Re: [Avid-L2] Old Media Drives

Thanks all!  A bunch of very good options -- 

I never thought to see if there's a second drive bay in the G3.  

I did a bit of research after getting all these recommendations, and there is surprisingly little info out there on the Mini Tower -- most of it has to do with the G3 Desktop or blue & white.  I opened up the machine and I couldn't see if there was a second bay, and all the links to documents showing how to do it are now inactive.

I also wonder now if I can simply hook an ethernet cable from the G3 to my modem and create a file-sharing network that way.  Thoughts?

David -- did you mean ethernet machine-to-machine or ethernet-to-modem?

Thanks again!

-- Sol

On Friday, August 12, 2022 at 09:12:19 AM EDT, David Zimmerly via groups.io <davidzimmerly=mac.com@groups.io> wrote:

I would use Ethernet.

On Aug 12, 2022, at 9:10 AM, editbruboy <bruno@bmansi.co.uk> wrote:



That will only work if the SCSI drives are single drives and not striped in any way.  I would imagine that the media drives from this era were probably striped in RAID 0.

I would see if it's possible to open up the case and install another hard drive in a spare bay. Once formatted you should be able to copy the necessary files across.

This drive can then be removed and attached to a modern machine via a hard drive caddy/dock.

On 12/08/2022 13:57, Mark Spano via groups.io wrote:

Hi Sol,

You should be able to find a SCSI to USB adapter fairly inexpensively. I would think that's the easiest way to go for this rather than trying to interface the machines.

On Fri, Aug 12, 2022 at 8:43 AM Sol Fischler via groups.io <sol.fischler=yahoo.com@groups.io> wrote:

Hi All —

I still have my old 1999 Avid XL system, running on a PowerPC G3 — pre-USB, pre-firewire. 

I still have the SCSI docks & drives that went along with this system.  I'd like to save a lot of the media that's still on the drives before I finally get rid of the system -- family stuff, etc. 

I also have a mid-2010 Mac Pro desktop running OS 10.9.5, and a MacBook Pro running OS 10.15.7.

My question: is there any way either to connect this Mac to a more modern Mac (ethernet to ethernet…?) and access the media that way, or are there SCSI cards that would work in the Mac Pro and allow me to connect the drives directly? 

Some of the drives are striped pairs, and some might not be…  I don't remember if the MediaDock is striped pairs or not.

…or is there any other way at all to get the media off the drives?

Thanks in advance!

-- Sol