Kanga G3 and OS 9.2.2
From Anthony Allen
Can I upgrade my G3 Kanga
to 9.2.2, or is 9.1 the highest. I am new to Macs so I don't know much
about them.
Hi Anthony,
You can with the help of an installer hack called
OS 9 Helper, although unless you have a compelling reason to use
9.2.2 I would suggest sticking with OS 9.1.
Potential reasons for installing 9.2.x are:
- Compatibility with ATI's latest drivers . ATI dropped support for
OpenGL versions lower than 1.2.2. (9.1 has 1.2.1)
- You can't run DVD Studio Pro 1.5 or 1.2.1 without 9.2.2.
- You can't run Final Cut Pro 3 without 9.2.2.
- Full compatibility with iPod .
- MacSpeech's iListen dictation software is not supported by OS
9.1.
If none of those apply to you, it's not worth the
trouble. I have both OS 9.1 and OS 9.2.2 installed on my PowerBook, and
I boot into OS 9.1 by preference.
OS 9 Helper is available as a free download with
no support. There is a support forum available for a $10 fee.
You can download OS 9 Helper from
Other World Computing or OS 9 Forever.
Charles
USR PCI modem for Mac
From Brandon Starkey
Hello again, Charles.
Figured this link might be of some use
Supports Linux, Mac OS, and many flavors of Windows. Leave it to USR
not to have such interesting information on their website. Not to
mention the price is lower. :)
Best regards,
Brandon
Thanks Brandon.
Charles
Suggestions for beige G3s and OS X
From Tom Wyrick
In response to the person having difficulties getting OS X
going on a processor-upgraded Power Mac, I have some suggestions:
1. Make sure you remove the existing L2 cache memory stick! When you
use a G3 or G4 upgrade board, they have their own onboard L2 cache.
Sometimes it causes slight timing problems (and instability) to keep
the original L2 cache stick on the beige G3 motherboard after you
upgrade with an accelerator board.
2. Make sure your RAM is not interleaved! I had a Power Mac 7600 I upgraded with a
G3 500 MHz CPU, and it kept crashing during my OS X installs or
failing shortly thereafter. It turned out the interleaved memory sticks
(supposed to make the machine run 10-15% faster) were the culprit. By
rearranging them in the sockets so they weren't interleaved anymore,
all the problems disappeared. I guess the motherboard just can't quite
handle the extra speed boost when the CPU itself is upgraded. (As I
recall, on Mac boards with 8 DIMM slots, they usually label them as
banks A1 through A4, and B1 through B4. To interleave 2 sticks, you put
one in A1 and the second in B1. For the next 2, they'd go in A2 and B2,
etc. etc.) This means you can't avoid interleaving at least 1 set of
DIMMs if you're filling more than 1 bank. Therefore, it's best to buy
something like 4 64 MB or 4 128 MB DIMMs and put them in the A1 through
A4 slots, leaving the B slots empty. Don't fill all 8 slots with lower
capacity DIMMs to achieve your desired total RAM amount!
3. Almost every time I've had a Mac (beige G3 especially) that
experienced random disk write/read failures (garbled directories after
saving files, etc.) and the hard drive itself was fine, it turned out
to be cabling issues. In particular, beige G3 owners tend to install
faster EIDE cards like the Sonnet Tempo, and these require new Ultra
EIDE ribbon cables. These are very length-sensitive! I tried one
of the expensive round EIDE Ultra ATA133 cables, and at a length of
over 20", it was too long. I replaced it with the shortest EIDE cable I
could find that would reach and all my disk corruption problems
vanished.
Thanks for the helpful tips, Tom.
Charles
A few questions
From Scott Atkinson
Charles,
Having decided my trusty 7200 is a bit long in the tooth
even for me, I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of a 9600.
A few questions for you/your readers, if I could:
- Best OS? There is some split about whether any pre-G3 machine
should run 9.x. My choice is either 8.6 or 9.1.
- If I put in a G3/G4 upgrade, is it likely to affect the stability
of my OrangeMicro PC card? I have one Windows-only app I have to run
all day, every day, so OrangePC is mandatory for me.
- What's the minimum low end machine for Final Cut Pro 2? Most folks
I know who are serious about FCP run it on G4s, but it was certified
for use on B & W
G3s, and I'm wondering - is it insane to think about running FCP 2
on an upgraded 9600?
Best,
Scott Atkinson
Hi Scott,
OS 8.6 or 9.1 should run great on a 9600. OS 9.1 works
nicely on my 200 MHz Umax S900,
which is a close cousin motherboard wise to your 9600.
The upgrade/Orange Micro card question is an
imponderable without actually trying it out. Perhaps our readers can
help.
I have no personal experience with any version of
Final Cut Pro, but I would anticipate that it would work fine with a G3
or G4 upgrade on your 9600, provided you add sufficient RAM. FCP 3
requires OS 9.2.2, but I expect that FCP 2 would work with OS 9.1.
Charles
OS X Beige G3 Problems (Not)
From: M. R. Schaferkotter
In your article Upgraded Beige G3 Problems, More
on OS X on the Beige G3, OS 9.2 on Pre-G3 Macs, and More of
2003.05.19 there are various remarks about difficulties with OS X
and Beige G3.
There seems to be an implication that the Beige G3 was an
unsupported OS X machine. I don't think that implication is
correct.
Secondly, there was an implication that only a restricted amount of
memory could be in the Beige G3 to get the OS X to install. If
that remark is merely an observation about the particular writer's
machine, then okay, however I can say that I upgraded four Beige G3
Rev. A to full memory 768 and installed 40 GB HD before
upgrading to OS X.
I further put in G4 ZIF 400 MHz processors.
I've experienced no difficulties, and I don't think that a one of
them has crashed in almost 18 months of rather constant use.
I've been blessed, as I have read a number of trying
testimonials.
Now I'm using the machines in a simple fashion, as part of an
OS X cluster (see AppleSeed cluster at UCLA or DaugerResearch.com
for more info).
m. r.
Hi m.r.
The beige G3 is certainly an officially supported
machine for OS X, but then so was my WallStreet PowerBook, and I
couldn't get OS X to install on it. Many other WallStreet owners
have installed OS X successfully. There seems to be a big
idiosyncrasy factor with these Old World ROM machines and
OS X.
Glad your experiences have been, as you say,
"blessed."
Charles
More on Using OS X (incl. Jaguar) on a Beige
From George Mogiljansky
Hello,
I was able to install Jaguar on a Beige with an external SCSI HDD
but with some problems: Certain files in the CFM folder were not in the
image form, but as plain docs. I was able to copy from a correctly
installed Jaguar system folder sitting in an internal IDE HDD.
The Read Me for the 10.2.6 update mentioned better compatibility
with SCSI. I was hoping to create a SCSI chain using either the slower
external connector or the faster inner socket. The problem is probably
with the Agfa scanner (not supported for OS X by Agfa). This is a
cross-platform (Win/Mac) SCSI device, and I suspect I will have to take
it apart to check for parity (or something else I know little about).
The one successful chain I had so far was the same SCSI HDD and an old
Pinnacle CD-RW (last on the chain).
George (Montreal)
Beige DT rev. 1, upgraded to 400 MHz/768 RAM, 10.2.6 (dual boot; IDE
and external SCSI)
Hi George,
Thanks for the report.
Charles
Mac OS X on Beige G3
From Stuart Bell
Dear Charles,
One further tip for would-be Mac OS X on beige G3 users: My system
kept freezing while sleeping through installations of X from 10.1.5 to
10.2.5. Now, 10.2.6 seems totally to have cured the 'freezing sleep'
problem, and my beige G3 is wonderfully stable.
best wishes,
Stuart
Glad 10.2.6 is working well for you, Stuart.
Charles
RE: Fragile Power Mac 8600
From Kevin Weise
Mr. Moore,
On these older Power Macs, you should add one more trick to your
arsenal: Rebuild the desktop.
I have a coworker whose spouse works for a local school system. They
had a Power Mac 8600
running Mac OS 8.6 which would crash every time they put a floppy in
the drive. They came to me for advice, and I couldn't help. They later
informed me that they rebuilt the desktop (for no apparent reason,
other than perhaps desperation for something to try at startup) and the
problem went away. When I think about it, my wife's beige PowerMac G3
used to experience similar problems with Mac OS 8.1 & 8.6, and
rebuilding the desktop as part of a maintenance regimen did seem to
help a lot. Users take the Desktop for granted, but in classic Mac OS,
it can still acquire a fair amount of garbage in it, especially if you
create & move/remove lots or files on the desktop. Rebuilding it
every month or so is a good idea.
Kevin J. Weise
Hi Kevin,
I agree. My favorite way of rebuilding the Classic Mac
OS Desktop is with Micromat's free
TechTool Lite utility.
Charles
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