I just recently installed 10.3 on a Beige G3 via Xpostfacto. When I first turn the machine on, it takes a long time (@ 1 1/4 minutes) before there's a video signal and then the regular X startup. If it were OS 9 I would suspect it's doing a memory test and I could speed up startup by going into OS 9's memory control panel while at the same time pushing command and option in order uncover the switch to turn off the startup memory test. Is there something similar in OS X? thanks
Here's the specs: Beige G3 with XLR8 350mhz G4 ZIF, 3 sticks of 256mb (768mb total) PC100 CL2, a Quantum Atlas 10k SCSI hard drive (Boot drive with 10.3--I included the RagePro patch when installing with XPF) hooked up to a SCSI PCI card, an ATA hard drive with OS 9 hooked up to the motherboard ATA bus, an LCD monitor is hooked up to a Rage 128 PCI card (no monitor hooked to onboard RagePro), a USB PCI card, and a Hitachi DVD drive on the second motherboard ATA bus.
I'm having a similar issue with my Beige G3 AIO. When I power it on, it takes an unreasonable amount of time to load, I don't remember when it started doing it. I have 386 MB of RAM in it, one slot is defective and has problems when a RAM card is inserted into it. But I do believe it started doing this too when I put OS 10.2 on it(which won't boot, only from OS 9). I do believe that it could be doing a memory test or some form of test. But I don't see how OS 9 would change something when a different OS is installed. Another theory is that my screen resolution has to do something with this. I don't remember the resolution it's at right now, but when I changed it below a certain one, it was able to boot up a lot faster for some unknown reason. This problem could be occurring in OS 10.3 for you. And from your statement of turning of memory test, I would try that too. But try some screen resolution changes and other things and see what happens.
Thanks for the input, but I didn't need to go to display resolutions. I'm not sure, I think your problem may be different. My screen was completely black for the 1 1/4 minute until a video signal started and then the OS would start loading. If I'm reading you right, yours is simply slow loading. That does sound like a memory or some other hardware problem. Maybe your hard drive is simply going bad or heavily fragmented.
For my solution, I simply booted back into OS 9, turned off the memory test using the memory control panel (command-option-memory panel), booted back into 10.3 via Xpostfacto, shut down, started back up, et voila! The video comes on right away, no delay. I thought that might be the solution, but I thought I'd ask here first before I risked mishap by booting back and forth between OS's. Looks like I have to boot both ways via XPF all the time. I tried booting back to 9 using the 10.3 startup disk preference panel, but that sent me to OF no-man's land. I had to zap PRAM to get back to the OS 9 drive (I purposely left an OS 9 drive on the onboard ATA bus for this type of situation, my X drive is on the PCI SCSI bus, so it won't be recognized after zapping, but anything on the ATA bus will be found), and once in 9, I turned the memory test off, and then went back to 10.3 via XPF. That did the trick. Simple.
Makes sense, right? Turning the memory test off in OS 9 would change the command somewhere in NVRAM. Wherever the command is, it's before the OS starts loading, so it wouldn't matter which OS you will be booting into. The option to turn it off is there in 9, but why isn't it in X too?
I'm not sure how to change the memory test settings in OS X, and I don't think I will ever need to. But I did have the same problem as you, for 1 minute(not 1 1/4 minute) my video signal was blank, until that minute later, you could hear the tube turn on, and the relays click.