What I'm doing with my old iBook G4

[mikehalloran]

It is possible to boot from an SSD with the right PATA/IDE/EIDE to SATA 2.5" adapter.

https://www.amazon.com/GODSHARK-Adapter ... ref=sr_1_9

A fried drive might also be the cause of your G4 problem. To my knowledge, there are no PATA drives being made anymore. My G4s had a max useable capacity of 128GB but a larger drive can be partitioned. Depending on the G4, max bus speed was 100 or 166. SATA blew that away, of course.

[James Steele]

It is possible to boot from an SSD with the right PATA/IDE/EIDE to SATA 2.5" adapter.

https://www.amazon.com/GODSHARK-Adapter ... ref=sr_1_9

A fried drive might also be the cause of your G4 problem. To my knowledge, there are no PATA drives being made anymore. My G4s had a max useable capacity of 128GB but a larger drive can be partitioned. Depending on the G4, max bus speed was 100 or 166. SATA blew that away, of course.

Thanks, Mike. So that will let me put an internal SSD in the old MacBook G4? Yeah... maybe it's a fried drive. The thing that's odd though is it doesn't even attempt to boot or even power up. It's just dead. No chime. No screen. No "?" because it can't see a drive. It's as if it's not even plugged in when I hit the power button.

[James Steele]

I think I have a spare 2.5" 250GB SSD lying around that I could TRY this with... the adapter is so cheap even if it doesn't work it would be fine. The trick will be to install Snow Leopard onto it before installing into the iBook G4. I might be able to put the SSD in my MacPro4,1 and see if I can somehow run a Snow Leopard installer and install it on the SSD.

Again... my concern is the iBook G4 doesn't seem to even power up at all, so may not be the drive.

[mikehalloran]

You can try booting from an external which will tell you if it’s the drive or not. Problem is that a G4 must be booted from a FW external, not USB.

[James Steele]

You can try booting from an external which will tell you if it’s the drive or not. Problem is that a G4 must be booted from a FW external, not USB.

If it's the drive, wouldn't at least a power lite or screen come on? Kinda hard to find a bootable FW drive with an OS that old on it. Frankly, I'm probably better off finding a replacement. I have to figure out if the my older MacBook that's running Yosemite can be downgraded to Snow Leopard. Of course, I pulled the optical drive and installed an SSD in that bay, so can't install off a Snow Leopard CD/DVD/whatever. Oh well.

[James Steele]

Hmmm... I think I have a plan. I found a seller on eBay who sells bootable Snow Leopard installers on USB sticks: https://www.ebay.com/itm/394440555764?m ... media=COPY

He has them customized for various models and from what I can tell a 2009 Mac Mini can run Snow Leopard which was the last OS Unisyn was able to run on. It has a power switch on the back and ethernet. I figure I can hook up a monitor/mouse/keyboard and get it configured and setup to screenshare over ethernet like I did with the iBook G4 and then just lose the keyboard/mouse/monitor? Or will it not boot without those things attached? Basically I'm just after a box that I boot, then connect to over network from my Mac Studio and then run Unisyn on it.

Or course I'm guessing an old 2009 Mac Mini is going to have a spinner in it. I'm not sure if I can install the 2.5" SSD I have in one? Here's a Mac Mini for $30... they have some for a bit more. Won't be that expensive. I figure ditch that old spinner that will probably die soon, pop in the 3G 250GB 2.5" SSD that I already have... then boot from the USB stick, format and install Snow Leopard and then pop in the Unisyn installer CD (or was it DVD?) that I still have.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/305279572615?m ... media=COPY

[James Steele]

Just found this at OWC:

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ssd/owc/mac-mini/2009

Since I'm not going to have a lot of files on this thing... I could get a kit to replace the drive including 120GB SSD drive (It's gonna be storing sysex files not video, LOL) for about $31. $35 if I want 250GB LOL. Just can't remember if I have to force trim on it. I think you can with Snow Leopard.

They also make a bracket to put an SSD in the optical bay, but I'm going to need it to install Unisyn and authorize it, so the straight hard drive swap seems the way to go.

I have to check... maybe I'm lucky and I still have a Snow Leopard CD installer around here, but I don't think so.

[mikehalloran]

TRIM became part of the macOS with 10.6.8 (why do I remember this?). The simple Terminal command won’t work but I believe that Cindori has a version that does. IIRC, you paid him the $20 (or was it $10?)all those years ago like I did.

[James Steele]

TRIM became part of the macOS with 10.6.8 (why do I remember this?). The simple Terminal command won’t work but I believe that Cindori has a version that does. IIRC, you paid him the $20 all those years ago like I did.

Yep. I remember that. I’ll have to see if I still have my license code and all of that. I’m sure I can’t retrieve it assuming they’re still in business.

I went ahead and bought a 2009 Mac Mini for $50. The 250GB SSD and installation kit for $35 and the bootable USB Snow Leopard installer for $18. I’m hoping that will make a decent Unisyn machine. Time to retire my iBook G4.

BTW, funny story about my iBook G4. I actually had Steve Wozniak sign it in black Sharpie. He just signed it “Woz” under the Apple logo on the cover. But like an idiot I continued to use it and his signature eventually wore off. Dumb!! I should have just taken it home and put it under my bed and never touched it again. Sigh.

[James Steele]

Well, the plot thickens.

This morning the seller informed me that the power supply wasn’t working and did I still want it for 50% off, or did I want to cancel? I decided to cancel.

Fortunately, I did find a similar unit on eBay and bought it at the “Buy It Now” price which was reasonable. So I’m still on track hopefully for getting the 2009 Mac Mini up and running as my “Unisyn box.“ Crossing my fingers!

[James Steele]

Hmmmm... I think I really screwed up here. I haven't installed Snow Leopard on the 2009 Mac Mini yet, but I just found this at MOTU's site:

https://motu.com/techsupport/technotes/ ... erm=unisyn

As far as I can tell, it says Unisyn won't run on an Intel processor? Ugh.... I don't know why I thought this, but I thought there was some sort of Rosetta-like translation in macOS that let PowerPC code run on Intel Macs in emulation??? I need to do more googling and on a different Mac. I'm on the Mac Mini right now which has macOS 10.11 on it ... I think that's Yosemite???

[James Steele]

Maybe all is not lost. I think I found an old post on this board that Snow Leopard allowed you to install (the original Rosetta) and run PowerPC apps? I hope so. Just out of curiosity I put the Unisyn installer CD in this Mac Mini with El Capitan and it doesn’t even show the icon for the installer app on the Unisyn CD.

Waiting on the bootable USB Snow Leopard installer I bought online to get here and then I’ll find out if this is going to work.

[mikehalloran]

I saw the offer for an optical drive with FW ports. Snag that—if a dead HDD is the issue, you can boot from that. I should still have the dvd files for OS Tiger which you might need to see if it even works. Hell, I might even have a DVD set. I know that you can upgrade to Leopard but I didn’t like the performance when I tried it on my G4s. I settled on a dual boot OS9/OS10.4.11 before my wife threw it away.

[James Steele]

I’m trying to be patient. I actually was doing a long overdue clean out of junk and came across a Snow Leopard CD. It was not in a sleeve and looks a little scuffed up so I tossed it. Now I wish I kept it so I could try it in this 2009 Mac Mini.

I have a bootable Snow Leopard installer coming in by early next week. The plan is I swap the internal spinner for the SSD then boot from the USB installer, format the SSD, install Snow Leopard and probably look up the Cindori site and install their Trim utility.

After that, try to install and authorize from my Unisyn CD. I hope it’s version 2.11 which was the last. The key code indicates 2.10. Cursory search of MOTU’s website didn’t turn up any legacy Unisyn installers but maybe they’re there?

Then all I need to do is get correct MIDI driver installed that works with my MIDI Express XT. I found one for the G4 so should be no problem. Then set it to automatically launch Unisyn on boot and set up screen sharing.

My hope is once I have it all set up it’s more or less going to be an appliance. I’m hoping I can just boot it with no monitor, keyboard or mouse attached, and then control it from my Mac Studio via screen sharing like I was doing with my iBook G4. I have a USB switcher with a remote button that lets me connect the MIDI interface to either the Mac Studio or the older Mac running Unisyn.

Which reminds me. I’m tempted to write to Bob Melvin and ask if he ever made an Intel version? Even if he did, I’m sure it’s still MOTU’s IP, but what a shame that app was allowed to die.

[James Steele]

I forgot to mention that it seems the only difference between OWC’s raw SSD Drive and the “kit“ for the Mac mini is to include an external USB drive enclosure for transferring your files over after swapping the drive.