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linuxgeekintraining wrote:

it's probably a dumb question but did you make sure your firmware was up to date?

I know some of the Blue and White systems need a firmware update to be able to use OS X.

I am probably wrong, but thought I would ask anyways.

Ya, the updater says my firmware is up to date. Hmmmm

Interactive_Eaten wrote:

I have the same damn problem except it's with an 8500 with a g3 366mhz upgrade and panther. Worked fine at first, but not anymore.

So what's the deal? Does Panther get inside the ROM and change the firmware or something like that?

In any event, what a bummer. I'm up against a wall. Can't figure it out.

What amazes me is that the computer will not boot even from the Panther installation disk, and so it must be a change in the hardware.

Odd, indeed. The Panth3er Installation disk works fine when booting other Macs. But apparently something was CHANGED in the ROM or processor of my blue and white G3 350mhz. It WILL NOT boot from system 10 anymore, not at all. It booted once and then nevermore.

Still boots fine from OS 9.21

kex215 wrote:

if you hold down option while starting up with the cd/dvd in the drive, does it appear as bootable?  Does your install of OS X appear at all?

or can you  place the cd/dvd in the drive while os 9 is running, can you set it to boot to the disk on restart?

No none of this works. I'm really puzzled.

1. I have a Mac OSX Panther installation disk. I've tried it on several Macs and it boots them fine.

2. This installation disk booted my B/W G3, 350 mhz, 384MBRAM *once*. I installed Panther, and successfully rebooted. After using Panther, I shut down normally.

3. Since that time, the machine WILL NOT boot from the disk or from the installed system (I have now trashed the installed system and reformatted my hard drive.)

4. I've selected the installation CD in the startup disk control panel. No boot. Nothing.

Sigh. I got this old G3 for free, installed 256 megs RAM. (Before installing Panther) The machine works great, so this OSX issue is frustrating.

Thanks for your thoughts

David Gordon

kex215 wrote:

Have you upgraded anything besides the ram?
Is it the original hard drive in there?

Unplug everything except your keyboard/mouse, even the extra ram that got thrown in there. 
I'd even try throwing in a different hard drive if you have one.

Before you tried installing panther, was another OS on the system, and how did it work?

Thanks for your continued interest in this.

Two 6GB hard drives are installed. Been in there since the machine was delivered.

I erred in a previous post: I installed the RAM upgrade AFTER the unsuccessful Panther upgrade. At the time of the Panther installation I was running 128 MB RAM.

Prior to the Panther installation, the G3 was running OS 9.21. Perfectly fine and stable.

I'll try the bare-bones boot you suggest. THANKS AGAIN

David

kex215 wrote:

Yeah- it could just be that particular stick of ram doesn't agree with your system, it could be an external device hanging on boot, who knows.  Let me know how it turns out.

Alas, it's still a mystery, and I'm going to put this on the back burner for a while.

To sum up:

I installed Panther successfully. The G3 booted and ran under System X. Then I shut down. From that moment onward the machine will not boot from sydstem X. Not from the installed system or from the installer CD.

I changed nothing between the boot and the no-boot. First it booted and then it didn't. Nothing was changed in the hardware.

To try to get it to boot I disconnected all peripherals. Tried booting with just a keyboard, with the mouse plugged into the keyboard. I also removed  a PCI card that I no longer need.

THe machine simply does not recognize the system X CD. Although it originally did recognize it.

Thanks for your help. I'm enough of a geek to really want to get to the bottom of this. I also have a ton of software that will run only on System X, so I'm up the creek. Oh well. One of life's mysteries.

David

Zap your smurfin pram man and take out that bad ram.

Last edited by Cleric (2005-08-25 7:13 pm)

I experienced a complete speed boost on my B & W when I switched to panther.  The 2 minutes I got back on boot was worth the money alone.

Cleric wrote:

Zap your smurfin pram man and take out that bad ram.

Did it. Still won't boot from Panther.

But, why Panther?  Wouldn't vanilla OS X achieve that without being as taxing?