Classic Mac OS Boot Problem on OS X
iMac Solved
As a follow-up to our earlier
correspondence, Tim Galvin writes:
Update: OS 9 loading. I was unable to boot [my iMac] from the OS 9.1
install CD (using the C key during startup). This was after installing
OS X. So I repartitioned (and erased OS X) and tried again to
no avail. So I reloaded OS X into the first partition again and
was about to give up.
Then I got a wild idea. I copied the OS 9 contents from the install
CD to the second partition. Then, by booting from my OS 8.6 CD (which
presented no problem using the "C" key during startup), I was able
perform a "clean install" of OS 9 (it would not do a normal
install) from the second partition into the first partition.
I assumed I killed OS X by this action, so I reinstalled OS X.
However, it gave me some options to save my previous settings just
prior to reloading OS X. I then reloaded OS X into the first
partition. I upgraded OS 9 to 9.2.2 and OS X to 10.2.3 and am
now happily running both OS X and OS 9 in classic.
Strange route but good results.
Always good to hear of a success, no matter how convoluted that
pathway that led to it. Jerry Pournelle used to frequently comment in
his Byte magazine columns that troubleshooting worked best by
the persistent application of logic. It seems to have worked for
you.
Upgrading a Beige G3
Looking for upgrade advice, Marek writes:
I have a question: I recently purchased G4 DP 1 GHz through USC
- nice educational deal (and it's great), but I also have G3/333 beige running OS 8.1
(from 1998). It was my workstation. Now that I have the G4 to do the
music (and only music!), the G3 I am using for the Internet and
Microsoft Word and so on....
G3 has three PCI (only); one is taken by [Ultra-Wide SCSI controller
for my] 9 GB drive!, second: sound card, and the third one by my
graphic card (I love to have two monitors). Now this is my plan: I
would like to replace my hard drive with something like 40 GB. It would
free my PCI [slot], which I could use to install one with 2 FireWire/2
USB (is this card okay, or should I have only FireWire or only USB on a
single PCI card?).
Now, I would like to run 9.2.2 (I love it on my G4). can it be done
on G3? Do I need to upgrade my processor?
Changing the HD, installing a PCI card and OS 9.2 wouldn't be costly
- let's say $50 + $100 + $100 for about $250 (I could be wrong [never
good on math]). I could have practically new computer! I highly value
your opinion! For me it could be upgraded within my budget; I could run
all my 9.2 applications on G3 and have my G4 committed to OS X
upgrades now, to have more PCI slots available can I upgrade a graphic
card?
As you see, there is many options to consider I am dying to find out
what is your opinion It could help me out great deal!
Thanks a lot.
First things first. Your beige G3 has a terribly slow IDE bus for
the hard drive - 16.7 MB/sec - which is going to be a real bottleneck
when you replace your SCSI drive with an IDE drive. Most drives you'll
find today are 2-3 times faster than the bus on the beige G3, so if you
really want to use them to their potential, you'll want to consider a
card that supports Ultra66.
There goes the slot you would free by pulling the 9 GB SCSI drive and
controller.
I've had really good luck with the Acard Ahard Ultra66 controller,
which is inexpensively available from Other World Computing and other
vendors (US$55 today at OWC). I'm using one in our beige G3 and really
appreciate the improvement.
Of course, that doesn't give you the empty slot you want for a
FireWire/USB card. I can see the importance of a better video card, but
if you don't need the sound card (if you're using the new G4 for all
your sound work), you could have video, Ultra66, and FW/USB cards in
your beige G3.
Another alternative is the Tempo Trio
from Sonnet. This card supports up to four IDE hard drives (right up
through the Ultra133 specification) and provides two FireWire and two
USB ports. At US$180, it's not cheap, but it can give you both good
drive performance and extra ports while using only a single slot.
You should have no problems at all running Mac OS 9.2 on the beige G3,
but another factor is the value of these vintage computers. I've
seen them sell for
as little as US$200 on the used market (slower one than yours) and also
seen blue & white G3s selling for as little as US$300. The b&w
G3 already has a faster IDE bus, has a faster system bus, includes both
USB and FireWire, and has even more room for internal hard drives than
the beige G3 desktop.
You might want to consider investing $300-400 in a b&w G3/350 or
faster, moving your files and PCI cards over, and selling your old
beige G3 to a student. It could have a lower net cost than upgrading
your older computer.
Radeon 7000, a Beige G3, and OS X
Francis Gibson writes:
Love your site! I want to put an ATI Radeon 7000 in my recently
upgraded Beige G3, but I want to use it
with OS X. Is this configuration now support?
I have read in the past that this card did not support OS X on
the Beige G3 and that ATI claimed that Apple needed to fix the problem,
but that was back with 10.1. Has the Jaguar fixed this issue to your
knowledge?
To my knowledge, no. ATI recently updated their website and
packaging for the Radeon 7000 to reflect that it requires a blue &
white G3 or later with Mac OS X. The card works fine with the
classic Mac OS on older hardware, but boots into a black
screen on the beige G3 and earlier models when used with
OS X.
Your best bet may be the ATI Radeon Mac Edition. According to benchmark results
published on Bare Feats, the older card outperforms the 7000 on some
tests. This card typically closes at US$85-90 on eBay
these days.
Latest OS for PPC Upgraded
Centris
Oskar Bruil wonders:
I have a Mac Centris 650 with
a PPC upgrade running
at 50 MHz (twice the bus - the PPC CPU is actually a 66 MHz one). My
question is now that I have a PPC upgrade, what is the maximum Mac OS
version that I can run on it. I know the newest version you can run
without a PPC upgrade is 8.1. Also, it says on your site that you need
a "fat" system for this computer, what is a "fat" system?
A "fat" system is one that contains the code required to boot both
a 680x0 CPU and a PowerPC CPU. Without a fat system, you would never be
able to run your old Centris as a 68040 machine.
I have heard reports of people running Mac OS 8.5-8.6 on PPC upgraded
Quadras, but I've never worked with such a setup myself. For more help
on this, consider joining Quadlist
(our email list for Centris and Quadra owners) and asking for advice
from those who have attempted it.
Macs in Heaven?
After reading my comments in Why
Apple Can User IBM's PowerPC 970, Matt Olson couldn't resist
asking:
It's more promising than any vaporware G5 from Motorola, which
seems destined to ship three week's after Christ's return.
Does this mean that we will have Apple laptops and/or desktops in
heaven? Thanks for a laugh-out-loud funny line. Oh, and as a Baptist
pastor I hope Jesus comes back soon. It would be neat, however, if
everyone there was issued an Apple, but ultimately I'll just be glad
I'm there.
I've seen the editorial cartoon where people going to heaven are
issued Macs and those going to hell get Windows PCs. We've also shared
the story Bill Gates Goes to Heaven on
our website, but we can't find any evidence - biblical or otherwise -
that there will be computers in heaven, or any reason we would want
them.
24-bit Macs?
After reading Why Apple Can User
IBM's PowerPC 970, F.C. Kuechmann notes:
In your 970 article [which I agree with] you say "Or the way
Motorola moved from the 24-bit 68000 to the 32-bit 68020 and later."
While the original 68k only had 24 external address pins, the program
counter was, like the other registers, 32 bits. The upper 8 bits of
address were generally unused, but they could be accessed by xfering to
a data register and writing out as data, e.g. to a latch.
Things were so much simpler in the 8-bit era, where chips has one
size. With the 8088, 68000, and later processors, there are different
register sizes, data buses, and so forth. I was specifically thinking
of the 24-bit addressing of the 68000, which limited RAM to 16 MB.
Writing 24-bit specific code was the reason some older Macs had
problems when the Mac started using 32-bit addressing in System 7. For
more on that subject, see 32-bit
Addressing on Older Macs.
More on the PowerPC 970
In response to Why Apple Can User
IBM's PowerPC 970, Tony Wight writes:
The other fellow is talking cobblers. Have a look at this pdf from
IBM: <http://www-3.ibm.com/chips/techlib/techlib.nsf/techdocs/A1387A29AC1C2A
E 087256C5200611780/$file/PPC970_MPF2002.pdf> (restricted
access).
About half way through, it explicitly states: "Native 32-bit mode:
High word of all effective addresses are cleared. 32-bit PPC
application code supported."
It was cited by <http://www-3.ibm.com/chips/techlib/techlib.nsf/techdocs/A1387A29AC1C2
AE087256C5200611780> Product Presentation - PowerPC 970: First
in a new family of 64-bit high performance PowerPC processors.
Have a look at this in InfoWorld <http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/02/04/HNibmroad_1.html>.
Their take is that the Power5 is the real deal for desktop computers,
and that the PowerPC 970 is really just for laptops.
Frankly, until Apple gets something like these, OS X is going
remain a slug race.
best wishes,
Tony Wight.
P.S. BTW a key difference between MoTo and IBM is that Big Blue's
chip production yields are consistently some 10-15x higher than
MoTo's.
Thanks for the additional information. After porting to the PPC
970, imagine the power if Apple ported OS X Server to the
Power5....
Apple and the PowerPC 970
Romeo writes:
The bus on the PowerPC 970 was designed by Apple itself. It is
termed the Apple IO bus, or AIO for short. Thus Apple shouldn't have
problems implementing it in future Apple motherboards. Apple and
Motorola had serious disagreements on the G5 about the chip's system
bus. Motorola wanted it's Rapid IO bus, while Apple wanted it's AIO bus
on the G5. This contributed to the end of the G5 project. Apple helped
design the 970, thus there shouldn't be doubt that it will turn up in
new Power Macs.
I'd heard rumors that the G5 had been put so far on the back burner
that we might never see it. This whole Apple-IBM-Motorola consortium
sure has devolved from a mutually beneficial partnership.
Older Macs and Digital
Photography
After reading Digital Photography
and the 68K Mac, where we recommended a Power Mac to obtain USB
support, Ed Nilges notes:
Your article was very helpful, and the best advice was to buy a new
PPC Mac. However, there does appear to be a viable way of working with
digital cameras on any Mac with a SCSI port.
Even on a modern computer, a direct USB connection to the camera is
not my preferred way of transferring pictures. I prefer to swap a
CompactFlash or SmartMedia flash card into one of the very cheap
readers available, which are USB, but, if I'm on the road, I use an
even cheaper adapter to plug directly into the PC Card slot.
I started looking around for a cheap SCSI PC Card reader, and I
found I wasn't even the first one to think of this:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3401059688&category=11157
Yet another cute, dedicated use for that spare Color Classic or Mac II (impress 'em with 1987's
cutting-edge monitor spanning technology).
Yeah, I have to agree that it's easier to use a flash memory reader
than connect the camera to the computer.
I've been looking for a cheap way to put a Compact Flash card on a Mac
Plus for completely quiet computing (assuming it can be used as a
bootable drive). I hadn't run across the Minolta CD-10 SCSI PCMCIA Card
Drive before, but Steve's
Digicams speaks very highly of it. They seem to be rare on the used
market and sell for $100-150 on close-out when you can find them.
Steve's also notes that this is the same unit as the Microtech DPA-P,
which still sells for $199.
Readers should be aware that the CD-10 doesn't accept Compact Flash,
Smart Media, or other types of flash memory directly. The CD-10 accepts
a PC Card or PCMCIA card that accepts the flash memory card, so users
will also have to invest in such an adapter.
With Power Mac 5400s
selling for under $50 and USB cards for $30, it may generally be less
costly to buy a whole computer than a SCSI-to-PCMCIA adapter plus a
PCMCIA-to-flash-memory adapter.
Dan Knight has been publishing Low
End Mac since April 1997. Mailbag columns come from email responses to his Mac Musings, Mac Daniel, Online Tech Journal, and other columns on the site.
