Originally posted by iShater
Definitely my first step would be upgrading the RAM. I spent 6 hours yesterday (9PM until after 3AM) playing with this machine 
I still have tons to learn, it is amazing what stuff I am discovering, but I have no clue about the utils and the partitions yet.
Are there stuff on the CDs that come with the system that I should look at?
Oh, and that sleep light in the front, that is awesome! Man, I don't believe it took me soooooo long to finally get this iBook. I guess third time is the charm, and now I have it
Hey iShater, dont get ill from overtiredness. Too much of a good thing and all!
RAM is a bit of a deal with OSX, the specs are super tight and even perfectly fine RAM sometimes wont meet the grade and so gives all sorts of subtle misfunctions that look like software problems. So buy the very best ie from Kingston or Crucial - Kingston is dearer than most, whereas Crucial is not the most expensive chip on the market.
I am not a great fan of the Hardware checker disc. Dont get me wrong, it is powerful and will find faults, but so often I read - ran the Hardware checker, nothing reported wrong, therefore my hardware is perfect, time to reinstall Jaguar then. Firstly, it is best to run it at least 4 times. Secondly it, and all but the best software (which is not readily available to us consumers) is incapable of finding a "subtle" fault with RAM. The best troubleshoot to erase RAM from the equation is simply to pull out non-factory RAM.
If you power on then immediately stick in the software DVD with the C key pushed down, that will get you into the Installer again. Dont install again! but look around the menu bar. You will find where you can change your password, and also there is Disk utility. The Disk Utility that is in Jaguar on your hard drive is more up to date, but if you cant boot up its not much use to you. The CD version will let you repair permissions and verify/repair the disk and get you back up and running. (Then you use the uptodate version to re-repair as well as can be done with OSX.)
When you have finished looking around, just follow the prompts to reboot.
You can also erase and partition your drive from Disk Utility. When or if you do it is up to you. Starting with reasons to partition - If you want to play around with dodgy utilities - like wot I do - then you would be better off with a partition, and probably sooner rather than later. If you use OS9, a separate partition is also logical ie would you have OSX and Windows on the same drive? Probably not! But that's what Classic is like IMO. The 2 Mac OS's are like chalk and cheese. I dont have OS9 loaded anywhere, but there is plenty of info on boards on how to get OS9 on its own without being Classic in OSX. Also, if you want to keep your data totally separate ie music, photos documents etc, and you dont have a second external HDD (the "best" way IMO) you can set up a data partition which is dead easy to back up.
In principle and pretty much in practice, ALL you do with partitioning is erase ALL your data first, decide how many drives you want then drag a cursor to size them. Bingo. (Click the OS9 box when resizing - just in case you need to be able to use OS9) Be meticulous about erasing - When you have your partitions set up, erase each partition again before loading Jaguar onto the ones you want to be able to boot up. I think the latest CD lets you run 0's and 1's which some people suggest doing, but I dont think that is appropriate (its a privacy measure) andI cant see it is necessary for partitioning.
With partitions you have the best of both worlds - ie a failure of one copy of OSX will only cripple the drive it is loaded on so you just switch to the other drive rather than be left with a dead computer AND the good bit is, when you are on drive A you can get to any app or file on any other drive. And if your hard drive is in good condition and OSX is working as it should, there is no visible compromise worth &%^t on perfomance.
The big debate is usually - what size partitions, and don't partitions contradict the wisdom that OSX functions best on a huge single drive.
Starting from the smallest, for OS9, if it is just sitting there "just in case" a piece of hardware doesnt have an OSX driver yet, or you need an alternative route in order to trash a hard-to-trash file, 1GB is plenty. For playing, a 3GB bootable partition is plenty.
Then comes the million dollar question. How much for OSX on your working partition? For the smoothest ride and to cater to the "single drive is best" school, give it the maximum space possible. So.if you can get your data, which is after all what takes up the most space, on an external bootable HDD, I reckon that is ideal. With data on a separate internal partition, OSX with 10GBs of its own uninterrupted space worked pretty amazing for me.
Hope that helps a bit more
Andy
