Install 10.4.11 on ATA HD using 2018 MacBook Pro?

[LightBulbFun]

Well then I stand corrected. Interestingly I've heard lots of people say that a Sawtooth cannot boot from USB.

On my B/W, I've tried the multi-boot command in OF, yet all it did was freeze up and shut down.

I have a really quite early Sawtooth (Uninorth 1 Rev 3) and it can boot from USB just fine

in-fact somewhere I have a photo of said Sawtooth booted into Leopard off a USB 3.0 stick plugged into a USB 2.0 card, playing minecraft LOL

Hold on here. From my experience, you are correct. I have a 1999 Sawtooth (with an internal FireWire port on the logic board unlike later revisions) and I've been unable to get it to boot from USB via its main ports - or those on a USB 2.0 card by holding down Option after the chime has sounded.

It ignored the very same USB stick which has successfully installed Tiger on my Dual USB iBook G3's, my eMac G4 and my iMac G3. Perhaps it never received a firmware update during its previous ownership but I very much doubt that at some point this didn't happen.

It's possible that not all Sawtooth models possess this capability.

what is your firmware version? the latest is 4.2.8

also worth noting not all USB sticks play nice with all versions of OpenFirmware/PPC machines

I have got some that will read fine on one machine but give USB bus errors on another etc

although I generally recall the sawtooth being pretty robust about it, I generally ran into issues with later machines

 

[TheShortTimer]

I have a really quite early Sawtooth (Uninorth 1 Rev 3) and it can boot from USB just fine

in-fact somewhere I have a photo of said Sawtooth booted into Leopard off a USB 3.0 stick plugged into a USB 2.0 card, playing minecraft LOL

Ok, you've convinced me!

Yet, on my machine it's not possible - and I made several attempts before I threw in the towel. Which again points towards the possibility that there have been revisions or inconsistencies across the Sawtooth models. Perhaps what Jobs giveth with one production range, was then later taketh from others?

what is your firmware version? the latest is 4.2.8

I'll have to set it up and check. It was found by the roadside and donated to me after my 1st Sawtooth (a 2000 model) gave up the ghost and so I'm unawares as to what its previous history was.

also worth noting not all USB sticks play nice with all versions of OpenFirmware/PPC machines

I have got some that will read fine on one machine but give USB bus errors on another etc

although I generally recall the sawtooth being pretty robust about it, I generally ran into issues with later machines

The only time I've used OpenFirmware for USB booting involved a Linux live distro on my iBook G3. In all other scenarios I'd hold down Option post-chime and wait for the boot selector screen to appear - and it never happened on the 1999 Sawtooth. Ok, when I've got the chance to set it up, I'm willing to check the firmware, try other sticks and see if that makes a difference and post back with the results.

 

[AlpacaLips]

Wow this is really unbelievable. I finally coaxed the optical drive into working long enough to use physical media because USB is just not reliable. (Some things bootable, others not, with no apparent reason.) As a byproduct of having the optical drive working I was able to get almost everything installed on the 4 partitions, and then… this project claimed it’s 3rd hard drive victim.

When examining the HD, it’s super hot.

I’m not going to waste any more time with this until I get some form of solid state storage in this thing. Time to do more research!

 

[LightBulbFun]

Ok, you've convinced me!

to that! while doing a bit of digging I unearthed the photo I mentioned a few posts above all the way back from 2015! one sawtooth Booted from a USB 2.0 card and USB Stick running Leopard playing Minecraft LOL

 

[TheShortTimer]

I was convinced but thanks for unearthing the photo - very cool!

In the corner of your photo I spot a Maxtor HDD. They were my default choice for years in my PCs, Macs and external HDD enclosures. These days I buy HGSTs.

 

[AlpacaLips]

OP here wrapping up this thread. So here’s where I’m leaving it for now.

To recap, this is an iMac G3 DV SE (Summer 2000) motherboard and optical drive inside a non-DV SE model chassis and case from the same year.

I did successfully install an SSD using these products:
Kingston 120GB A400 SATA 3 2.5"...
Kingwin SSD/SATA to IDE Bridge...

I found that I couldn’t partition the SSD with the recommended small 2-3GB partition sizes; it worked only when all partitions were 10GB or larger. Not a problem since the HD is way bigger than needed for this computer.

I was able to install OS X 10.4 on the main partition and update it to 10.4.1.1. I was also able to install OS 9.2.2 on all four partitions. However, except for one or two boot occasions, i haven’t been able to boot into OS 9. When selecting a startup disk in system preferences, all installed OS’s appear. However, when trying to boot from any OS9, it does one of two things upon rebooting:
— floppy w/flashing ? for a few seconds, then hangs
— floppy w/flashing ? for a few seconds, then OS 9 happy Mac, then immediately hangs

(On the couple of times that it actually still booted into OS9, it did so only after sitting a good 10-15 seconds of the flashing ? Floppy.)

There are only 2 ways to escape the hang: Zap PRAM (which makes it forget that it was instructed to boot from a different partition and reverts to the reliable OS X partition), or restart with CTRL held down to make it request a boot partition.

Interestingly, the latter is not always successful, because the OS X partition does not always appear there. I’ve noticed that it NEVER shows more than 4 boot partitions there, so this might be a limitation of the selector and not an indication that the iMac couldn’t find all of the bootable OS’s.

Interestingly, while running OS X, the iMac has no trouble booting classic using any of the OS 9 installations on the 4 partitions. To see if the failure to boot might have been due to a flaw on the source 9.2.2 image, I reformatted one partition and installed a differently sourced OS 9 image (9.2.1 this time). Attempts to boot from 9.2.1 has exactly the same result as 9.2.2.

I’m going to set this project aside for now. Next steps:
— get it to boot into OS 9
— refurbish it’s optical drive so that it ejects properly
— source and install new speakers; these are blown out (repaired with glue but not optimal)
— do a side by side comparison of both CRTs to make sure my Frankensteined iMac is using the better of the two, and swap them if necessary

 

[AphoticD]

Well done @AlpacaLips. Great perseverance!

I’ve had a handful of old (and not so old) HDDs go on me like that. It’s left me scratching my head wondering if it was something I did wrong or perhaps a circuitry issue in a particular machine or drive enclosure, but I think it’s simply mechanical failure - sh*t happens.

How did you go about the OS9 install? I know that typically a drag and drop installation will do the job, but there must be something missing... I would try to use disk utility to restore the MacOS9Lives Universal iso onto your OS9 recovery partition, then boot into this partition and run the install software to properly copy and configure things on your OS9 system/boot partition.