Jaguar or Panther on beige G3 RevA?

[oogieboogiex]

hi everyone, first post... long time Mac user/owner, but never on the forums, and managed to get by without a ton of tech knowledge...

my question here concerns my second Mac, which is a beige G3 300 rev A, 20GB, 384MB ram, running a Sonnet G4 400 MHz processor (previous owner installed)... it sits at my parents house and was my mom's internet machine... she now has a Dell notebook, but she'd prefer the old G3 for things like banging out letters and then being able to email them...

I had installed OS X into this machine, complete with the partitions, first 8GB etc. And, I managed to run it for a short time.

But, then I started getting a white screen at start up with a repeated "can't open", and it would boot back into OS 9. I have tried to reinstall, using Apple-original disks, I have tried to get 10.1 in, and then 10.2. My objective was to get Jaguar in, because I cannot get internet access any longer using IE 5 or Netscape 6, and I can't get Safari or Firefox into anything older than Jaguar...

Attempting to install Jaguar, I am not able to access any of the drives to install. I'd like to even get Panther or Tiger in if I can get past jaguar and get XPostFacto in...

any help? is this a limitation of having the rev A motherboard? can I get around this? it was still such a useful machine, i'd hate to have to get rid of it because it does nothing anymore...

 

[Buzz Bumble]

Internet Explorer should work with most "non-fancy" websites. For those that don't work you can try iCab. Someone else did mention another Mac OS 9 browser in another topic, but I forget what it was called though. The only websites I've come across that don't work are ones that require a newer version of things like Flash, QuickTime, etc.Things like Internet banking may also be a problem, but I don't use that.

I still use Mac OS 9 on a daily basis on my beige G3 PowerMac. The only problem I have is that my hopeless ISP changed something at their end and I can no longer log-in to the Internet because it won't authenticate the connection using the local dial-up number. I can (and occasionally have to) log-in by using an alternate number, but that's a toll / long-distance call, so is too expensive for normal use. They refuse to fix the problem and I'm currently stuck using this ancient, s-l-o-w Windoze PC instead.

 

[oogieboogiex]

I remember trying iCab and Camino... neither seemed to help... I wonder if it was a limitation put on by my provider not to support IE... I used Netscape 6 for a time, but lost that too...

I would really like to try to get OS X on that machine though... not that I have a problem with OS 9, but it ran well on OS X when it did run it...

I am seeing a lot of threads on getting Panther and Tiger on to older machines... I am wondering if this Rev A motherboard is my issue... is that what is keeping my from getting OS X onto this machine?

 

[Buzz Bumble]

With the exception of a custom browser (e.g. AOL), an ISP can't tell what browser you're using or stop it working with general Interent websites ... unless you mean it's not working with your ISP's webmail system or similar, which is a possibilty as they add fancy new features the older browsers don't like. I know Explorer won't work with my provider's webmail, but iCab does.

Sorry, I can't help with install OS X on it. I've never bothered to even try on my PowerMac G3 ... OS 9 is faster, more stable and works.