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Leopard & CoreImage on B&W G3 (with G4 upgrade) Sucess!!!

J

jimjamyaha

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 2, 2003
46
59
I've been close for some while on nearly getting Leopard to load on a Beige G3 / Blue & White G3 I can confirm that I have had success with it booting fully to the graphical user interface, after quite a few tries of different techniques.

There are some functions which currently need attention, like Firewire and power management, but this is related to the way I've got it working:

1. G3 B&W upgraded to run a 600Mhz G4 CPU
2. Used the B&W to installed 10.4 and upgrade to 10.4.11.
3. Used a Digital Audio G4 to install Leopard as an upgrade over existing Tiger installation
4. Tried to boot this on B&W G4. Got previous error or crash with IOGraphicsFamily
5. Noted that AppleCuda and AppleLynx (firewire) kexts didn't load corrctly during boot either/
6. Extracted all kernel extensions from 10.5 WWDC 2006 edition, using Digital Audio - as this booted on G3 and G4 systems, and has all the missing kernel extensions not included in the Lopeard final release.
7. Deleted 'newer versions' of the kexts 'IOGraphicsFamily.kext', 'AppleCuda.kext', 'IOFirewireFamily.kext' and installed the relevant ones from WWDC 2006.
8. Boot was then successful.

I attach a screenshot of the about this Mac and an Apple System Profiler report as proof. Currently, AppleCuda.kext doesn't load and this results in a shutdown powering down everything, but not turning off the fans. IOFirewiewFamily.kext doesn't load so firewire port doesn't yet work.

http://www.jkalittle.co.uk/jkalittle.co.uk/leopard/BandW_Leopard.png
http://www.jkalittle.co.uk/jkalittle.co.uk/leopard/BandW.rtf

I've also flashed a Nvidia Geforce PCI 5200 card which support CoreImage as hardware accelerated, not too slowly,

Next I'll try on my Beige G3 to see what happens!

Hope someone else finds this information useful.

James Little.
 
A nice job, but you definitely don't have it running on a b&w G3 since the cpu is a G4. A good technical achievement nonetheless.
 
Update...

Have now also managed to get it to boot on a G4 upgraded Beige G3 with Radeon 9200.

1. Booted into Mac OS 9, which was installed on same partition as 10.5
2. Used Xpostfacto to install startup item and bootx, to enable booting on oldworld macs.
3. Disabled onboard video using setenv pci-probe-list fffbffff in Open Firmware (Apple-Alt-O-F at startup)
4. Restarted, and bootup occured as per the B&W G3 (G4 Upgraded) all the way to the GUI.

It's noticeably more laggy/slow on the Beige G3 than the B&W, however I would go far as to say on the B&W it's pretty useable for basic tasks. Must be down to the 66Mhz bus vs. the 100Mhz one on the B&W.

James.
 
I'm still trying to get a good deal on a graphics card for my (upgraded) 1.8GHz Digital Audio system since the 9700 Pro I bought awhile back will not run correctly on this system (died after a week and a replacement doesn't work either). Meanwhile, I'm stuck running the ancient ATI Rage 128 it came with. Suffice to say with (only) Sata hard drives, 1.5GB of ram and that 7448 G4, this thing is more than capable of running Leopard quickly save the graphics card. Well, that's a HUGE problem because Leopard only gives a User Interface score of 10, yes 10 (using XBench), on this machine with a Rage 128 (it gets over 100 in Tiger with it). Suffice to say, the interface feels like sludge under default Leopard. Yes, getting a 9800 Pro should make it super 'snappy', but I'm trying to bid a good deal since people want like $180 outright for one and I already wasted over $100 on that 9700 Pro that doesn't like my hardware for some reason.

But I ran into an article somewhere that said if you copy over the kexts for the ATI Rage 128 from Tiger to Leopard it will make a big difference. Well, seeing as I have them on separate partitions on the same drive, it was no big deal to copy them over. They were right. The GUI Interface score went from 10 to 40 (4x faster overall; actually faster in some areas than others) with no obvious issues (I guess the DVD player still doesn't work). But it does beg the question of how much of Leopard's 'requirements' are simply a lack of including a couple of megs of Tiger kexts that work perfectly fine straight out of the box in Leopard and make it usable on older hardware. I'm saying they purposely made Tiger slow on older systems. Now 40 <> 100, so Leopard is still slower than Tiger on that same hardware, but 40 is usable and 10 is not, IMO.

The dual 553MHz CPU it originally had was not the biggest cause of a slow-down in performance in Leopard (bypassing the installation check). No, in this case the lack of inclusion of video drivers for the machine's old graphics card was the biggest factor. Leopard runs faster on a dual 553MHz machine with copied kexts from Tiger than it does on the same machine with a 1.8GHz 7448 G4 without those kexts. Way to go Apple! I think those kexts for that card (which was standard Apple hardware back then along with the Nvidia M2) take up a couple of megs at most. They could have easily included them and Leopard would have been 'usable' for stock machines down to 400MHz, I think.

Given the fact even Apple admits (by way of Snow Leopard) that Leopard is horribly unoptimized (there's a reason this machine gets 40 in Leopard and 100+ in Tiger in that user interface score), it all just smacks of unnecessarily leaving older Macs behind, probably more to encourage them to eventually buy a new machine (they don't make much money off older Macs when hardware is their primary money maker) than any technical reason why they couldn't use the newer OS.

And before anyone tells me that Tiger is perfectly usable on older machines and there is no 'need' for Leopard, let me tell you how my Bluetooth headset with an MSI adapter that said it was Mac compatible (and it is...with a catch) doesn't work under Tiger, but DOES work under Leopard because Tiger's headset support is limited to only DLINK adapters whereas Leopard supports a lot more hardware. They couldn't be bothered to add that newer support back into a Tiger update so there's an example of how Tiger is already getting left behind. Apps are already appearing that require Leopard. So sadly, even though Tiger is fast and more stable than Leopard, users still need to upgrade to run some newer software or get support for some newer hardware add-ons, even USB ones. People say supporting PPC in Snow Leopard is not needed, maybe not even desirable (if they think it will benefit their Intel machine), but the same will eventually happen there as well. Snow Leopard only apps will appear and Leopard users will be left in the dust. If you can't run Snow Leopard, you will eventually be left in the dust until you buy a new machine too.

Leopard still has kinks regardless. I simply cannot get the Leopard Firewall to do what it says it can do. It blocks things like Yahoo Messenger and even the Bluetooth File Transfer program in the firewall despite them being added to the app-specific list. So far I've found no way to get them to work properly (Yahoo Messenger will work with the 'behind firewall' setting enabled, but that slows camera performance; Bluetooth file transfers work fine in Tiger but are dead useless in Leopard here).
 
Nice work (although I'm not sure the performance of Leopard will be acceptable on a 600 Mhz G4) but I think the OP has way too much time on his hands.:D
 
Wow, that's really neat. As far as I know... you're the first person to succeed in doing this in a non WWDC Leopard version (I'm assuming this is not the WWDC).

I have a Beige G3, and a B&W as well (and a 9600, and QS, actually....), so I might try it on the Beige if I ever get my hands on Leopard... probably not though, as I actually greatly prefer Tiger.

Really nice work though. I'd thought that the AGP requirement was an absolute show-stopper.

What version of Leopard?
 
Hi Firefly,

Thanks very much.

It's currently got 10.5.0 retail installed. After updating to 10.5.3 it kernel panics on startup with a 'cannot find driver for this platform, powermac1,1'.

I'm going to try 10.5.1 and 10.5.2 and the new 10.5.4 to see if they're any better.

James.
 
10.5.4 update success!

Hi,

Another update regarding Leopard on Beige G3 (G4 upgraded) - it's now running 10.5.4 with sound and power management functions working properly.

There seemed to be a problem that whenever I updated the Beige from 10.5.0 to a newer version it would always restart with a kernel panic, stating "unable to find driver for platform "APPL,PowerMacG3". The only way I could get 10.5.0 working on it was to install 10.5.0 over a working Tiger 10.4.11 installation. Using a 'fresh install' of 10.5.0, adding back relevant kernel extensions always result in the same error as above.

However, thinking that the solution must lie in the kernel extensions I managed to get a fresh copy of 10.5.0 working by figuring out the differences between an installation of 10.5.0 over 10.4.11 and a fresh 10.5.0 install.

The kexts (apart from the ones Xpostfacto installs) that were missing from 10.5.0 were:

* AppleCuda.kext (handles ADB mouse and power management function and sound)
* AppleGossamer.kext (Platfrom expert for Beige G3, B&W and Yikes! G4 - i.e. the platform driver)
* AppleHeathrow.kext (driver for the Heathrow chip which handles IDE/ATA)
* AppleGracklePCI.kext (driver for the Grakle chip which handles memoery management and IDE/ATA and PCI slots)
* HeathrowATA.kext (driver for the ATA controller section of Heathrow chip)

By experimenting with the working installation of 10.5.0 over 10.4.11 I determined that out of the available kexts versions I have (Tiger versions, WWDC 2006 versions and 10.5 beta-build a527 versions) that the following combination worked. Where possible I used the latest a527 versions as these were the most recent, with the exception of AppleGracklePCI.kext, which was only available in the WWDC 2006. IOGraphicsFamily.kext from a527 exhibited the same crash as the one included in 10.5.0, so the one from WWDC 2006 was used.

To get 10.5.0 working:

1. Installed 10.5.0 from DVD using a Digital Audio G4 to a 7.7GB partition.
2. Copied (from a527): AppleCuda.kext, AppleGossamer.kext, AppleHeathrow.kext, HeathrowATA.kext into System/Library/Extensions/
3. Copied (from WWDC 2006): AppleGracklePCI.kext, IOGraphicsFamily.kext (deleted existing 10.5.0 one)
4. *Important* used BatChmod (http://macchampion.com/arbysoft/Welcome.html) programme to set permissions on all kexts to owner: system, group: wheel, read and execute only. Doing a permissions repair on the kexts with DiskUtility does not set the permissions properly.
5. *Important* deleted files in System/Library/Caches/ and file: System/Library/extensions.mkext and System/Library/Extensions/Caches/
6. Booted into OS 9 and used Xpostfacto to install all missing kenerel extensions for the Beige and to enable booting into Mac OS X on an oldworld system.
7. Restarted and boot went well.

Trying to update this to 10.5.4 resulted in the same error, so instead I used the Digital Audio to install a fresh 10.5.0 onto a partition and then ran the 10.5.4 combo updater, repeated the steps above and had success!
In 10.5.4 even the internal RagePro works, without causing a kenerl panic on startup - they key to this is to make sure that the RagePro.kext isn't in the extensions folder. Installing 10.5.0 over 10.4.11 meant that this was there.

The B&W and the Yikes! G4 should all work the same, except you will need the additional kexts installed, which are missing, or do not work from 10.5.0:

* AppleFireWireFamily.kext (10.5.0 version doesn't load properly)
* CMD646ATA.kext (missing from 10.5.0 - ATA driver)

Sorry it's a bit long-winded, but hope it's of interest to all those G4 upgraded beige G3s.

Regards,

James.
 
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Just based on the screen capture, I'd suggest picking up a 40(minimum)-120(maxumim)gb IDE drive on ebay (or salvaged from something else) and try using Carbon Copy Cloner to transfer your OS to it. I think you'll see a significant speed improvement for almost no cost.
 
Hi disconap,

Thanks for the advice - it's actually running a 40HB - but this has to be partitioned to 7.7GB max for the OSX partition to enable booting on oldworld macs.

James.
 
Hi tuffluffjimmy,

Thanks - the point was to continue to make use of my beige g3 and the investment i made in a G4 upgrade for it... and of course just for general geekiness! :)
 
Availability of kexts

:) I'm very impressed! I have a B&W G3 with a Sonnet G4 upgrade(500 Mhz).I have a retail Mac OS-X 10.5 DVD; but had given up on installing it. Then I found out about LeopardAssist (to take care of the speed problem when installing Leopard). Michael Brice then referred me to this thread. With your post I realize it might be possible with the appropriate Kexts.
Unfortunately, I don't have WWDC 2006 or a527 or access to them. Is there any chance you could eMail me the required Kexts (other than what's on Xpostfacto)? Email address is: favreta@ieee.org Thanks very much.

Andy
 
Thanks very much.

Have also now managed to get Leopard running on a g4-upgraded PowerMac 8500! Will post details soon.

dmw007 said:
Congrats jimjamyaha on being able to successfully install Leopard on both of your Power Mac G3's - I am impressed by your efforts! :) :apple:
Click to expand...
 
Didn't Suceed

I was hoping to report success; but I couldn't make it happen. Somehow I managed to mess up my G3 so I can't use it at all. It won't "boot" at all-that is , I can't even get to the Chime.:(
 
Hi,

Try performing a PRAM reset by holding down apple-option-p-r on booting, or pressing the CUDA reset button on the motherboard (tiny button nearish CPU).

James.

OldFav said:
I was hoping to report success; but I couldn't make it happen. Somehow I managed to mess up my G3 so I can't use it at all. It won't "boot" at all-that is , I can't even get to the Chime.:(
Click to expand...
 
Can you use the kexts from 10.4.11 instead?

Hi James:

Good Work. It is nice to have a way to keep the OS current for these old Macs. This matters if you are using them for some kind of server. When 10.6 comes out I would not be surprised if Apple support for 10.4 drops out. The user experience from using the GUI is of less importance to me.

Question: With a Blue and White "G4" can you just use the kexts from 10.4.11 ? I don't have access to a WWDC 2006 and/or Beta Leopard DVD.

Thanks - Terry O'Leary
 
wow! please help!

Wow! This is great!

I'm trying to install leopard on my "Gigabit" PowerMac G4 Dual 500MHz.

I'm getting a similar error, where it says it can't find driver for PowerMac3,3 platform and so won't run the installer.

So it sounds like the problem lies in various extensions. How do I identify them and rectify them?

Any help would be hugely appreciated!
 
I'm trying to install leopard on my "Gigabit" PowerMac G4 Dual 500MHz.

jamdox said:
Wow! This is great!

I'm trying to install leopard on my "Gigabit" PowerMac G4 Dual 500MHz.

I'm getting a similar error, where it says it can't find driver for PowerMac3,3 platform and so won't run the installer.

So it sounds like the problem lies in various extensions. How do I identify them and rectify them?

Any help would be hugely appreciated!
Click to expand...
I have exactly the same problem and the same machine. If someone can help, it would be great.
 
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