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Old 01-21-2004, 12:34 AM   #1
Norm Nager
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Thumbs up 10.3.2 installs flawlessly on Beige G3 (rev. A) with XPostFacto 3.0a11 !

Apple said it couldn't be done; Panther could not be installed on a Mac without factory built-in USB.

Well, I discovered that the impossible was possible, thanks to Ryan Rempel's XPostFacto 3.0a11. Panther purrs on my old Beige as sweetly as it does on my G4.

I still can't believe it. But all my Panther-generation software and older software act as if they're on my G4 with OS 10.3.2 instead of on my old Beige G3.

Some participants in this forum may remember my postings here asking about the pros and cons of attempting to use XPostFacto (at that time, the version was 3.0a9). I got some useful advice here.

I'd been watching the XPostFacto forums at
<http://anybox.owc.net/forum/index.php>
especially the one for Beige G3s, for quite a while berore registering and was hesitant about installing XPF, let alone daring to risk a smoothly operating OS 10.2.8 to dive into the unknown of doing what Apple said was impossible: moving up to Panther on a computer without factory built-in USB.

I've been a volunteer external beta tester for a number of software corporations before and since I retired as a professor of communications and on occasion while testing early-stage betas had system corruption so bad I had to erase and do clean installations of my OS and all my applications. Not frequently, I experienced less severe crashes in beta testing and discovered bugs galore as one moved through the beta builds leading up to public release.

But never did I dare touch an alpha version, however, until Jan. 18 with the newly released XPF 3.0a11. I did so with the confidence that the kind of support I saw from Ryan and others in the several XPF forums was concerned, quick, responsive, helpful.

I bought a Radeon 7000 Mac Edition card, a prerequisite currently for installing Panther with XPF. (The same card and an adapter allowed me to hook up a couple-year-old 15" Apple Studio Display to my Beige.)

I anticipated disasters major and minor and was prepared to have to retreat to re-formatting my OS X partition and using my backup CDs to restore OS 10.2.8.

I think it didn't hurt that OS 10.2.8, instead of being an archival install, as had some of my earlier Jaguar versions, was installed on my freshly erased drive's 7.8 GB OS X partition and that all the applications and their updates had been re-installed from scratch, with frequent runnings of Repair Permissions in between and occasional running of TechTool Pro 4.0.1 and Disk Warrior 3.

Jaguar operated without a snarl, but I wanted the convenience of having the same OS and the same versions of software on both my G4 and Beige G3.

Some others have had bad experiences in attempting to install Panther on a Beige G3 or other vintage model Mac, so I expected the worst.

I expected the Panther installation to stall, but XPF allowed me to run the upgrade option and, with only pauses to respond to prompts, install from each of the three 10.3 CDs.

I expected a black or grey or weird screen, but Panther installed as smoothly as it had on my stock 733-mhz G4 QuickSilver.

I expected problems in booting TechTool Pro 4.0.1 OS 10.2.6 CD for Beige G3s on a G3 with a new 10.3.2 OS, but that went well.

I expected problems in turning on Apple Talk on both computers and moving through my G4 ethernet port and router a number of files and folders to my Beige G3's OS X partition, with XPF 3.0a.11 and OS 10.3.2 now installed. Not a hiccup!

I expected problems in running my Microsoft Office 10.1.5 Entourage suite, Word and Excel. And if that didn't upset XPF-installed Panther on a Beige G3, I was sure some of my favorite haxies that worked on my G4 with Panther would give my Beige G3 computer indigestion. No way!

All that I did was follow the directions in Ryan Rempel's a11 html file. I did NOT change any of the XPF defaults.

And all my software and peripherals--everything--has worked like the proverbial Swiss clock.

I was cynical and first posed questions on the MacOSXHints.com forums and at Apple.com's forum for older computers on the wisdom of trying to install Panther on a Beige G3. I wish to thank everybody for sharing their insights and experiences. I got quite an education here and in the XPF forums, enough of an education to take the plunge.

In the vernacular of my former students: Panther on a Beige G3 rocks!

Respectfully, Norm
--------------------------
266-mhz Beige G3 (rev. A) desktop
464 mb RAM,
Radeon 7000 ME card
Orange Micro USB/FireWire PCI card
40-GB ATA hard drive that replaced the original 4 GB driv
OS 10.3.2 with XPostFacto 3.0a11
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Old 01-21-2004, 01:28 AM   #2
valiant66
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Works on a Wallstreet too

I had pretty much the same experience yesterday when I installed Panther onto my old G3 PowerBook PDQ (a slightly faster Wallstreet). No native USB, no native FireWire, but following the XPostFacto default instructions it worked just fine.

And the good news is my MacAlly USB Cardbus card works too, so I can use my G4 keyboard and wireless mouse.

The other good thing is that Panther is noticeably faster on this box than Jaguar was. Even third-party (non-Apple) applications launch and are ready faster.

I haven't tried SCSI yet, but since this box is old enough to suffer from the "install on the first 8 GB partition" problem I've still got OS 9 on the other partition for any old SCSI needs I may have.
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Old 02-28-2004, 06:15 PM   #3
PCheese
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Re: 10.3.2 installs flawlessly on Beige G3 (rev. A) with XPostFacto 3.0a11 !

Quote:
Originally posted by Norm Nager I bought a Radeon 7000 Mac Edition card, a prerequisite currently for installing Panther with XPF.

I was able to install Panther on a beige G3 with a Rage 128 16MB card pulled from a Blue and White G3.

One problem I had was that I tried to do an installation on a partition that didn't have Jaguar on it, which failed miserably. Maybe it's because it wasn't in the first 8GB of the disk, or maybe XPostFacto needs to install certain things into an existing System folder...

Once I installed it on the partition that had Jaguar, it worked fine (I did an archive + install). The first time I rebooted, I had no sound and everything was grayed out, but upon rebooting again everything worked fine. It's almost as nice as my Blue and White G3.

Beige "Gossamer" Desktop G3 (266mhz)
Rage 128 16MB video card
320 MB RAM
20GB hard drive
A USB card, I forget which brand, and I just realized it's USB 2.0 (I think: ASP says USB High-Speed Bus)
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Old 02-28-2004, 06:44 PM   #4
Norm Nager
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Re: Re: 10.3.2 installs flawlessly on Beige G3 (rev. A) with XPostFacto 3.0a11 !

Quote:
Originally posted by PCheese
I was able to install Panther on a beige G3 with a Rage 128 16MB card pulled from a Blue and White G3.. . .

Isn't 10.3.2 grand! I went through different kinds of installations because of some hardware problems that corrupted my 10.3.2. I used the upgrade method to go from 10.2.8 to Panther and I installed from scratch on a zeroed-out partition. Surprised that Jaguar had to be in place, but then, again, I was surprised by the problems caused by a bad stick of RAM and by my having a conflict between on-board video and Radeon 7000.

PCheese, what does a Rage card do for you on the Beige? I've seen it mentioned, but never paused to ask what its function is and the pros and cons of getting one.

By the way, check out my latest posting in this forum on lessons I just learned in successfully cloning 10.3.2 to a 2nd internal drive AND to a BOOTABLE FireWire external.

Respectfully, Norm
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Old 02-28-2004, 08:33 PM   #5
PCheese
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Re: Re: Re: 10.3.2 installs flawlessly on Beige G3 (rev. A) with XPostFacto 3.0a11 !

Quote:
Originally posted by Norm Nager
PCheese, what does a Rage card do for you on the Beige? I've seen it mentioned, but never paused to ask what its function is and the pros and cons of getting one.

I'm not sure where you could find one, other than pulling it from a B&W G3; maybe people sell them on eBay. The main advantage for me was the price (free ), because I replaced it with a flashed PC Radeon 7000 64MB in the B&W, so I had a spare card. The second greatest advantage was being able to use Panther on the beige, because Panther is simply a faster system than Jaguar. Like you said, it's better having the same versions of programs if you have two or more computers.

Here are a couple other benefits:
++ The flurry screensaver actually looks good instead of displaying an ugly splash of color every 5 seconds.
++ Enabling the options to fade and move "picture" screensavers in and out actually works well.
++ iPhoto gets a slight boost, but for me it's still unusable.
++ The genie effect is almost smooth.
++ Exposé, is, well, jerky, but it's there.
++ When closing a Finder window, it looks okay when it scales away rather than bad as before.
++ Startup time is about a minute less (because of Panther), down to about a minute and a half (chime to desktop).
++ Many quicktime movies that were very choppy before are now fluid (meaning I can watch larger movies/trailers than before)
++ I know I'm forgetting some things; there so much that's improved

If you want further proof: I actually have two beige desktop G3s, one for each of my sisters. One is 266mhz and the other is 233mhz. Each has 20GB hard drive, 512KB L2 cache, USB card, 320 RAM, and maxed-out on-board VRAM (6MB). They both performed about the same. Then I added the graphics card and installed Panther on the 266mhz. The next day, my sister who has the 233mhz one was using the 266mhz one and asked me "Why is this one SO much faster than mine?". There was definitely a big speed increase.

Cons:
-- You can't enable Quartz Extreme, you need a Radeon (I did on the B&W using PCI Extreme!, find it on www.macupdate.com)
-- It's not as good as a Radeon 7000.

There aren't many disadvantages to adding a better graphics card to your computer.

I've read many times that with a monitor connected to a PCI graphics card on a beige G3, there is no video until the blue screen/progress bar part of boot or something like that. That isn't the case for me: I'm assuming it's becaues I set the output device to the PCI card in Open Firmware when installing XPostFacto.

I haven't had a conflict with the on-board video on the beige, even though I tried dual monitors which worked fine. (Except when I dragged a window from the screen connected to the Rage to the screen connected to the on-board video, there was a huge difference in the jerkiness because the second screen's video controller was so much older. Also, big quicktime videos would play on one but not the other.)

I wish I had a firewire drive.
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Old 02-28-2004, 10:05 PM   #6
AHunter3
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::waves at beige G3'ers::

Got it on my WallStreet. And, finally, bootable backups as well.
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Old 03-03-2004, 02:39 PM   #7
mulgamutt
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Angry Not working for me...

I'm glad you all are having luck installing Panther on an older machine not intended for. I'm not having such luck.

I have a Beige G3 tower, with the following: 640 Mb RAM, one internal drive (8.5 Gb), one external drive (60 Gb Firewire), internal USB/Firewire card, ethernet, etc.

Panther will not load, even though I've tried through using OWC's XFacto for a good month running, back and forth, tweeking and so forth. No can do.

I guess I either give up, keep Panther aside until I get a newer Mac, or basically give the software away since I can't return it.

Sigh.
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Old 03-03-2004, 03:31 PM   #8
Norm Nager
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Re: Not working for me...

Quote:
Originally posted by mulgamutt
I have a Beige G3 tower, with the following: 640 Mb RAM, one internal drive (8.5 Gb), one external drive (60 Gb Firewire), internal USB/Firewire card, ethernet, etc.

Panther will not load, even though I've tried through using OWC's XFacto for a good month running, back and forth, tweeking and so forth. No can do.

1. On my Beige G3 desktop and on a lot of other models, it's been required that we install a Radeon 7000 card to make any version of XPostFacto work. You didn't mention if you did. The Radeon 7000 Mac Edition is the easiest of the Radeon 7000 cards to work with.
2. Some people had problems with earlier versions of XPostFacto. I just started with 3.0a11.
3. The greatest value I've ever gotten on my Beige G3 was paying the $10 registration fee so I could raise questions and report my problems on the OWC Mac Project froums. I got a lot of help there. There are also some people with experience with XPostFacto in Apple's Beige Usage forum.
4. Lots of variables can be involved when things go wrong. In my case, a bad RAM chip and conflicts between the Radeon 7000 ME card and the on-board video were barriers until I got counsel at the OWC, Apple and MacOSXHints forums that helped me deal with both issues.
5. I found it useful to run utilities like DiskWarrior 3.0.1 and TechTool Pro 4.0.1 before installation to put the rest of the software in shape. I also ran Repair Permissions immediately after each installation and before launching and that included before and between updates.
6. My counsel: register on the OWC projects, carefully re-read the .html document that comes with the XPF download and review carefully both the success stories and reports of failures and learn from the interchange of messages--I learned a lot from them. Make a detailed log of what you do so you can summarize the steps and when and how you had problems when you go on the forums. If I can install 10.3.2 on a Beige, anybody can. But it takes a lot of patience. I'd wish you good luck, but I think that luck has very little to do with it. I'll just wish you success!

Respectfully, Norm
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Old 03-03-2004, 04:54 PM   #9
PCheese
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Re: Not working for me...

Quote:
Originally posted by mulgamutt
I'm glad you all are having luck installing Panther on an older machine not intended for. I'm not having such luck.

I have a Beige G3 tower, with the following: 640 Mb RAM, one internal drive (8.5 Gb), one external drive (60 Gb Firewire), internal USB/Firewire card, ethernet, etc.

Make sure you partition the drive so the first physical partition on the disk is LESS THAN 8 GB. You may want split it into 7 and 1.5, because I recommend having lots of free space on the partition with Mac OS X on it.

You might also want to install a previous version of Mac OS X (Jaguar or 10.1) on the beige G3 beforehand; that's the way mine was set up and I know that should work.

After you launch XPostFacto, reinstall everything manually using the "Install" menu (Extensions, BootX and the third thing). Some people reported that it does not install them correctly otherwise.

A Rage 128 video card will also work.
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Old 03-03-2004, 06:03 PM   #10
AHunter3
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One thing that I've discovered is tripping up some XPostFacto wannabees is holding down the "C" key after clicking the XPF "OK" button to reboot from CD.

Don't hold down the "C" key.

If you're getting a nonverbose plain-vanilla boot from CD but then it's telling you OS X 10.3 can't be installed on your ancient computer, you booted ONLY from CD which won't work. The XPostFacto trick involves starting to boot from the target volume (to which BootX and a handful of hack-files have been copied) and then switching to the CD for the rest of the OS to be read and executed. You should see a verbose boot that doesn't resemble any verbose boot you've seen before -- messages about Gossamer-this and Gossamer-that not being understood and messages that appear to be errors but which don't stop the bootup process.

Also: if you get the beginnings of the weird verbose boot that occurs, but it stalls out with verbose errors (usually pertaining to memory space), use the Options (or Preferences, I forget what it's titled) button in XPostFacto and disable the L2 caches and try it that way.

Also: if you have no luck using XPostFacto under MacOS X, boot into MacOS 9. You can run XPostFacto in 9 to set up a Panther install, and it is less picky about what it will and what it won't let you pick as a target volume.

Also: If you've been trying to put Panther on a currently blank target volume, try installing Jaguar (or earlier OS X for that matter) first and then select it as your target volume. Once you've got the installer dialog going, you can erase and fresh-install Panther, but I've had best luck if there were already a bootable OS X on the target volume before attacking it with XPostFacto.

And don't forget to back up your current OS. And make sure the backup is BOOTABLE. XPostFacto can hose your current install.
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