aren't looking) and you might be puzzled because further attempts to Restore will give you a "file not found" sort of error. The solution is to re-mount the target drive partition, and then use the File menu to eject the source DVD. Re-insert the DVD and it will mount.

The point of all this was to see if I could install Tiger onto my Wallstreet PowerBook via XPostFacto, which only has a CD drive. My quick experimentation with the new Tiger/FireWire partition described above resulted in a kernel panic. I'll have to look into this further, but for now I think the answer might be to send away for the Tiger CDs (see the "Media Exchange Program" box in the right column).

Tiger on iMac G3 (requires more RAM?).

I got Tiger working on my iMac G3 DV SE (a 400MHz slot-loading "Kihei" model). My initial attempts with the Tiger DVD led to the process hanging about midway through; I upgraded to 640MB of RAM last night and the install went off with out a hitch.

RAM's relatively cheap these days; the 512MB SDRAM module cost only $64 shipped from Omni Technologies, which has a goofy website (nearly all graphics and no text) but apparently makes their own chips and offers 24/7 customer support.

Installing Mac OS X via FireWire Target Mode.

Since the Power Macintosh G3 AGP, all Macs have supported FireWire Target Mode, the successor to the somewhat clunkier SCSI Target Mode. (Here's some history on the two.) Hold down the T key when your more modern Mac starts up, and it will magically turn into a FireWire device, visible to any FireWire-enabled Mac that you hook it up to. Any drives (optical included) will be at the disposal of the host machine.

MacOSXHints has a page that's chock full o' hints on how to use FireWire Target Mode on various machines.

This should be handy for installing Tiger onto the B&W G3 and the iMac G3; I was going to wait for the RAM upgrade for the latter, and haven't really figured out why the former keeps failing with the Tiger DVD.

A Tiger on Wallstreet.

After wiping some drives in eager anticipation, I ran into a small wall when attempting to install Tiger on the Wallstreet. I was puzzled until I figured out that that machine didn't come with a DVD drive, and Tiger is the first version of Mac OS X to come on DVD by default. (The Wallstreet won't tell you this, by the way; it will just tell you it wants to have a shot at formatting the installation DVD. In Pro-DOS format, no less.)

I have to figure out whether I can boot from a FireWire or other attached drive. I'm pretty sure the installations are machine-specific (e.g. I can't use the Titanium to install it one a drive and then transplant it). Either that, or take advantage of the Tiger Media Exchange (sidebar) by July 9th. Turn in your DVD and proof of purchase, plus $9.99, and Apple will mail you a set of Tiger CDs.

PDF: Apple Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger Media Exchange

UPDATE I may have spoken too soon. It looks like someone has done the transplant successfully.

Granite Digital FireWire products.

I was reading Macintouch this morning and saw an unusually positive endorsement for Granite Digital, which makes FireWire and other storage-oriented products:

[Louie Berry] My suggestion to him would be take a hard look at Granite Digital's large product list of FireWire enclosures, bridge boards, cables, and complete single units and RAID arrays. Throughout the last several years of reported FW problems, I've never had one instance of trouble from Granite stuff. They write their own firmware for the chipsets and I don't believe an update has been required since the release of 10.2. I use Granite enclosures on all manner of Macs from legacy machines to the latest G5s and move them from machine to machine; OS 9 to Tiger.

For years Granite was the leader in top quality SCSI cables, terminators, RAID, etc. and switched their main thrust to FireWire about five years ago. I have no connection with them except as a satisfied customer for about 10 years.

I don't have any of their stuff, but I may give them a try for a new 3.5" FireWire/USB case and maybe a bridge board for this little 2.5" drive enclosure project I'm thinking of...

DIY: replacing batteries on the PowerBook G3.

I have 3 PowerBook G3 Series (Wallstreet) batteries floating around, and they all have less than 10 minutes' worth of charge in them. This is par for the course; if you leave your PowerBook (or any other laptop with LiOn batteries) plugged in most of the time and the batteries don't get a chance to run down all the way, they're not going to hold a charge after a while. It's good to "exercise" them once in a while.

I did some digging and found this article on how to replace the cells inside your PowerBook G3 battery, and some photos of the battery disassembly process. Turns out each large battery has 9 smaller AA-sized LiOn cells in it, and if you're handy with a soldering iron, you can replace them yourself. The risks are high, though: LiOn batteries will explode if they're not wired up just right. This project is beyond my skill level, especially since it looks like the finished product won't give you anything near the battery life of a factory replacement.

But the plastics on these things are so sturdy. I wonder if I could crack them open and make them into 2.5" FireWire/USB drive cases...