SATA in Quicksilver G4 Problem

[exoframe2]

Quick rundown of the problem I've been experiencing:

Computer in question:
'Quicksilver' (2001) 867mhz G4
Serial ATA via MacSense ATA133/SATA card.

Card has been working fine, have been running 10.4.8 from a 250GB Seagate drive. I picked up a 500GB Maxtor SATA/300 drive this evening, but have had no luck powering it with the G4 power supply. When connected it clicks, and never spins up. The usual dead-drive click, every few seconds.

Here's the catch- it isn't dead. If I power it via an external source (like a USB enclosure) it spins up fine. When connected to the SATA jack it mounts, writes and reads fine. In fact I'm currently installing 10.4 to a 74GB partition on it. I have a power lead going through a PCI bay to a USB enclosure to power the drive in the short-term. This is not a fix by any sense of the word.

Attempts at troubleshooting-
Tested drive in two USB enclosures- spins up fine
Tested drive with spare ATX power supply- spins up fine
Tested drive with external power while connected to SATA- mounts fine
Removed all other internal devices, video card, and PCI USB 2.0 card- drive still 'clicks' rather than spinning up.

It almost seems as if the G4 power supply is 'incompatible' with the drive. The supply is the factory Apple unit, rated at 344W. I'm giving serious thought to modifying the jack on a G4 MDD 400W unit.

I'm open to any suggestions you folks might have--I'm stumped--and I can't keep running it with this dodgy 'external power' setup. I desperately want to avoid using the drive in an external enclosure if at all possible, I'd like to keep it internal.

[JeffCGD]

Hi. You've hit the nail on the head. The power supplies in Apple's towers – certainly in the Quicksilver and earlier days – were all custom parts that supplied pretty much the exact amount of power the Apple spec'ed machine required (give and take some). Your Serial ATA drive is going to need either a modified or upgraded power supply to function in that machine.

[exoframe2]

I'm sourcing a MDD power supply at the moment, 400W should give me enough breathing room with the new 1.5GHz processor, Radeon card and pair of hard drives.

In the short term I crimped a jumper for an ATX power supply so it will power on with the switch on the unit and I'm using this to run the hard drives and DVR-111. No problems with it so far, and it actually boots up a bit faster since the drives are already up to speed when it starts up.