iBook G3 'Clamshell' upgrade problem

ale1981 · 10-19-2006, 06:04 AM

Ok, here goes, this is my first post so bare with me and I am no Mac OS X expert, not even a beginner!

My gf bought a iBook G3 300Mhz Clamshell recently, so I thought I would upgrade it for her. I bought a 20GB Travelstar HD and 256MB RAM. I searched for some manuals and found that iFixIt provided the best manuals and they were free!

I spent 3 hours last night taking the thing apart and putting it back together, not even one screw left over!

Now comes the problem, the first boot after installing the new hardware was fine, the little flashing folder icon appeared, so I inserted my Mac OS X 10.3 boot CD and it proceeded to launch the installation.

I got as far as where it asked for my target disk where my new HD did not appear. So I went into the Disk Utility and the new HD appeared there, so I thought it must be because it has not been formatted in Apple format yet, so I formatted it with MAC OS Journal (Extended) and went back to the select target disk, now my disk appeared BUT had a RED ! through it and says "Mac OS X can not be installed on this drive". I had a quick look on the internet and found an article where it said I would need to partition the drive, so I did. Went back again, still the same RED !.

I then restarted the machine thinking it may need a restart to activate, this is where my problems begin! I now get nothing, I get the sound when the machine first turns on, but then nothing, just a black screen.

Any help would be very grateful!

JDV · 10-19-2006, 08:48 AM

A machine of this vintage almost certainly needs to have firmware upgrades to run OS X. If you did not upgrade the firmware before replacing the drive, that is going to be the first place to start. Now, the firmware upgrades have to be installed from OS 9, so your first step would be to re-install OS 9.2.2 and then download and install those upgrades from the Apple site. That -may- be all that is necessary, but that is certainly a minimum that you will have to do if you haven't done that.

If you -did- the firmware updates already (and it does look like you did some homework on this, so you may have already known this), then we have different issues and have to look elsewhere for the problems.

Joe VanZandt

ale1981 · 10-19-2006, 09:36 AM

Hi Joe,

Thanks for your reply. I can say its not a firmware problem, sorry I should have mentioned in my first post that MAC OS X 10.3.9 was installed on the old HD before I installed the new one.

Vintage is definately a word to describe this machine!!

ale1981 · 10-19-2006, 01:06 PM

Well after a bit more research it seems resetting the PMU seems to have worked

Will update once 10.3 is installed.

ale1981 · 10-19-2006, 01:37 PM

Ok, my new problem is that I need to reset the PMU EVERYTIME I want to reboot, it just refuses to restart otherwise. All i get is the black screen, until I reset the PMU.

ale1981 · 10-19-2006, 04:17 PM

Update - Ok, it seems that in some ways Joe you were correct. The memory upgrade was causing the problems, it seems the original firmware will not accept 256MB, i put the old 128 back in and it worked fine.

So now I have to re-install MAC OS 9 (as the firmware wont run on 10.3), update firmware then upgrade memory and re-install MAC OS X.

MacWrite · 10-19-2006, 09:55 PM

You may want to install ShadowKiller on that machine (once you have it back running OS X, of course), it gets rid of shadows on windows and tends to make a good bit of difference in performance on the G3 iBooks.

ThreeBKK · 10-20-2006, 04:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MacWrite


	You may want to install ShadowKiller on that machine (once you have it back running OS X, of course), it gets rid of shadows on windows and tends to make a good bit of difference in performance on the G3 iBooks.

I second that. I used to own a 466 Mhz Graphite iBook, and had OS X installed. I think it was Jaguar, but not sure. I had a lot of problems with windows being drawn. The Finder was incredibly slow to draw and/or refresh new windows. You'll want to disable the icons and preview for sure (see attached photo).

It's quite possible that using Tiger you could see better performance than I did, but since your iBook only has 8 MB of video RAM, I doubt it. You can check the Apple site for a list of OS X capable machines. If I recall correctly the iBook G3 Clamshells were not on the list due to inadequate VRAM.

Anyway, if Tiger doesn't work too well, you've got a great OS 9 bootable machine. That's worth the price you paid to buy it. I have been kicking myself for selling mine.

ale1981 · 10-20-2006, 04:41 AM

Thanks for your info guys, I will definately take a look at installing ShadowKiller. I wont be using Tiger, I will only use 10.3.9 (Panther?), which I had installed previous to doing the upgrades and worked fine.

As my gf only paid £150 for it, it certainly is a cheap working laptop that does its job.

I wont be taking it apart again in the near future though!

logx79 · 11-12-2006, 01:08 PM

I just bought a 120 gig hard drive, 512 mb ram and airport card for my clamshell 466 MHz.

After installing all the stuff I tried to install OSX but the screen just went black after the 'apple + swirly start up thing'

So I disconnected everything and for some reason the install CD finally work.
So, after installing OSX and re- starting the computer it still gives me the same blank screen after the log.

I tried all the start up commands, I tried re- installing my old hardware but I still get the same blank screen. In firmware it says that the computer has a kernel error.

I bought a mac thinking that these types of problems were only present on PCs, when in actuality this is the worst kind of problem I have every seen.

hayne · 11-12-2006, 01:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by logx79


	I just bought a 120 gig hard drive, 512 mb ram and airport card for my clamshell 466 MHz. After installing all the stuff I tried to install OSX but the screen just went black after the 'apple + swirly start up thing'

What version of OS X are you trying to install? Where did you get the Install CD? Note that the disks that came with a new Mac are not suitable for installing OS X except on that same model. In general you need to buy a retail copy of the OS X Install disks.

Your problem could also be bad RAM. OS X is quite intolerant of any RAM problems. You can check the RAM with 'memtest':
http://www.memtestosx.org/

ThreeBKK · 11-12-2006, 07:24 PM

That Clamshell has a maximum RAM capacity of 320 MB. I don't know if that means it only addresses 320 MB or if it stops working if more is installed.

http://www.apple-history.com/

trevor · 11-12-2006, 08:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ThreeBKK


	That Clamshell has a maximum RAM capacity of 320 MB. I don't know if that means it only addresses 320 MB or if it stops working if more is installed.

I do not believe this to be true anymore, although the 320 MB maximum was true when this iBook was first released, which is why Apple History still carries the incorrect information.

When this iBook was first released, it was only compatible with up to a 256 MB DIMM. Add the 64 MB permanently on the motherboard (that's ignoring the 32 MB on some early motherboards of this model), and you have 320 MB maximum.

However, after the iBook had been out for awhile, a 512 MB DIMM that worked just fine with it was released. Add 512 MB to the 64 MB on-board and you have a much better maximum of 576 MB. That's the information given by Low End Mac: http://lowendmac.com/pb2/ibook-se2.shtml

I agree with hayne's guess that the problem reported by logx79 is not with DIMMs of the size he or she used, but with the specific DIMM used--it did not meet the necessary spec.

Trevor

logx79 · 11-12-2006, 10:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hayne


	What version of OS X are you trying to install? Where did you get the Install CD? Note that the disks that came with a new Mac are not suitable for installing OS X except on that same model. In general you need to buy a retail copy of the OS X Install disks. Your problem could also be bad RAM. OS X is quite intolerant of any RAM problems. You can check the RAM with 'memtest': http://www.memtestosx.org/

I tried to back door it and re- install OSX onto my clamshell by using the command t (firewire) connection to my other mac. I was able to run some diagnostics on the clamshell hard disk from my other mac and it passed all the tests. I also tried booting in firmware and do a hard disk and ram check and everything seems to be ok, no errors. Even in single user mode, i had a kernel error before, but after the re-install there are no more errors. This is very very odd... Since the clamshell is booting with video and the BLAM no more video and it also works in firewire mode then im guessing that the problem is not hardware. Maybe the boot is tell the system to install a screen setting that dosnt work, but I tried installing the old OS9 disc that came with that clamshell and it gave me the same crapulance. PLEASE HELP ME

logx79 · 11-13-2006, 08:44 PM

I have recently upgraded my old clamshell with 512 mb ram and 120 gig hard disk airport and battery. When I finished upgrading I did a Mac OSX instillation, (I previously had OSX on the clamshell). After the instillation of OSX the computer loads normally up until the apple in white background disappears, then the screen becomes dark blue and stays blue but OSX still seems to be functioning. I have tried everything to get this resolved but nothing seems to be working.
Has anyone actually had this happen to them and was able to fix it?

I appreciated it,
Joe

logx79 · 11-13-2006, 08:46 PM

PS. I cant even boot off a CD anymore. The only way I can access the computer is through a firewire connection to another mac.

logx79 · 11-17-2006, 11:08 PM

Wow... this week has been crazy trying to get my clmashell to work. Thank God my clamshell came with an AV cord. What I did to get the thing to work is plug it up to a tv (for some reason it loads onto a TV, but only if the extensions are off) while OS 9 is loading I hit the spacebar key, once the extensions manager showed up I turned them all off and turned on one by one and restarted until I was able to isolate the extension that was causing my ibook to display a blue blank screen.
It appears that the extension is something called an ATI updater... Anyway, now OS 9 works perfectly but the problem is I hate OS 9 and I don't want to be stuck using this operating system. When I try to load OS X on my Ibook, it gives me the same crap as the OS 9 did, but the only problem is that OS X does not have an "extensions off" button, and when I try "safe mode" by hitting the shift key it just turns off my computer. So I did a command-alt-s into single user mode and thenI tried to boot from there so I could see what the conficlt is and now for OS X it appears that the conflict is "FireWire (OHIC) Apple ID 18 built-in: no valid selfIDs for more than 2 minutes after bus reset." It repeats this code over and over again at 3 minute intervals.
Can someone help me with this very very starange fickle mac.

Thanx guys,
Joe

MacWrite · 11-23-2006, 02:49 PM

That's a tough one.

Have you tried taking the extra RAM out? Will OS X boot then? I assume it needs its claimed 128MB to boot, but you never know, it could be worth a shot.

MacWrite · 03-31-2007, 08:40 PM

Seems others have seen that error before:

http://www.google.ca/search?num=20&h...G=Search&meta=

But I don't see any fixes.

Mkramizeh@mac.co · 04-16-2007, 03:57 PM

After reading your thread I thought I might try to get some help here as well. I have a lime green firewire clamshell and can't install 10.3 on it. I added 256MB of ram for a total of 302Mb and wiped the drive and partitioned it into one 7.55 Gb and one 1.55 Gb drive partition. I installed OS 9.2 with updates including a firmware update on the smaller partition. I've tried using 10.3 install cd's but it hangs. I tried installing from a external firewire DVD/CD drive and got "Startup disk was unable to select the install CD as the startup disk. (-2)" A couple of times it started the install process but would just hang up and "spin". I first tried installing on a single partition with same results before going to 2 partitions. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to get 10.3 to work? Thanks.

10-19-2006, 06:04 AM	#1
ale1981 Prospect Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 7	iBook G3 'Clamshell' upgrade problem Ok, here goes, this is my first post so bare with me and I am no Mac OS X expert, not even a beginner! My gf bought a iBook G3 300Mhz Clamshell recently, so I thought I would upgrade it for her. I bought a 20GB Travelstar HD and 256MB RAM. I searched for some manuals and found that iFixIt provided the best manuals and they were free! I spent 3 hours last night taking the thing apart and putting it back together, not even one screw left over! Now comes the problem, the first boot after installing the new hardware was fine, the little flashing folder icon appeared, so I inserted my Mac OS X 10.3 boot CD and it proceeded to launch the installation. I got as far as where it asked for my target disk where my new HD did not appear. So I went into the Disk Utility and the new HD appeared there, so I thought it must be because it has not been formatted in Apple format yet, so I formatted it with MAC OS Journal (Extended) and went back to the select target disk, now my disk appeared BUT had a RED ! through it and says "Mac OS X can not be installed on this drive". I had a quick look on the internet and found an article where it said I would need to partition the drive, so I did. Went back again, still the same RED !. I then restarted the machine thinking it may need a restart to activate, this is where my problems begin! I now get nothing, I get the sound when the machine first turns on, but then nothing, just a black screen. Any help would be very grateful!

10-19-2006, 09:55 PM	#7
MacWrite Triple-A Player Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 75	You may want to install ShadowKiller on that machine (once you have it back running OS X, of course), it gets rid of shadows on windows and tends to make a good bit of difference in performance on the G3 iBooks. __________________ Stop by macskill.com and stay a while.

11-12-2006, 01:08 PM	#10
logx79 Prospect Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 7	Clamshell blues I just bought a 120 gig hard drive, 512 mb ram and airport card for my clamshell 466 MHz. After installing all the stuff I tried to install OSX but the screen just went black after the 'apple + swirly start up thing' So I disconnected everything and for some reason the install CD finally work. So, after installing OSX and re- starting the computer it still gives me the same blank screen after the log. I tried all the start up commands, I tried re- installing my old hardware but I still get the same blank screen. In firmware it says that the computer has a kernel error. I bought a mac thinking that these types of problems were only present on PCs, when in actuality this is the worst kind of problem I have every seen.

11-12-2006, 07:24 PM	#12
ThreeBKK MVP Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Bangkok Posts: 1,626	That Clamshell has a maximum RAM capacity of 320 MB. I don't know if that means it only addresses 320 MB or if it stops working if more is installed. http://www.apple-history.com/ Attached Thumbnails __________________ ➤ Think it's a good idea to put your most intimate data on someone else's server? Macmini5,2 ❖ 2.7 GHz Core i7 ❖ Snow Leopard ❖ Mtn Lion

11-13-2006, 08:44 PM	#15
logx79 Prospect Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 7	Ibook Clamshell Upgrades I have recently upgraded my old clamshell with 512 mb ram and 120 gig hard disk airport and battery. When I finished upgrading I did a Mac OSX instillation, (I previously had OSX on the clamshell). After the instillation of OSX the computer loads normally up until the apple in white background disappears, then the screen becomes dark blue and stays blue but OSX still seems to be functioning. I have tried everything to get this resolved but nothing seems to be working. Has anyone actually had this happen to them and was able to fix it? I appreciated it, Joe

10-19-2006, 08:48 AM	#2
JDV Hall of Famer Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Chicago, Illinois Posts: 3,191	A machine of this vintage almost certainly needs to have firmware upgrades to run OS X. If you did not upgrade the firmware before replacing the drive, that is going to be the first place to start. Now, the firmware upgrades have to be installed from OS 9, so your first step would be to re-install OS 9.2.2 and then download and install those upgrades from the Apple site. That -may- be all that is necessary, but that is certainly a minimum that you will have to do if you haven't done that. If you -did- the firmware updates already (and it does look like you did some homework on this, so you may have already known this), then we have different issues and have to look elsewhere for the problems. Joe VanZandt

10-19-2006, 09:36 AM	#3
ale1981 Prospect Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 7	Hi Joe, Thanks for your reply. I can say its not a firmware problem, sorry I should have mentioned in my first post that MAC OS X 10.3.9 was installed on the old HD before I installed the new one. Vintage is definately a word to describe this machine!!

10-19-2006, 01:06 PM	#4
ale1981 Prospect Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 7	Well after a bit more research it seems resetting the PMU seems to have worked Will update once 10.3 is installed.

10-19-2006, 01:37 PM	#5
ale1981 Prospect Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 7	Ok, my new problem is that I need to reset the PMU EVERYTIME I want to reboot, it just refuses to restart otherwise. All i get is the black screen, until I reset the PMU.

10-19-2006, 04:17 PM	#6
ale1981 Prospect Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 7	Update - Ok, it seems that in some ways Joe you were correct. The memory upgrade was causing the problems, it seems the original firmware will not accept 256MB, i put the old 128 back in and it worked fine. So now I have to re-install MAC OS 9 (as the firmware wont run on 10.3), update firmware then upgrade memory and re-install MAC OS X.

10-20-2006, 04:41 AM	#9
ale1981 Prospect Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 7	Thanks for your info guys, I will definately take a look at installing ShadowKiller. I wont be using Tiger, I will only use 10.3.9 (Panther?), which I had installed previous to doing the upgrades and worked fine. As my gf only paid £150 for it, it certainly is a cheap working laptop that does its job. I wont be taking it apart again in the near future though!

11-13-2006, 08:46 PM	#16
logx79 Prospect Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 7	PS. I cant even boot off a CD anymore. The only way I can access the computer is through a firewire connection to another mac.

11-17-2006, 11:08 PM	#17
logx79 Prospect Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 7	Wow... this week has been crazy trying to get my clmashell to work. Thank God my clamshell came with an AV cord. What I did to get the thing to work is plug it up to a tv (for some reason it loads onto a TV, but only if the extensions are off) while OS 9 is loading I hit the spacebar key, once the extensions manager showed up I turned them all off and turned on one by one and restarted until I was able to isolate the extension that was causing my ibook to display a blue blank screen. It appears that the extension is something called an ATI updater... Anyway, now OS 9 works perfectly but the problem is I hate OS 9 and I don't want to be stuck using this operating system. When I try to load OS X on my Ibook, it gives me the same crap as the OS 9 did, but the only problem is that OS X does not have an "extensions off" button, and when I try "safe mode" by hitting the shift key it just turns off my computer. So I did a command-alt-s into single user mode and thenI tried to boot from there so I could see what the conficlt is and now for OS X it appears that the conflict is "FireWire (OHIC) Apple ID 18 built-in: no valid selfIDs for more than 2 minutes after bus reset." It repeats this code over and over again at 3 minute intervals. Can someone help me with this very very starange fickle mac. Thanx guys, Joe

11-23-2006, 02:49 PM	#18
MacWrite Triple-A Player Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 75	That's a tough one. Have you tried taking the extra RAM out? Will OS X boot then? I assume it needs its claimed 128MB to boot, but you never know, it could be worth a shot. __________________ Stop by macskill.com and stay a while.

03-31-2007, 08:40 PM	#19
MacWrite Triple-A Player Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 75	Seems others have seen that error before: http://www.google.ca/search?num=20&h...G=Search&meta= But I don't see any fixes. __________________ Stop by macskill.com and stay a while.

04-16-2007, 03:57 PM	#20
Mkramizeh@mac.co Registered User Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 1	iBook G3 clamshell w/firewire can't load OS 10.3 After reading your thread I thought I might try to get some help here as well. I have a lime green firewire clamshell and can't install 10.3 on it. I added 256MB of ram for a total of 302Mb and wiped the drive and partitioned it into one 7.55 Gb and one 1.55 Gb drive partition. I installed OS 9.2 with updates including a firmware update on the smaller partition. I've tried using 10.3 install cd's but it hangs. I tried installing from a external firewire DVD/CD drive and got "Startup disk was unable to select the install CD as the startup disk. (-2)" A couple of times it started the install process but would just hang up and "spin". I first tried installing on a single partition with same results before going to 2 partitions. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to get 10.3 to work? Thanks.