I've got a Power Tower Pro and I'd like to be able to run a newer operating system on it, however currently I can't get anything newer than OS 8 to boot. I've tried 8.5 8.6 and 9.1 and it just ignores the install media, but as soon as I put in the OS 8 disc it boots perfect. They are all retail discs, is there some special trick to getting it to recognize something newer? I have memory maxed out at 1GB and a XLR8 G3 card in it and it is working just fine with that setup on OS 8. I'd really like to bump it up to something newer but I'm stuck on this. Any tips? Thanks!
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Power Tower Pro Operating System Upgrade
- Thread starter igmgentry
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If you have an Apple SCSI CD ROM drive, try swapping that in.
Apple's CD ROM driver only supported third party drives with System 7.6 to 8.1, IIRC, so later version retail CDs most likely only support Apple branded drives.
Apple's CD ROM driver only supported third party drives with System 7.6 to 8.1, IIRC, so later version retail CDs most likely only support Apple branded drives.
Awesome! That makes sense, I'm going to try that I have an apple branded CD drive in my WGS 9150 that I can pull out to test and see if that's my problem. I didn't even think of that, probably because I didn't know that, but it makes sense. I'll report back and let you know if that fixes my issue.
I was getting ready to tell you the CD was just the tip of the iceberg... but Everymac (a resource you should become familiar with) says it can go up to 9, though not how:
http://www.everymac.com/systems/powercc/powertower_pro/powertower_pro250.html
http://www.everymac.com/systems/powercc/powertower_pro/powertower_pro250.html
Yeah I knew it could go up to 9 at least, my goal is to push it as far as I can just for the heck of it. I saved a couple of Power Tower Pro motherboards from way back just for this purpose. I have the MB installed into a custom PC case with a Mad Dog 750W powersupply, currently it is running of an 80GB IDE drive from a Tempo 133 PCI card. I was amazed that OS 8 was able to detect the hardrive and install with no problem.
The only SCSI HD I have floating around is dead so I would have had to buy one if it didn't work. I've got USB, Firewire, Ethernet, and Video PCI Cards all kinds of stuff I saved for this project. I don't have an old monitor anymore either so the OS 8 is running straight to a radeon 9200LE video card and works fine on VGA. I haven't tried the DVI yet just have to rustle up the cable, the flatscreen has both inputs.
I'm just having fun with this my main computer is a modern mac, this is just for grins. Maybe I'll bust out some of my classic games. I'd kind of like to have a drive or partition for each OS, my IDE controller should support 4 drives I think. I've been looking for the Temp Trio but I haven't found one yet. Although PCI slots are plentiful on the power tower pro.
Glad it worked!
Just as an aside, Apple's CDROM Extension v5.3.1 works with ANY SCSI CDROM drive - though that doesn't help with booting from a CD.
Just as an aside, Apple's CDROM Extension v5.3.1 works with ANY SCSI CDROM drive - though that doesn't help with booting from a CD.