PowerMac G3 (B&W) Upgraded to a G4 CPU Can It Run Leopard?

[MAC MAN JW]

Hi, i got this g3 at a flea market for $10 this summer it has a G4 450MHZ upgraded CPU in it, it did not come with a hard drive or ram so i put a old 40Gb Hd in it and got a Gig of pc133 ram off ebay for $10. only thing not so good is the ati rage 128 GL it works fine but it is a little slow. it runs fast under tiger but now i want to push it to Leopard i seen a youtube video of leopard running on a g4 upgraded Powermac 8500, so i know it can be done on my g3 (g4) i just need a little help on how to get leopard to install i have a retail Leopard DVD and have a spare combo drive from a dead emac i can use in the g3. this mac was the 350Mhz version before it was upgraded.

 

[SuperJudge]

Use LeopardAssist and you're in like Flynn. Be sure to turn off as much eye candy as you can. PCI graphics cards are a little painful without doing that. Additionally, you probably won't be able to use Time Machine since it requires Quartz Extreme to work due to the needless animations when entering it. Go figure.

Best of luck!

 

[MAC MAN JW]

Use LeopardAssist and you're in like Flynn. Be sure to turn off as much eye candy as you can. PCI graphics cards are a little painful without doing that. Additionally, you probably won't be able to use Time Machine since it requires Quartz Extreme to work due to the needless animations when entering it. Go figure.

Best of luck!

Thank you! i will be trying it in the next few days first i have to backup my 18GB of music\Programs\documents with USB 1.1 to a 32GB USB Flash

 

[Hrududu]

Grab a PCI Radeon 7000 off eBay and install that. They're cheap and some even have 64MB of VRAM.

 

[zen.state]

Grab a PCI Radeon 7000 off eBay and install that. They're cheap and some even have 64MB of VRAM.

Good idea but a Geforce 5200 PCI would be better as it would support core image also rather than just quartz extreme like the 7000. That is very beneficial with Leopard specifically. It would be about the same price.

MAC MAN JW:

LeopardAssist like SuperJudge recommends is the best path to getting Leo to run. From your post you sound like a guy that can get a lot out of hardware so the Leopard experience on a G4 450MHz will be decent I'm sure.

A B&W G3 will get a lot more out of a G4 upgrade than an 8500 and OS X will perform better for sure.

 

[MAC MAN JW]

Good idea but a Geforce 5200 PCI would be better as it would support core image also rather than just quartz extreme like the 7000. That is very beneficial with Leopard specifically. It would be about the same price.

Thank you i will look for that it would be nice to have a core image Video card!



"From your post you sound like a guy that can get a lot out of hardware so the Leopard experience on a G4 450MHz will be decent I'm sure"

Thank You! This is my main mac because it has all the cpu power i need. i do only light web browsing some older mac games and use Microsoft office 2004 if i need to make a Document. so why have more then I need. if i ever need more Power i can use my Dual 500MHz Gigabit G4 or my Dual 1.8Ghz G5

zen.state- By the way i love the look of your painted G4 it looks like you put a lot of hard work in to it. it looks Very Cool

 

[Imixmuan]

Really?

I was under the impression one had to apply kernel extension hacks from the 2006 world wide developer conference release to get Leopard onto a blue and white G3, even with an upgraded G4. Or does Leopard Assist fix all those issues? See:

http://lowendmac.com/mail/0807mb/0709.html#3

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slMVdMp5-ng

Apologies if I don't know of what I speak.

 

[Intell]

Leopard requires a G4. The B&W G3 is nearly identical to the early PowerMac G4's but with a G3 card. A simple swap of the CPU and it'll work with no problem.

 

[zen.state]

I was under the impression one had to apply kernel extension hacks from the 2006 world wide developer conference release to get Leopard onto a blue and white G3, even with an upgraded G4. Or does Leopard Assist fix all those issues? See:

http://lowendmac.com/mail/0807mb/0709.html#3

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slMVdMp5-ng

Apologies if I don't know of what I speak.

I had a B&W G3 upgraded to a G4 600MHz back in 08-09 that I ran Leopard on thanks to Leopard Assist.

 

[zen.state]

The B&W G3 is nearly identical to the early PowerMac G4's but with a G3 card.

Just want to clarify that only the Yikes (PCI graphics) which was a 3 month temporary solution is similar to the B&W G3. The Sawtooth (AGP graphics) is an "early PowerMac G4" but it's logic board is far more advanced and has a totally different CPU socket. Same 100MHz bus but the memory runs 3x faster.

 

[goMac]

Just want to clarify that only the Yikes (PCI graphics) which was a 3 month temporary solution is similar to the B&W G3. The Sawtooth (AGP graphics) is an "early PowerMac G4" but it's logic board is far more advanced and has a totally different CPU socket. Same 100MHz bus but the memory runs 3x faster.

LeopardAssist probably works, but I just wanted to point out the Yikes G4 was not supported by Leopard either.

 

[zen.state]

LeopardAssist probably works, but I just wanted to point out the Yikes G4 was not supported by Leopard either.

The only stock G4 towers that are Leopard supported are the upper half of the Quicksilver's and the MDD. All the rest either need a CPU upgrade or Leopard Assist.

 

[MAC MAN JW]

i can not get it to work here is what i tryed first the combo drive out of the emac could not read the Leopard DVD so i put my Powerbook g4 in firewire target disc mode and the disc came up on the desktop then i used disc utility to make a image of the disc and put it on a old 80GB ata hard drive with the boot drive in my mac as well, It booted to a KP saying "Unable to find Driver for this Platform "PowerMac 1,1" so i took out the main hd in the g3 and put it in my MDD G4 and installed Leopard it booted fine in the MDD. But when i put it in the B&W it kp. i also tryed the superdrive from the MDD in the G3 it read the disc but would not boot from it. The CPU is a G4 7400 Made by PowerPc MAX and the CPU Model Is 2,2 i did try Leopardasst but it would not boot to the dvd. Please Help Me i do not know what to do now

 

[zen.state]

Lots of great info to help you here.
http://www.applefritter.com/node/23084

 

[MAC MAN JW]

Lots of great info to help you here.
http://www.applefritter.com/node/23084

Thank you zen.state But it looks like i will have to stay with tiger the links i clicked on to get the kext files do not work. but someday if i find a working link i will for sure try it

 

[zen.state]

Thank you zen.state But it looks like i will have to stay with tiger the links i clicked on to get the kext files do not work. but someday if i find a working link i will for sure try it

It's not the kext files at all that were linked to. He simply listed the different kext files that Leopard adds during the install over Tiger. The files you need are already on the disk.

I know from personal experience that it can be done as I did it just for fun in 2008. The problem is that I forget most of what I did as it was just a one off thing for the hell of it so my mind wasn't in absorb mode.

Since you have other more powerful Macs you could turn this into an ongoing project. Best way to learn is hands on and through trial and error. Thats how I learned everything I know about computers.

 

[MAC MAN JW]

It's not the kext files at all that were linked to. He simply listed the different kext files that Leopard adds during the install over Tiger. The files you need are already on the disk.

The way it sounded in the How-too link is that you needed a kext file from the WWDC 2006 Leopard preview. i thought that the link to the install instructions you posted had the Kext in a link but it was just a photo link sorry about that


"Best way to learn is hands on and through trial and error. Thats how I learned everything I know about computers".

Thats what i think as well,books can only help you so far with computer repair You needs hands on experience. i am only 17 and i love to take a part macs and add new hardware/fix them i have ben takeing apart old pc's since i was 7 years old (Sadley those old pc's never worked again) but in the lest few years i have ben fixing them more successfuly some day i want to do computer repair as my job.

"Since you have other more powerful Macs you could turn this into an ongoing project"

That is a good idea i have 4 other G4's Towers and 1 PowerMac G5 so i can use them if i have to. i will use tiger if i can not get leopard to work because i want to see how much longer a 11 year old computer can go before it dieds

 

[zen.state]

I have the Leopard preview if you want me to grab those kext. I have about 3-4 different beta and then the retail.

 

[MAC MAN JW]

I have the Leopard preview if you want me to grab those kext. I have about 3-4 different beta and then the retail.

That would be Great Thank You!!!