komodo

The 350 MHz Rev. A blue and white Power Macintosh G3 is picky about its ATA configuration.

Specs

TODO: Pull from Apple System Profiler

Quirks

• The fan may or may not rattle loudly.
• Because this is a Rev. A model, "newer" ATA drives exhibit data corruption. Even the stock 6 GB drive from a tray-loading iMac G3 is "too new". Classic Mac OS will pretend to install just fine, but Mac OS X will abort the installation because it knows something is wrong.
• Open Firmware can't boot from hard disks connected to the CD-ROM drive and Zip drive's ATA cable, even though it can boot from CD-ROM drives on that cable just fine.

History

• 2020-07-06: The computer arrives at my parents' place from an eBay seller. One handle on the back bottom is broken. The hard disk is dead.
• 2020-07-06: ⚠️ A bit of plastic from the clock battery holder is chipped away when removing the clock battery.
• 2020-07-06: Attempts at using different hard disks I have on hand fail due to the data corruption issue.
• 2020-07-10: 📈 The RAM the computer came with is replaced with four 256 MiB sticks (256 -> 1024).
• 2020-07-17: 📈 I replace the dead hard disk with a period-correct 13.6 GB Quantum Fireball. No data corruption is observed.