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livingfortoday

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Nov 17, 2004
2,903
4
The Msp
I have a question for all you Powerbook G3 owners out there. I have a Lombard, so I don't know if this is different on your models or not, but here goes.

The Powerbook G4 I had before had a little cable which converted the hard drive connection into a little weird connector that plugged into the logic board. I took apart my CD drive on my G3 Powerbook today, and saw that it connects through a similar port in the drive bay. In fact, it looks just like the one used on the Powerbook G3 drive bay, only smaller. So, I'm wondering if there's a converter to get 2.5" drives to connect in the Powerbook G3 drive bays? That'd be pretty sweet if I could swap an extra drive in and out like that.
 

Makosuke

macrumors 604
Aug 15, 2001
6,665
1,250
The Cool Part of CA, USA
Pretty sure that since an optical drive can work in those bays, so can a hard drive. I thought I'd seen empty cases for the bays for sale in the past, but a quick look now didn't turn anything up. If you want to test, you could pull apart your optical drive module and see if a hard drive in it will mount.

Maybe buy a broken optical drive tray on eBay or something?
 

livingfortoday

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Nov 17, 2004
2,903
4
The Msp
Well, the problem is that the optical drive uses a weird little connector to connect in the bay. Ditto for the Powerbook G4 hard drive. So I was wondering if there was a conversion kit to make it possible to connect a 2.5" hard drive with a G3 bay.

I just saw that some companies made hard drive bay expansions, and some sell DIY kits, but for way too much. I planned on using a extra bay I had and sticking in an extra drive I had, I just can't seem to find a connector to make it work.

Edit: I would do it like this guy here with his 1400:
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/macdan/pb1400_hd_ebm.html

Only difference is the connectors in the bay are different, which is why I need some sort of conversion thingiemabobber.
 

livingfortoday

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Nov 17, 2004
2,903
4
The Msp
Mods - Should this maybe be moved over to the "Apple Collectors" forum, as it's not exactly new hardware? Just a thought. And a bump :) .
 

RacerX

macrumors 65832
Aug 2, 2004
1,504
4
livingfortoday said:
So, I'm wondering if there's a converter to get 2.5" drives to connect in the Powerbook G3 drive bays? That'd be pretty sweet if I could swap an extra drive in and out like that.
Yes, I've been using these for years (have a 20 GB drive in my expansion bay on my PowerBook right now)... you can find the kits here.
 
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