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Leopard Retail on Beige G3 (G4 upgraded), B&W G3 (G4 upgraded), G4 Yikes Success!!

Submitted by jimjamyahauk on July 1, 2008 - 1:07pm. Unix and Mac OS X

After my previous couple of posts (on Lowendmac) about nearly getting Leopard to load on a Beige G3 / Blue & White G3 I can confirm that I have had success with it booting fully to the graphical user interface, after quite a few tries of different techniques.

There are some functions which currently need attention, like Firewire and power management, but this is related to the way I've got it working:

1. G3 B&W upgraded to run a 600Mhz G4 CPU
2. Used the B&W to installed 10.4 and upgrade to 10.4.11.
3. Used a Digital Audio G4 to install Leopard as an upgrade over existing Tiger installation
4. Tried to boot this on B&W G4. Got previous error or crash with IOGraphicsFamily
5. Noted that AppleCuda and AppleLynx (firewire) kexts didn't load corrctly during boot either/
6. Extracted all kernel extensions from 10.5 WWDC 2006 edition, using Digital Audio - as this booted on G3 and G4 systems, and has all the missing kernel extensions not included in the Lopeard final release.
7. Deleted 'newer versions' of the kexts 'IOGraphicsFamily.kext', 'AppleCuda.kext', 'IOFirewireFamily.kext' and installed the relevant ones from WWDC 2006.
8. Boot was then successful.

I attach a screenshot of the about this Mac and an Apple System Profiler report as proof. Currently, AppleCuda.kext doesn't load and this results in a shutdown powering down everything, but not turning off the fans. IOFirewiewFamily.kext doesn't load so firewire port don't yet work.

I've also flashed a Nvidia Geforce PCI 5200 card which support CoreImage as hardware accelerated, not too slowly,

Next I'll try on my Beige G3 to see what happens!

Hope someone else finds this information useful.

********
Just an update: have now also managed to get it to boot on a G4
upgraded Beige G3 with Radeon 9200. 1. Booted into Mac OS 9, which was
installed on same partition as 10.5
2. Used Xpostfacto to install startup item and bootx, to enable booting on oldworld macs.
3. Disabled onboard video using setenv pci-probe-list fffbffff in Open Firmware (Apple-Alt-O-F at startup)
4. Restarted, and bootup occured as per the B&W G3 ()G4 Upgraded) to full GUI.

Now going to experiment with updates!

James.

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10.5.4 update success!

Submitted by jimjamyahauk on July 9, 2008 - 10:24pm.

Hi,

Another update regarding Leopard on Beige G3 (G4 upgraded) - it's now running 10.5.4 with sound and power management functions working properly.

There seemed to be a problem that whenever I updated the Beige from 10.5.0 to a newer version it would always restart with a kernel panic, stating "unable to find driver for platform "APPL,PowerMacG3". The only way I could get 10.5.0 working on it was to install 10.5.0 over a working Tiger 10.4.11 installation. Using a 'fresh install' of 10.5.0, adding back relevant kernel extensions always result in the same error as above.

However, thinking that the solution must lie in the kernel extensions I managed to get a fresh copy of 10.5.0 working by figuring out the differences between an installation of 10.5.0 over 10.4.11 and a fresh 10.5.0 install.

The kexts (apart from the ones Xpostfacto installs) that were missing from 10.5.0 were:

* AppleCuda.kext (handles ADB mouse and power management function and sound)
* AppIeGossamer.kext (Platfrom expert for Beige G3, B&W and Yikes! G4 - i.e. the platform driver)edit to fix forum filtering - that's Apple, not AppIe
* AppleHeathrow.kext (driver for the Heathrow chip which handles IDE/ATA)
* AppleGracklePCI.kext (driver for the Grakle chip which handles memoery management and IDE/ATA and PCI slots)
* HeathrowATA.kext (driver for the ATA controller section of Heathrow chip)

By experimenting with the working installation of 10.5.0 over 10.4.11 I determined that out of the available kexts versions I have (Tiger versions, WWDC 2006 versions and 10.5 beta-build a527 versions) that the following combination worked. Where possible I used the latest a527 versions as these were the most recent, with the exception of AppleGracklePCI.kext, which was only available in the WWDC 2006. IOGraphicsFamily.kext from a527 exhibited the same crash as the one included in 10.5.0, so the one from WWDC 2006 was used.

To get 10.5.0 working:

1. Installed 10.5.0 from DVD using a Digital Audio G4 to a 7.7GB partition.
2. Copied (from a527): AppleCuda.kext, AppIeGossamer.kext, AppleHeathrow.kext, HeathrowATA.kext into System/Library/Extensions/
3. Copied (from WWDC 2006): AppleGracklePCI.kext, IOGraphicsFamily.kext (deleted existing 10.5.0 one)
4. *Important* used BatChmod (http://macchampion.com/arbysoft/Welcome.html) programme to set permissions on all kexts to owner: system, group: wheel, read and execute only. Doing a permissions repair on the kexts with DiskUtility does not set the permissions properly.
5. *Important* deleted files in System/Library/Caches/ and file: System/Library/extensions.mkext and System/Library/Extensions/Caches/
6. Booted into OS 9 and used Xpostfacto to install all missing kenerel extensions for the Beige and to enable booting into Mac OS X on an oldworld system.
7. Restarted and boot went well.

Trying to update this to 10.5.4 resulted in the same error, so instead I used the Digital Audio to install a fresh 10.5.0 onto a partition and then ran the 10.5.4 combo updater, repeated the steps above and had success!
In 10.5.4 even the internal RagePro works, without causing a kenerl panic on startup - they key to this is to make sure that the RagePro.kext isn't in the extensions folder. Installing 10.5.0 over 10.4.11 meant that this was there.

The B&W and the Yikes! G4 should all work the same, except you will need the additional kexts installed, which are missing, or do not work from 10.5.0:

* AppleFireWireFamily.kext (10.5.0 version doesn't load properly)
* CMD646ATA.kext (missing from 10.5.0 - ATA driver)

Sorry it's a bit long-winded, but hope it's of interest to all those G4 upgraded beige G3s.

Regards,

James.

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coius's picture

wow! congrats!

Submitted by coius on July 10, 2008 - 5:27pm.

nice work you have done!!! I love hacks like this. I would try it, but alas, i have no G4 Zif for my G3, so it won't work Undecided
edit: I digg'd ya. sorry, just had to do it

» troubleshootnow.com. When you need to troubleshoot NOW! Forum site for macs and PCs. We are happy to help you troubleshoot. Home WebPage: coius.info <-Served off an iMac in my roo

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GEOS's picture

Pretty cool. I had a friend

Submitted by GEOS on July 11, 2008 - 9:46pm.

Pretty cool. I had a friend get 10.4.11 on his iMac 266MHz trey loading. Installed the OS on one Mac, then swapped out the hard drive. Just that simple.

» Oh, Hazel, look. The field! It's covered in blood

MacBook Pro 2.16 Core 2 Duo, 12" Powerbook G4 867MHz, iMac G3 600, Powermac B&W G3 450, iMac g3 400, iBook 366, B&W G3 350, Beige G3 350, Powerbook G3 233. Plus many more..

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where to get the extensions?

Submitted by troman71 on August 5, 2008 - 2:56am.

James,

I just had the HD fail in my FrankenMac Beige G4 1.12GHz Radeon 9200 that was running 10.4.11. So, I think I'd like to try this. Where can I download the kernel extensions that need to be replaced?

Thanks for this excellent bit of work!

TR

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Hi TR, If you could PM me

Submitted by jimjamyahauk on August 5, 2008 - 7:27am.

Hi TR,

If you could PM me your e-mail address I'll send them to you as a zip file.

Regards,

James.

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Someone seems to have inserte

Submitted by jimjamyahauk on August 13, 2008 - 8:22am.

Someone seems to have inserted Evil Block Company into the forum - what's going on, as I can't edit the previous posts to re-correct.

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eeun's picture

That's an unfortunate side-ef

Submitted by eeun on August 13, 2008 - 12:06pm.

That's an unfortunate side-effect of word filtering. And a long story. The block company whose name rhymes with eggo called down its lawyers when a computer case made from the aforementioned block was posted.

I've edited your post to make it clearer.

» Jack of all Trades, Tinkerer and Dabbler in the Obscure and Nonsensical.
3 stories posted
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