Quick question on G4 Cube booting from firewire drive...

[James Kenny]

Is this a known issue? I've found one other forum topic on macosxhints.com, but no proper idetification of the problem.

Basically, I've a new terabyte Western Digital drive, onto which I installed OS 10.3. When I run Startup Disk, from the OS X installer application running from the CD, I can select the Firewire drive. However, on bootup, the Cube doesn't recognise it. boooo!

So is it something about the Cube specifically? I dunno, I'm lost. I'm about to give up on modernising my Cube.

Also, what's the deal with Firewire Target Disk mode? Can I use it to boot my Cube from my mini mac? or what's that wizard, y'know when you start a Mac for the first time and it says 'Oh let's copy your stuff from an old Mac!'..... how do I get that to run again?

Anyway... thanks for listening to my ramblings.

[James Kenny]

Mine is a MyBook too... (lol, 'MineBook'). There's no working OS on the drive at the moment. The only OS that'll install on it is OS9. Even when it does install, it reports errors towards the end. It never caused a problem - the OS ran smoothly afterwards. It's only when I try to install OS X or Linux, then the installers cop-out complaining about a dodgey disk.

The worst part about all this? It took my three months to find the tight T-screws so I could take out the drive. On the first turn of the screwdrive I rounded the damn screw head. Disaster. I'll pobably have to drill the damn thing out.

Or, if I can boot from an external drive, perhaps Disk Utility's repair function will help, as you've suggested.

[James Kenny]

Also, excuse my poor spelling - I'm typing by monitor-light. Ssssh! My spouse is sleeping! I love you, honey! See what you've reduced me to!? Tinkering with all my toys in the dark while you sleep!

[Heather]

Cube Three had the bad hard drive and the broken optical drive. That's the one I mentioned in the first reply. I forgot to say that when I used Disk Utility to do an erase of the disk, I used the extra option of writing zeros to the disk so it really got a good thorough going over. Unfortunately, it has a shattered top on its acrylic case (UPS had fun with a poorly packed box) so it's my only computer that is not connected (to display, keyboard, mouse, power, ethernet etc) and ready to use.
Cube One had a loud hard drive. I got it a new hard drive on eBay that turned out to be bad. I was able to get it running using the same method of booting via FW drive and erasing it (extra zeros, too) with Disk Utility. Then I installed Tiger with my Tiger DVD. The hard drive failed within a week, so I replaced it again with a good hard drive purchased on eBay and repeated my steps. It is working flawlessly to this day.
My eMac, however, had the same issues and it worked perfectly for about six months but after that it began to do random shut downs from time to time. It's not the hard drive though, as it shuts down even when I boot it from the FW drive. Oh well, it only cost $27 and I picked it up locally so no shipping charges.

With no functioning OS installed on the internal drive, FW TDM will NOT work, thus my Erase/Restore method.
Do you have OS 9 on CD? If you do, try booting from the CD and then use Disk Utility to erase (with zeros) the internal drive. (If OS 9 has that option.) Then reinstall OS 9 and see how it goes.
Good Luck with the screws!! A Cube is too cool not to save, though!! Aside from the screw issue you're facing, the Cube is so nice to work on because of the easy access to everything.

[James Kenny]

Wow. You're a Cube master, I guess. Yeah, I'll stick OS 9 on it. Funny, I ran Disk Utility from the install CD, but it didn't even show / recognise the internal drive. Not good, I guess. Maybe it's shagged altogether.

Still, I really appreciate your help on this. I'll keep h4x1ng away and let you know.

[James Kenny]

Actually, Heather... if it's not too much trouble, and, really, please don't go out of your way to do this... could you send me a snap of the jumper configuration on the hard drive? I'm just wondering now if I fiddled with mine in the past and have the wrong one. i thought I had a diagram somewhere detailing the correct one, but, can't find it. And of course, I can't get the drive out either to look at the diagram on the drive label!

Anyway, if you know the config, that'd be great.

[Heather]

I printed this pdf when I did all of this the first time. Step 14 on page 6 is the one you want to read. Here's the link for the pdf: http://fastmac.com/downloads/cube_drive_install.pdf

[Heather]

Mine are set to MASTER as I have not upgraded my optical drives.

[connectionfailure]

Different drive manufacturers use jumpers in different ways. Some have a jumper On for master, Off for slave. Others have a jumper in one position for master, next spot for slave, third spot for Cable Select.
Most drive companies have this on their respective web sites. If it's a Quantum, just remember they were bought by Maxtor.

[James Kenny]

Well, Heather... it's come to an end. After booting 8 ways from Sunday, and failing each time, I decided enough was enough and I'd take out the hard drive, buy a new one.

Looking at the IDE ribbon plugged into the hard drive, I noticed it was slightly crooked. I couldn't push it in any further. I disconnected the drive and noticed one of the god damn connector pins bent to hell, touching one of the other pins!!! With much care, I pushed back into an upright position, hoping I wouldn't break the pin completely.

Reconnected it, booted, OS9 loads. Phew. Ran 10.3 installer disk, ran disk first aid though Disk Utility, fixed one major problem, couldn't fix another major problem, finished the install successfully. Ta-da!

My saga has come to an end. My Cube is working. Heather, thank you so much for your time and patience on this.

[James Kenny]

Just reading this article:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2699

Suggests that the base install of 10.3 doesn't have the right drivers for this FW800 drive. I think I'll resort to OS9, get the drive working on that, and then trying to boot from it.

[Leon]

Are you running the most up to date firware on the Cube? I think it is something like 4.1.9f? This is supposed to include better support for booting off firewire devices. You need to update firmware with OS 9.1 or better.

[macmedic]

Im not sure if this was answered but here's my 2 cents.

A) Make sure the firewire drive is a MASTER on the jumper
B) Make sure its not a drive larger then 120GB
C) Make sure you used a 10.3 retail CD kit and not ibook cd's or the like..
D) If a, b and Care right, the unit should boot

(Its still possible you need a later firmware version on your cube to boot 10.3) If you have never had 10 installed on the cube you would need to upgrade the firmware via OS 9 before the unit will boot.) I believe only 10, 10.1 and 10.2 gave you an error message if you tried to install OS X onto a machine that machine that did not have the 4.19f firmware if memory serves me correct.