did I break my BlueSCSI?

[Dave928]

Sorry, it’s a long, detailed post. TLDR: I think I may have borked my BlueSCSI?

The equipment:

1. Mac Classic, 4MB RAM, running OS 7.1.
2. PowerMac G4/400 upgraded with a Sonnet Encore 1.2 GHz CPU, Rage 128Pro AGP, PCI Grappler SCSI card, 64 GB RAM, running OS 9.2.

My 2 month old external BlueSCSI v2 was working fine on my Classic (this is the only one running, my other “classic” Macs are down for recaps), and the .hda and .iso files mounted fine every time. Until I tried it on the G4. The G4 didn’t see it at all. After putting it back on my Classic, it gave a “Damaged disk” error with “[Ignore] or [Initialize]”. If I clicked [initialize] it would format the 20MB .hda file and mount the drive on the desktop. The flash card itself still had the .hda and log.txt files on it.

I ran the SD Memory Card Formatter tool with the “Overwrite format” option selected, installed a fresh 20MB .hda file and the same error came up. From here, ever time I say “a new 20MB .hda file”, I mean a newly minted file made with Disk Jockey. Every time.

Now, I may have been having an issue with the G4’s SCSI card, as it turns out it also wasn’t seen by the Mac in System Profiler, even though the BlueSCSI’s power light was on (on this SCSI card the DB25 port is upside-down, so I couldn’t see what the status lights were doing). I read on a post somewhere that SCSI cards need to be in Slot B on the G4 (better power?), so I moved it to Slot B and then the G4 saw it and it worked great with my Iomega Jaz drive backing up some old Jaz disks I have.

The G4 has 4 PCI slots, but Slot A is for the AGP graphics card. And the G4 only has 2 internal ATA drives installed, so there were no SCSI conflicts.

For every test after this I enabled the debug mode with the “bluescsi.ini” file to generate verbose log.txt files.

So next I followed the troubleshooting directions and reflashed the latest firmware. On the Classic, “Damaged disk” again.
I ran the “flash_nuke.uf2” file, reflashed the firmware, installed a new .hda file and got the same fault again, a “Damaged disk” window with “[Ignore] or [Initialize]”. Again, if I clicked [Initialize] it would format the .hda file and mount the drive.

Did that whole process again and put it on the G4. Got a “Disk not initialized” window with “[Ignore] or [Initialize]”. Again, if I clicked [Initialize] it would format the .hda file and mount the drive. The only oddity here is that both machines reported the newly formatted .hda "drives" as larger than the .hda image was created to be.

I’ve included links to two log files, one on the G4 and one on the Classic.

PowerMac G4 log:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/14h2C7Ipfiu1j5IWtRuD8E0_cfQutGSJZ/view?usp=sharing

Mac Classic log:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16a0CqiA3u7TJwBi-_ElnGlLGyjMWlNaR/view?usp=sharing

So what did I mess up? Is a G4 running OS 9 (or OS X?) with a SCSI card not a “classic” Mac? Does the BlueSCSI not work on PPC Macs, and/or with OS X? In the old days, SCSI was SCSI, the machine didn't matter.

Did the at-first non-working SCSI card break it?

Is it broken and I need to buy a new one and never put it on the G4 or newer Macs?

Any input helpful, Thanks.