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Powermac G3 350MHZ and Mac Os 10.4

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kasuja00

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 3, 2018
101
64
Italy
Hi,
I have a Powermac G3 350MHz with installed Mac Os 9.2.
I inserted the hard disk drive that was from an imac G3, with Mac os 10.4.11 in one partition and 9.2 in the other. If I start the Powermac with the option key press, I see only the partition with 9.2. why?

Powermac G3 has 256MByte of Ram and Ati Rage 128GL. I miss requirements?

Thank you.
 
kasuja00 said:
Hi,
I have a Powermac G3 350MHz with installed Mac Os 9.2.
I inserted the hard disk drive that was from an imac G3, with Mac os 10.4.11 in one partition and 9.2 in the other. If I start the Powermac with the option key press, I see only the partition with 9.2. why?

Powermac G3 has 256MByte of Ram and Ati Rage 128GL. I miss requirements?

Thank you.
Click to expand...
The boot drive selector screen only came in with the PowerMac G4. In order to boot Tiger, you should use Startup Disk from the Control Panel in OS9.2
 
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I'm pretty sure the boot drive selector screen came in with the New World ROM. I too have used it on G3 Macs. Doesn't work on my PowerBook 1400 though (Old World ROM).

I could be wrong, but I can't think of any OS X-capable Mac I've used that wouldn't bring up the boot drive selector by holding down the Option key at startup.
 
weckart said:
The boot drive selector screen only came in with the PowerMac G4. In order to boot Tiger, you should use Startup Disk from the Control Panel in OS9.2
Click to expand...
Sorry, I forgot to tell you that my Mac is a blue / white and so there is the boot selector.
 
Any B&W G3 of any speed can run Tiger by default. It supports any G3 system with firewire.

My guess is that something is off with the data on the drive. I would backup any data you need from the drive, then wipe it and do a fresh Tiger install.
 
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z970mp said:
I've used it many times on an iMac G3.
Click to expand...
It works in slot-loaders, but it isn't present on Tray loading iMac G3s.
kasuja00 said:
Sorry, I forgot to tell you that my Mac is a blue / white and so there is the boot selector.
Click to expand...
The first mac to support the boot selector was the Sawtooth G4. It wasn't present in the B&W so I'd be truly surprised if you have a boot selector. I have a B&W that has a G4 in it and leopard installed and I still have no boot selector available on it.
 
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kasuja00 said:
Sorry, I forgot to tell you that my Mac is a blue / white and so there is the boot selector.
Click to expand...

Is the firmware updated to the latest version? It will need to be, for your B&W to run any version of OS X.

You can find the firmware updater here.

It requires that you be booted into Mac OS 8.5.1 "or later" in order to update the firmware. 9.2 certainly qualifies as "later", but these things can be finicky sometimes. If you need to install 8.5.1, you can find that here.
 
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z970mp said:
Mac OS X 10.4 requires a 400MHz G3 processor or higher as a minimum requirement to boot.
Click to expand...

It’ll boot just fine on any B+W G3, even a 300Mhz without third party tools.

*posted while looking at the B+W in the corner of my room merrily running Tiger, admittedly overclocked to 450, but it wasn’t when Tiger was installed...
 
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amedias said:
It’ll boot just fine on any B+W G3, even a 300Mhz without third party tools.

*posted while looking at the B+W in the corner of my room merrily running Tiger, admittedly overclocked to 450, but it wasn’t when Tiger was installed...
Click to expand...
Correct. Tiger doesn't have a Mhz requirement. Only that the machine has "Built-in FireWire". I have Tiger installed on a Rev B bondi iMac. it's got a 333Mhz CPU card in it and it had no problem booting tiger. It'll even boot the installation CD, and it'll just tell you it isn't supported.
All B&W G3s are supported officially with Tiger as they all have FireWire. However as said above they need a firmware update to work with OS X properly. I installed mine under OS 9.2.2
 
Project Alice said:
The first mac to support the boot selector was the Sawtooth G4. It wasn't present in the B&W so I'd be truly surprised if you have a boot selector.
Click to expand...

OK this bothered me, so I've been digging and you're right. In my defense, I'm not the only one that thought it was a New World ROM thing, it seems even OWC thought that. But I found this Apple article on the Wayback Machine that clearly supports what you're saying. Just wanted to set the record straight.

What still bothers me though, is that the OP is even getting the boot selector screen at all. Is that how it works when you hold down the option key on a Mac that doesn't support the startup manager/boot selector? It only shows you one option? I would have thought it wouldn't show you anything, just ignoring your option-key-pressing and going ahead and booting.

Also, I found this article linked from the other one. Could it be that just pressing X on boot would solve OP's problem?
 
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Raging Dufus said:
OK this bothered me, so I've been digging and you're right. In my defense, I'm not the only one that thought it was a New World ROM thing, it seems even OWC thought that. But I found this Apple article on the Wayback Machine that clearly supports what you're saying. Just wanted to set the record straight.

What still bothers me though, is that the OP is even getting the boot selector screen at all. Is that how it works when you hold down the option key on a Mac that doesn't support the startup manager/boot selector? It only shows you one option? I would have thought it wouldn't show you anything, just ignoring your option-key-pressing and going ahead and booting.

Also, I found this article linked from the other one. Could it be that just pressing X on boot would solve OP's problem?
Click to expand...
On mine, it just ignores me if I press option. Same for my Tray loading iMac. It just continues to boot as if you aren't pressing option.
 
amedias said:
It’ll boot just fine on any B+W G3, even a 300Mhz without third party tools.
Click to expand...

Oh, sorry.

Had a look at my install box, and sure enough, only needed a G3, G4, or G5 processor + FireWire and 256mb RAM to install.

I could have sworn I saw somewhere that it needed 400mhz...
 
z970mp said:
I could have sworn I saw somewhere that it needed 400mhz...
Click to expand...
Probably for the slot loading iMacs. There is an odd model of slot loading iMac thats 350Mhz and doesn't have FireWire. So when looking at everymac or mac tracker for the imac G3 it says the latest OS is 10.4 for the 400Mhz+ models.
 
Last edited:
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Raging Dufus said:
I'm pretty sure the boot drive selector screen came in with the New World ROM. I too have used it on G3 Macs. Doesn't work on my PowerBook 1400 though (Old World ROM).

I could be wrong, but I can't think of any OS X-capable Mac I've used that wouldn't bring up the boot drive selector by holding down the Option key at startup.
Click to expand...

The B&W and the Lombard PowerBook were the first New World machines but still had a foot in the Old World way of operating. The B&W had Firewire but no way of booting from it, still had an ADB port and, as said, no boot selector screen in its firmware. The Lombard similarly had no boot selector screen and still had onboard SCSI.

I have both computers. I can confirm that OP is either not getting any boot selector screen or does not have a B&W.
 
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Sorry, I made a mistake. There is no boot selector if I press 'option' key.
Today I update to Mac os 9.2.2 and restarted.
Then I installed the hard drive from imac g3 with Tiger as slave.
I Reboot my Mac and I went to the startup drive and now there is also the 10.4.11 in the list of bootable drives.
I've tried to select it and my G3 booted to Mac Os X.

Now I'm waiting for 512MB of RAM to improve speed.
 
timidpimpin said:
Might as well go to the max of 1GB. It would be cheap.
Click to expand...
Thank you.
Today I received the ram model 'Kingston KVR133X64C3 / 256 VALUE RAM' and although they are 256MByte, the PM recognize only half of them (128MB). The chips are only on one side.
 
There is actually a "hidden" boot picker on these that @LightBulbFun found, but you won't access it by holding "option" as on newer Macs. The first gen "New World ROM" Macs-the iMac G3, Lombard, and B&W G3(along with the Yikes! G4) have a fair few quirks.

To switch between OSs, use the "Start Up Disk" control panel in OS 9, or the same under System Preferences in OS X, to pick the OS you want to boot.
 
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