Mac OS 10.2 on a Beige G3.

I'm running 10.2 (Jaguar) on my own Beige G3 minitower, and I've had no real problems with it (other than that it' maddeningly slow). The Beiges (along with other G3s of similar vintage like the tray-loading iMacs and the Wallstreet PowerBooks) have a few quirks, though, that can trip people up sometimes.

Did you install Jaguar directly onto the machine using its internal drives, or did you install Jaguar on another computer and transfer the drive to the Beige? Beiges must find OS X (any version) on the first partition of 8GB or smaller on any given drive. An install (created on another machine) on a partition larger than 8GB will not boot.

When you say it won't boot, do you mean it won't chime and has no video? That it boots to a flashing folder with a question mark? That it boots to a sad Mac face? More details would be very helpful here.

When I turn on the G3, everything works but OS. After a while it shows and out of positioned gray screen, thats repeating the text "Can't open:" over and over again. After a while it loads the mouse pointer, comes up with a smiley computer, then restarts itself. This loop cycle never ends. I installed Mac OS 10.2 from a CD in the machines CD drive to a 4GB hard drive in the machine. The installer worked fine. What should I do?

1) Check for conflicts on the iDE and SCSI chain(s).
a) There shouldn't be more than one Master or one Slave on an IDE chain. The drive at the end of the cable should be set to Master, and the one in the middle of the cable should be Slave. I'm not certain whether the Beiges supported Cable Select: if someone knows for sure, please jump in here.
b) No to devices on the SCSI chain should have the same address. Usually the addresses of 3 and 6 are reserved for CD-ROMs or Zip drives; the address 0 is reserved for the computer itself. Termination shouldn't be necessary inside the machine or on the external port if it's empty; however, make sure that any external SCSI devices are properly terminated.

2) Try eliminating possible conflicts between devices by removing them from the system and seeing whether the machine's behavior changes. Disconnect the CD-ROM drive and reboot, for example, then do the same with the Zip, the floppy, and any other internal drives. Remove the PCI cards one at a time. Remove one stick of RAM, then another and another. Remove the video RAM stick if there's one there.

3) Boot to a Disk Warrior CD (I believe version 3 would be the proper one here) and check the hard drive for directory errors or other problems.

4) Reformat the internal HD and try installing Mac OS X again.

That should keep you busy for the weekend. Report back with your findings. This message will self destruct in ten seconds ...

FWIW, the first 8GB limit only applies to ATA/IDE drives.

The hard drive is a 4GB IDE drive set to master. Have a Zip and a CD drive, Cd drive Master, Zip drive slave. 256 MB of RAM. No SCSI. My question is, which port IDE slot on the motherboard is primary and which one is slave?

I reinstalled Mac OS X. It's doing the same thing as before. I believe I need helper software, what software do I need, where do I get it, how do I install?

No IDE slot on the mobo is master or slave. Each IDE slot has its own bus, and each IDE bus can have two drives - master and slave.

There have been some reports that the beige G3s can be flaky when trying to boot off a hard drive - master or slave - that's on the second IDE bus (IDE bus 1 - the first IDE bus is bus 0).

I would say, use Apple System Profiler in OS 9 to see if the internal IDE HD is on IDE bus 0 or 1. Make sure it's on 0. Disconnect the ZIP drive, and make sure the CD drive is on IDE bus 1.

That way you'll have the HD isolated in IDE bus 0, and the CD drive isolated on IDE bus 1. Make sure both drives are jumpered to Master (NOT cable select). Then reinstall Jaguar.

If that doesn't work, the only other things I can think of are RAM (OS 9 is more tolerant than OS X when it comes to RAM), or maybe something screwy with the personality card in the AIO.

Finally, one other question:

- Is this a retail/universal Jaguar disc, or one that's a grey disc specific to a particular model line of Macs? If it's the latter, then the installer might be lacking one or more kernel extensions necessary for the beige G3 series.

Best,
Matt

Do I need Mac OS 9 to run OS 10.2? I will also check the hard drives with my Mac OS 9 CD. But if I have to have Mac OS 9 to run OS X, I will get a bigger hard drive, and install it on there.

i would say do an os 9 and 10.3 dual boot with xpostfacto assuming you have 10.3. my wallstreet ran that way fantastically (and i did manage a minimal install on my 4gb drive). hopefully the issue has to do with the os being incompatible with the computer in some way, but at least getting os 9 running to start will guarantee your hardware is set up corretcly.

I have Mac OS 10.2 CD's, I have 10.2, not 10.3. How do I install xpostfacto?

you should just be able to download it and install it on os 9. if i remember, it installs a couple files that allow 10.3 to run on the machine, and then it can be used to switch between 9 and x. it's not needed for 10.2 though.

Mac OS X still does the same thing. I installed Mac OS 9 before OS 10.2, but Mac OS 10.2 screwed up Mac OS 9. Mac OS 10.2 still won't but. What should I do???

Please excuse me if I'm unnecessarily repeating, but are you sure that the drive is hooked up as master. (Cable select WILL work on G3)

We can beat this. I installed 10.2 on my AIO over a year ago. I've seen this exact message messing around with X, 9 and Ubuntu. It comes from the firmware not being robust enought to look around for a boot partition.

I did not realize it at first but I believe the first time I got this message when I installed on a slave drive and tried to boot. When I re-installed on a master it booted. (I think using xpostfacto may allow you to boot from a slave if you use a "helper" on the master drive, but don't quote me on that)

This is the main reason that there are 2 ata busses in the Beige one for CD boot and one for Disk boot. (It may also be the case that is has to boot from the first partition of the master drive.)

Did you reformat the drive? I can’t find the reference just now but I think the drive needs formatting with disk utility from 8.5 - 9.1 (not osx). and let it install new drivers.

You do not need 9 to install X.

Sorry, for not being more definite. I guess I should take notes when doing these things.

-- Aside from your issue: if you get the chance, take it to 10.3 it runs much better than 10.2. (It will require xpostfacto)

I'll try what you said, I formatted my hard drive with Mac OS 9 disk utility. The only Mac OS CD's I own are: Mac OS 10.4, Mac OS 10.2, Mac OS 9.1, and Mac OS 7.5.

you could xpostfacto 10.4 if you wanted. i believe the newer version of xpostfacto supports it, but i've never tried it so i have no idea how well it would work.