Having trouble installing 10.3 on an old powerbook6,2 g4

[Luxly]

Hey, everyone. This has been a huge pain in the ass for me and I need some help!

My friend has an old powerbook g4 6,2 with a clean install of 10.2.7. I'm trying to install 10.3 from the black install cds (there's three of them) and the computer is just spitting them out no matter what I do. My Macbook can read the install cds just fine so the cds are not damaged. As for the powerbook, the computer can read the grey cds perfectly. That's how the clean install was done.
I have tried holding "c" when it boots, holding "alt/option" when it boots. It just spits out the disk.

I don't have a mac that can run 10.3 to do the target disk mode install unfortunately.

Any help would be awesome!

 

[bunnspecial]

I've had problems similar to this(although not your exact problem) and they were generally solved by cleaning the optical drive.

There are special cleaning disks made for optical drives-generally they are an audio CD with a soft, fine brush attached to the surface. The audio track contains verbal instructions that will advance the lens to such a place that the brush will sweep over it. These are handy to have, especially if you deal with older computers very much.

 

[Luxly]

I've had problems similar to this(although not your exact problem) and they were generally solved by cleaning the optical drive.

There are special cleaning disks made for optical drives-generally they are an audio CD with a soft, fine brush attached to the surface. The audio track contains verbal instructions that will advance the lens to such a place that the brush will sweep over it. These are handy to have, especially if you deal with older computers very much.

This worked perfectly! Thank you very much.

I have one more question: Safari is very unstable and does not load half the webpages I try to visit. It seems to not load CSS at all. Any idea on how to fix this? I have installed the 10.3.9 combo update and that didn't solve the issue. Update software has no updates, and I've tried installing java but oracle won't let me. Says I need to do it through software update so I'm assuming I have the latest that the system can have.

 

[bunnspecial]

My standard advice:

Upgrade to 10.4(Tiger) so that you can use Tenfourfox, which a fork of Firefox that is still kept current and updated. There is also Tiger Webkit(an more up-to-date version of Safari) although it is no longer maintained.

Alternatively, upgrade to 10.5(any G4 can run 10.5, although depending on your system specs it can be a bit slow) and you can use either Tenfourfox or Leopard Webkit. Leopard Webkit is also still maintained.

If you must stick with Panther, your best option for a browser is probably Classilla, which will run in Classic mode under 10.3. It too is Firefox-based, but is kept up to date and in fact just had a new release a few weeks ago.

 

[Altemose]

This worked perfectly! Thank you very much.

I have one more question: Safari is very unstable and does not load half the webpages I try to visit. It seems to not load CSS at all. Any idea on how to fix this? I have installed the 10.3.9 combo update and that didn't solve the issue. Update software has no updates, and I've tried installing java but oracle won't let me. Says I need to do it through software update so I'm assuming I have the latest that the system can have.

OS X Panther has been completely left behind in terms of support in this day and age. Even Software Update is no longer supported. That being said, your computer is capable of running OS X Tiger or Leopard, and depending on the RAM, can run them both quite well. OS X Tiger affords you TenFourFox, and Leopard will allow you to run Leopard WebKit and many new pieces of software.


Is this machine yours now? I am not sure if you are aware, but most PowerPC computers do not handle the web well today. Perhaps your friend would be better served by an Intel Mac if they need the web a lot.