[rescue] Bondi-ng

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Mon, Jul 23, 2007 at 12:15:11PM -0400, Sandwich Maker wrote:

> i also have just acquired an early imac.  dunno what rev it is, but
> it's a strawberry 333MHz, and it now runs 10.3 very nicely with 256M
> ram.  [watching a spacewalk on nasatv in realplayer right now]
> 
> anyone know what the disk size limit is in these things?  are they
> lba48, or something even earlier?  looking to upgrade the 6G disk...

I can't answer that, but the limit is both 120gig in adressing and
there MAY (or may not) be a speed limit. I forget the details, but some
of the early iMacs (before the "DV" ones) had the same bad controller
chip as the revision 1 Blue and White G3's. It was also in the Wallstreet
(and PDQ) Powerbooks and the first two revisions of Beige G3's.

If your drive is capable of 66mHz DMA the iMac will use it, but can't keep
up with it. You need a 33mHz DMA drive. MacOS 8 had support for it
(forcing 33mHz on a 66mHz drive). MacOS 9 did not, and you had to use 
the defunct and impossible to find FWB hard disk toolkit. 

OS X 10.0-10.2 had fixes for the B&W G3, it may have also worked on
the iMacs.

There were some 20gig Apple and Maxtor drives that worked, but except for
those, the only reliable from PC stock were 10g or less. 

XpostFacto does not include a fix for it, and Apple claimed when they
dropped it that they never shipped a computer with those chips in it
that had anything faster than 33mHz DMA. 

If you need storage you can always get a USB drive, but they are
relatively slow.

I have been collecting Mac Software for a privatearchive for a while and
I have had no luck in finding anything from FWB. It must have been
extremely rare,

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
IL Voice: (07)-7424-1667 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838 
Visit my 'blog at http://geoffstechno.livejournal.com/