help: I'm a mac newbie

I Was just given 2 Mac systems from a company who is upgrading their
hardware.The first one is a Mac G3 tower and the other one a
Powercomputing powerpro 180.Both HDs were removed and kept by the
company. I was given a Mac OS 8.1 CD and that's all the software I have
for both systems. I installed a PC formatted IDE 20 gig on the Mac G3
and boot up the OS CD but the system does not seems to see the HD. I
presume I need to format the HD but how do I go about it with what I
have. TIA for all the help.

In article <A32yf.945$La2.41273@news20.bellglobal.com>,
Trifecta <Toyo RemoveThis @sleepwell.org> wrote:

> I Was just given 2 Mac systems from a company who is upgrading their
> hardware.The first one is a Mac G3 tower and the other one a
> Powercomputing powerpro 180.Both HDs were removed and kept by the
> company. I was given a Mac OS 8.1 CD and that's all the software I have
> for both systems. I installed a PC formatted IDE 20 gig on the Mac G3
> and boot up the OS CD but the system does not seems to see the HD. I
> presume I need to format the HD but how do I go about it with what I
> have. TIA for all the help.

From your message, sounds like the G3 booted OK from the CD.

On the CD, there is an application program called Drive Setup. It is
probably inside a folder called Utilities.

Use Drive Setup to format the HD. Format it as Mac Extended Format
(otherwise known as HFS+). Don't use Mac Standard, as that will make
very inefficient use of a drive larger then about 500 MB.

You have the choice of formatting the drive as one volume or multiple
volumes. Your choice. I would probably format it as one volume unless
there were good reason to format as more than one. Others may have
different opinions about this. BTW, "volume" is the official Mac
parlance for what many call "partitions."

Use the on-screen help file for assistance with the details, if you need
it.

After you have formatted the drive, you can install OS 8 on it from the
CD.

You may want to get an OS X disk and boot and install from that. That
machine should run OS X, if it has a goodly amount of RAM (At least 512
MB).

Some early G3s need to have the volume where OS X is installed be the
first volume on the disk, and be no larger than 8 GB. If your machine is
in that category, that would be a good reason for formatting the drive
as two volumes. You may be able to discover if your machine is in that
category from the Support section of the Apple web site, under
Specifications.

G3s that have built-in USB ports will install and run versions of OS X
up to 10.3.9. If the machine has a built-in Firewire port, it will
install and run OS X 10.4. You can find out from the Specifications on
the Apple web site what versions of the Mac OS are supported on that
machine.

If I were you, I would not fiddle around with the Power Computing
machine. It can probably be made to work OK, but it is around 10 years
old, and would need significant upgrade to be able to run recent
software. For one thing, you would probably need a SCSI drive for it,
and those are hard to come by nowadays; you might find a used SCSI drive
on eBay.

Bill Collins

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