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Help Installing Tiger on a B & W G3

D

d-fi

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 12, 2004
81
0
Calgary, Canada
I have a Rev A 300Mhz G3 currently running OS 8.6 thats currently sitting around doing nothing so i thought i'd install OS X and make it a bit more useful

Now i've just got Tiger (cd version) and tried to boot from the cd holding down the 'C' key. CD-ROM made a bit of noise for a few seconds then it just booted to 8.6

So i thought maybe the CD wasn't bootable so i tested it on my powerbook and it boots from the cd no problems

Did a bit more research and downloaded and installed the ROM and firewire updates for the B & W but i can't install the newest firewire update because it only will install in OS 9 so i installed the newest one that will install in OS 8.6 (2.33 if i remember right)

Now I'm not even sure if the ROM is the problem but i couldn't find anything else that might be causing problems because even if it is the ROM i should be able to boot CD then tiger should cry if there is a problem

I've run out of ideas i know you can install OS X on a B & W but i can't seem to find the problem any help you could offer would be greatly appreciated

just tried booting from my 8.5 cd and it worked fine

Thanks
 
i presume you've tried running the installer from the disk when it mounts under 8.6? Does it mount?
It may be that you need OS9 installed for it to be able to recognise X as a bootable system. I installed Jaguar (initially) on a B&W 350 running 9.22, without problems.
 
boot into open firmware and see what version of open firmware you have. i was able to install 10.4 without any problems on my b&w.
 
reboot, and then press the control-option-o-f buttons at the same time until the boot chime ends. then you'll be presented with a white-background screen. at the top it should say what open firmware version you have.
 
frankblundt said:
i presume you've tried running the installer from the disk when it mounts under 8.6? Does it mount?
It may be that you need OS9 installed for it to be able to recognise X as a bootable system. I installed Jaguar (initially) on a B&W 350 running 9.22, without problems.
Click to expand...

Yes it does mount and i have tried the installer but i guess it only works in OS 9.x

It's starting to look like i'll have to find OS 9.x in order to install Tiger (or any OS X) nothing seems to be working under OS 8.6

Thanks for all the help so far :)
 
You shouldn't need to have ANY OS installed on the computer to install OS X. Put the CD in the drive, and restart while holding down the "option" key. When you get a choice of what to boot from (your HD or CD), choose the OS X Install CD. Should boot right off it. If not, I would test booting from your 8.6 CD. If that doesn't work either, replace your optical drive.
 
I too would second the usage of XPostfacto, as it helps tremedosly with older machines. However, i belive it needs to run in OS 9 and is not compatible with OS 8.x
 
No.

SnickterP said:
I too would second the usage of XPostfacto, as it helps tremedosly with older machines. However, i belive it needs to run in OS 9 and is not compatible with OS 8.x
Click to expand...

You don't need an operating system At ALL to install OS X. For example, if you put a new hard drive in a machine (if your old one died) you just boot from the CD and install. It doesn't know what you had on the old hard drive. Now - you may/do need an OS 9.x variant for Classic Mode in X, but not for X itself.

You have a RAM, firmware, or POSSIBLY OS X disk drivers to be installed before you can install OS X.
 
ITASOR said:
You shouldn't need to have ANY OS installed on the computer to install OS X. Put the CD in the drive, and restart while holding down the "option" key. When you get a choice of what to boot from (your HD or CD), choose the OS X Install CD. Should boot right off it. If not, I would test booting from your 8.6 CD. If that doesn't work either, replace your optical drive.
Click to expand...

tried the option key (several times, both sides of key board) but it didn't do anything with tiger CD. boots from original CD no problem (OS 8.51)

OS 8.x does complain about not having a driver for my "apple extended usb keyboard" (original keyboard suffered a death via coffee) but keyboard works fine in OS 8.6 just the 'extra' keys don't work (eject, vol, etc)

don't think the keyboard is the problem but who know
 
The min. spec. for tiger to run on a B&W G3 is 256MB of Ram/ @least 3GB hdd and might need firmware update to 1.1, and OS 9.2.2 to complete the tiger install

I got an old G3 as my Mac, look @ my sig. that needed firmware upgrade via OS 9.2.2 because the old G3's won't boot into X of an early boot rom version.

look @ ebay for 9.2.2 cd then try to boot into 9 then update the firmware

Mac OS 8 is an ancient OS thats why "Tiger" wont boot from cd or dvd..

To boot from Optical drive its Holding "C" while booting to select the drive to boot from ..
 
d-fi said:
tried the option key (several times, both sides of key board) but it didn't do anything with tiger CD. boots from original CD no problem (OS 8.51)

OS 8.x does complain about not having a driver for my "apple extended usb keyboard" (original keyboard suffered a death via coffee) but keyboard works fine in OS 8.6 just the 'extra' keys don't work (eject, vol, etc)

don't think the keyboard is the problem but who know
Click to expand...

did you try looking at what open firmware version you have yet?
 
No, No, & NO..........

A) B&W's WILL run OS X just fine (w/enough ram & HD space) I know this b/c mine has run EVERY version from the P/B thru 10.4.4.....notta problemo!

B) The Firmware MUST be updated prior to installing OS X, but that can ONLY be done in OS 9.1 or later

C) The "option" key boot selection is NOT supported on B&W's, never was, never will be! Holding down the "C" key, however, does set booting from a bootable CD.....

D) X-PostFacto is ONLY for the Beige G3's and earlier!
 
Not to over simplify things but... do you have the CD version of tiger or the DVD version? I know you said CD but I'm not sure if you knew your copy of tiger was on a DVD or not. If you were aware of this, disreguard this.
 
Yeah tiger will install just fine on a blue/white g3. i have a powermac blue/white g3 350(overclocked to 400mhz)/768mb ram/40gig/32mb at card, and i have it running os 10.4 tiger and its just fine. no issues at all.
 
please read this if you're still having trouble. you may need to update your rom to version 1.1; you also need to use mac os 9 to update the firmware. so what rom version do you have?
 
Firmware has been updated to newest version (1.1)

just as a note to others firmware update can be done in OS 8.51 to OS 9.2.2

The main problem seems to be that i can't boot from the tiger CD, possibly my CD-ROM doesn't like the CD? but that doesn't make sence since i can read from the CD in OS 8 no problem and booting from CD-ROM works fine with the original 8.51 CD. But so far i can't get it to boot from any other CD (tried booting from my diskwarrior CD (good for OS9 & OSX) but that wouldn't boot either)

My only options that i can see are to find a OS 9 cd install that then install OS X over top (assuming i can get the OS9 cd to boot)
 
Upgrade optical drive

Sounds like your optical drive is shot. You should replace, I just bought a Pioneer DVD/CD-RW internal so I can install Tiger on my B/W G3/300. Still had original 24x CD drive. As long as the firmware is the latest, everything should work. If memory serves me right, that HD is small, replace with something bigger. Don't forget to max the RAM. You have 4 slots fill them w/256 chips.
 
rev. 2

Hi! You need a rev 2 motherboard. I couldn't install os 10.2 to my b&w while at the same time I didn't had any problems installing it to an imac sl (350mhz). For me everything went fine, until installer couldn't find local drives. I have upgraded everything in my b&w, and run into some data corruption problems after HD upgrades because of the rev1 motherboard's IDE controller. So it was time to change it anyway. Got a rev2 motherboard from ebay for USD 20 and afterwards os x went in without a problem. First g4 motherboards with ZIF cpu should also work.
 
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