Any hard drive limit on an iMac G3?

Sunnz

Sunnz

Who wants a stylus?
Got this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Steve_Jobs_with_iMac.jpg

But it is the (newer?) one with slot loading.

I am able to remove its hard drive.

Looks like an ordinary PATA to me... now wondering, if there are any hardware limit on how big (capacity) of hard drives this G3 will support?

I am planning to install some sort of BSD on to it, wanted to set up a file server.
 
So is it a hardware limit, or software? It is said that there is a driver to get around this... but if I use something other than OSX, would I need it?
 
I have an old iMac and ran into the hard drive sizing issue. Basically, I created 2 partitions, 1 for the OS, and 1 for Home Directories. (It broke the HD into small enough piecies for the hardware to use it.)
 
Oh, so say if you have a 300 GiB HDD, you could do something like 100GiB for /, 100 for /usr and 100 for /home and etc. and it will work?
 
Thanks guys.

On OpenBSD PPC mailing list, I've found out that the limitation is limited by the OpenFirmware used in iMac G3, so when I insert the OSX CD it can only use 128 GiB.

I am installing OpenBSD now which does not rely on OpenFirmware and well, it is now formatting the whole 320GiB HDD, seems like it actually does work now!!!

So, it is not exactly a hardware thing, just a limitation in the OpenFirmware.
 
Well, sure, good luck on that.
You would be wrong, but good luck, anyway.

The limitation is provided by the drive controller chip on the logic board, and would not be controlled by Open Firmware, nor something you can bypass completely by simply installing BSD, and is truly a hardware limit.
This will make itself known the first time you copy files to fill past that 128GB limit.
 
So it is really a hardware issue??? :confused:

It is all formatted now and installing the system files... so you are saying I shall fill it up pass 130GiB and see if it still works?
 
I don't have much of a choice anyway...

What if I put it in a external enclosure and connect to it using USB, would there be any limit then? (Not worry about booting up using USB, I can always just use the original HDD for boot up then mount the new external disk.)
 
Sure, that's a solution. External drive cases sold within the last 2 or 3 years should support large hard drives.
 
Yea I got a few spare ex-cases lying around.

Seems like it isn't needed though, the internal hard disk has been filled pass 130 GiB, today. (See attachment.)

Convinced yet? What else shall I check?

By the way, this is one of those 'newer' G3, not the Blueberry, but I believe it is the Indigo, with 500 mhz clock speed... maybe it had a newer board after all and therefore does not suffer the 128GiB problems of earlier G3 models?
 

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Sunnz said:
Convinced yet? What else shall I check?

By the way, this is one of those 'newer' G3, not the Blueberry, but I believe it is the Indigo, with 500 mhz clock speed... maybe it had a newer board after all and therefore does not suffer the 128GiB problems of earlier G3 models?
Click to expand...

Not convinced - no G3 has support for larger drives.
Why does your df command not show all your partitions? I run the same command, and mine shows 8, including automounts. (also a 500MHz iMac)
c-71-200-34-176:~ dad$ df -k; df -h
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/disk0s10 62904000 23167340 39480660 37% /
devfs 100 100 0 100% /dev
fdesc 1 1 0 100% /dev
<volfs> 512 512 0 100% /.vol
/dev/disk0s12 14976992 2386608 12590384 16% /Volumes/the Abyss
automount -nsl [120] 0 0 0 100% /Network
automount -fstab [124] 0 0 0 100% /automount/Servers
automount -static [124] 0 0 0 100% /automount/static
Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/disk0s10 60G 22G 38G 37% /
devfs 100K 100K 0B 100% /dev
fdesc 1.0K 1.0K 0B 100% /dev
<volfs> 512K 512K 0B 100% /.vol
/dev/disk0s12 14G 2.3G 12G 16% /Volumes/the Abyss
automount -nsl [120] 0B 0B 0B 100% /Network
automount -fstab [124] 0B 0B 0B 100% /automount/Servers
automount -static [124] 0B 0B 0B 100% /automount/static
c-71-200-34-176:~ dad$
Click to expand...
A partition over 128GiB, on a logic board that doesn't support it, is like waiting for the bomb timer to stop ticking. It will happen - you won't be able to ignore the file corruption. I suspect you haven't rebooted that iMac yet? BTW, there's no need to have a boot partition of less than 8GB, that's only needed on the oldest, slot-loading, iMacs.
 
DeltaMac said:
Not convinced - no G3 has support for larger drives.
Why does your df command not show all your partitions? I run the same command, and mine shows 8, including automounts. (also a 500MHz iMac)
Click to expand...
Different OSes...
A partition over 128GiB, on a logic board that doesn't support it, is like waiting for the bomb timer to stop ticking. It will happen - you won't be able to ignore the file corruption. I suspect you haven't rebooted that iMac yet?
Click to expand...
No I haven't... so I should reboot and expect there is a file corruption?
BTW, there's no need to have a boot partition of less than 8GB, that's only needed on the oldest, slot-loading, iMacs.
Click to expand...
Ok but I haven't defined a separate, /boot partition... unless I misunderstood something...
 
Sunnz said:
No I haven't... so I should reboot and expect there is a file corruption?
Click to expand...

I hope you don't get file corruption, but you won't be able to control that, now that you have 'stepped over' beyond 128GiB - that may be one result when using a drive controller beyond its design capabilities. You just won't know when your directory will 'blow up' for you.
Good Luck!
 
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