It Lives! Panther on the Beige G3!
Panther now lives on my Beige G3! Currently, the 10.3.2 update is installing, and things have been going well. For the curious, here was the basic procedure…
My Mac’s stats are as follows:
- Beige G3 Rev. A
- XLR8 G4/466MHz processor upgrade
- 768MB RAM
- Stock 24X CD-ROM
- Generic USB card
- ATI Radeon Mac Edition
- ATTO PSC UltraWide SCSI card
To install Panther, I removed all but one stick of ram, all my USB devices, and the ATTO card. I backed up my critical data onto another drive, and pulled it from the system for good measure.
I then partitioned my drive into two pieces, a 512MB and a 5.5GB from the remainder. I booted off of an OS 9.2.1 CD, and then installed OS 9.2.1 on the small drive. After running into an issue where OS 9 would crash on boot, which was solved by booting with extensions off (holding down ‘shift’ while booting) and removing some offending extensions, I proceeded.
I downloaded version 3.0a11 of XPostFacto and ran it. I inserted the Panther Install CD, and in the options menu, I specified a throttle of 10, set my input device to Keyboard, and my output device to my ATI card. The ATI card is required, because Panther does not support the onboard video on these Beige G3’s. It is a shame, but on the other hand, the onboard video sucks, so you really should be upgrading anyway.
Fiddling with the ‘options’ menu on XPostFacto can take the most time. I tried many different combos before finding something that worked. What worked for me may not work for you. I recommend checking out OWC’s Tech Forum and reading about other people’s experiences.
After initiating the installation from XPostFacto, the computer rebooted, and began loading the installer. I got all sorts of crazy text messages, which could be identified as the BSD kernel loading. Eventually, the installer loaded, and I began the standard procedure of installing and choosing options.
After the installation of the first CD finished, the computer booted up, but then failed, giving me CLAIM Failed errors in Open Firmware. I booted back into OS 9 (with the assistance of the Startup Disk control panel on the OS 9 boot CD), reran XPostFacto, and reinstalled BootX, the Extensions, and the Startup Items. Then I used XPostFacto to choose the 10.3 partition, and used it to restart the computer.
It booted back into Panther, I finished the installation, fiddled with my settings, and installed the 10.2.3 update, which seems to have gone fine!
I still have some things to do, mainly reinstalling my USB devices, my ATTO ExpressPCI PSC SCSI card (this will be the one to give me trouble, if anything does), the extra memory, and the Powerlogix CPU Director software to activate the cache on my processor. Then of course there is all the software reinstallation and backup restoration.
But for now I can breath a sigh of relief, and go to bed, confident that everything is going to be downhill from here.
Update: After a day of installing stuff, things are working quite well, with one exception. My ATTO ExpressPCI PSC card is detected by the system, but drives connected to it do not mount. The card was once an Apple BTO card, but has been reflashed to the ATTO firmware v.1.66. The system detects the card, and the ExpressPCI configuration lets me view the card’s details (even showing the connected drive), and the Panther drivers for the card have been installed, but still, no mounting. I may need to play with the termination settings some more, as it seems others have gotten this card working with Panther on Beiges.
In good news, my Wacom Graphire2 works great, my Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse work great, and early boot video is enabled thanks to XPostFacto (set the keyboard as the input device and your video card as the output in the NVRAM settings, then reboot and enjoy). The video looks great thanks to the new card, and I’m loving Panther’s speed and features. It is clearly faster than Jaguar, and the Finder finally feels like a real product instead of being sort of half-assed. Expose is a great feature as well. I’m also enjoying the improvements to Mail, mostly speed, improved Junk filters and threading! PDFs load lighting fast, and Photoshop and Illustrator (both CS) run like a dream. Sound works fine, including global volume control.
In terms of network performance, I’m amazed that finally, for true, OS X will detect and mount my PC’s shared drives! And the PC will mount OS X’s shared drives! Previously, this feature just wouldn’t work. Not at all. Along the same lines, I can now use my PC’s printer over the network. Unfortunately, I still have some driver issues to work out there, but the basic functionality is there, which is another first for OS X. I’m amazed at what Apple does with OS X in each revision. More and more this is feeling like the OS I really want to be working in.
Aside from this ATTO problem, I’d say things are working quite swimmingly. More updates as I try to work through that remaining issue.
Update II: The printing issue has been solved thanks to the Gimp-Print drivers included on Disk 2 of the Panther install! A driver for my Deskjet 1120C (connected to an XP box via the parallel port) was included, and works great.
Thursday 22 Jan 2004 | Sam | Apple
Sigh, another Beige G3 running OS X. I had a beige G3 on which I installed OS X. My config was a 500 MHz ZIF, USB card, ATI Radeon and 512 of RAM. All was good with 10.2 until I ran the updater to 10.2.3. Got the (can I say this?) Blue Screen of Freeze. Computer would boot, and hang at the blue screen. Tried to re-install 10.2 multiple times. Finally, the computer wouldn’t even start up. No chime, no nothin’. Wouldn’t even boot from an OS9 CD!
Did something get fried, or was it a coincidence? I dunno. I took the computer apart and sold the pieces on eBay – got more than I would’ve if it were intact!
Anyhow, be careful out there!
Well, I won’t say that it hasn’t been a trial using this Beige… However, it has been a fun way to get to know the inner workings of macs and OS X, and has given me a lot of great use. I’ve been lucky in that all my 10.2 use was largely without incident, all the way up to 10.2.8. This transition to 10.3.2 has been the most difficult part of my ownership (with the difficulties associated with installing the G4 processor and 10.1.5 coming up as a close second).
I will say, however, that this box wouldn’t have been worth the trouble if it wasn’t free. Also, many of the parts were bought used, or were given to me by friends who no longer needed the part. All in all, I really only bought the RAM, the processor, and the OS (student pricing) and I got good prices on those. If I had paid full retail for everything else, I’d feel a little unsatisfied.
Its been said before, and I’ll say it again. These beige’s are great computers, and they have a lot of life in them for a 7 year old box, but they are only worth it for the hobbyist. If you don’t get a certain satisfaction from solving problems and have access to cheap/free used parts, then save yourself the trouble, and buy an 800mhz ‘gigabit ethernet’ model cheap on ebay. But for those of us who just don’t give up (or have the money to give up), have fun!
Hmmm, can’t agree that the Bold Macs are just for hobbyists. I’ve found that once X is installed, it runs like clockwork. I’m running 10.2.8 on a 7500 and 10.3.2 on a Beige G3 (both heavily upgraded over time). The only tricky bit is installation, but once the appropriate XPF version is ready even that tends to go relatively smoothly. It’s just a matter of refraining from being on the bleeding edge.
Anyway, I’d say if you’ve still got a Beige lying around, there’s no need to retire it just yet, although if you haven’t upgraded it much over the years then you would be better off getting a cheap G4 on eBay.
Well, I’ve also got a 1998 G3-300MHZ Desktop Beige that I’ve max’d out… Now it’s a hybrid G3/G4-500MHZ (OWC ZIF), with 768Megs of RAM (OWC), a ATI Radeon 32Meg Mac Video PCI Card (CDW), an Orange-Micro / Orangelink Firewire/USB PCI card (2 firewire & 2 USB ports)(CDW), and a 40Gig IBM IDE 7200rpm harddrive (Accessmicro) in the extra bay above the 100meg stock zip drive… I’ve really never had a problem loading any system except for 10.3.. I’m hoping there will be a much less painful way of making it load… Is there anyone out there, or is there a patch out there that will accommodate us diehards ???
Oh yeah, one more thing or two… I also added an external 24×16 x 48 CD-R Burner (OWC) which interfaces perfectly with the Orangelink Firewire/USB PCI card… My one major problem, is that my mother board built in SCSI interface (I’ve got two external SCSI storage HD’s, and a SCSI scanner) is not seen by system 10, and therefore I can’t use my external drives or scanner.. bummer !! Do I have to buy an aftermaket PCI SCSI card so my system will see SCSI, or is there something that I can do to make it identify it ?? This has been very frustrating, and any help will be greatly appreciated… I do have one more PCI slot available, but I was hoping to buy a MIDI PCI card…
Hi from Paris ,
extract from xpostfacto page :
The internal and external SCSI bus both work. However, there are some users who have trouble with the internal SCSI bus. One thing that you need to double-check is that your SCSI termination is correct, because Mac OS X is picky about that. In general, Mac OS X is sensitive to timing issues on the SCSI bus. Sometimes removing unnecessary devices helps. Also, you will sometimes need to adjust the jumper settings on drives connected to the internal bus, to make sure that they spin up automatically at boot time (the “Disable Unit Attention” jumper is one that sometimes needs to be changed).
more at : http://eshop.macsales.com/OSXCenter/XPostFacto/Framework.cfm?page=XPostFacto.html
Bo – I see your point, perhaps ‘only for hobbyists’ is a bit too strong of a term, perhaps more accurately, ‘only for people who are willing to do some tinkering once in a while, and accept that upgrading isn’t always going to be as plug and play as it is on newer hardware. Anytime you start running software on unsupported machines, you have to accept a certain number of consequences. To the ‘average user’ those consequences might outweigh the benefits, but to a tech savvy, penny conscious person, it can be a very usable platform. My beige is my primary machine, sharing my desk with a PII400 running XP. Both of these computers were built a long time ago, but with great hardware and good planning, and I’d say I’ve gotten fabulous use out of the both of them! Of course, the mac is still my baby, the PC is more of a workhorse/file server.
As to the SCSI problems, I agree with the idea to check termination carefully. Often an active terminator can do a good job where as a built-in terminator (set with a jumper) might not be so great. OS X is quite sensitive to termination problems. On my system, the internal scsi bus runs the zip drive fine (at least, i’m pretty sure the zip is on the internal bus..) and I was running a 2GB drive on the external bus to swap files around. Both seemed to be working and mounting fine.
I’ve got a PCI SCSI card, an ATTO ExpressPCI PSC, which is a single channel UltraWide SCSI card that was offered as a BTO option on the original Beige G3s (and a few other models too, iirc). It worked dandy in Jaguar, and seems to be working fine in Panther, though I haven’t put any drives on it yet (thats my plan for after work). It still has the original Apple ROM on it, but I will probably flash the rom to the retail version today, so I can take advantage of driver and firmware updates that ATTO has since made available. Also, the retail firmware activates the external plug on the card, which is disabled by the apple firmware.
These cards are pretty cheap, seem to work fine in OS X (I’ll have a final report on how it works in Panther later today), and offer basic UltraWide capability. It might be a good option for people needing an extra SCSI bus.
John – I’m sure installation will get easier as XPostFacto improves. Ryan is working hard on it, and it is fantastic for an alpha product. Just wait till it hits final release! He did a great job of enabling Jaguar support on the old world macs, and with time, I’m confident that the process for Panther will become just as easy. However, Panther made lots of fundamental changes, and the G3 is a different platform than he is used to working on, so it might take some time before this is a totally streamlined process. But in the meantime, if you are persistant, you should be able to get things running! If you are uncertain, wait a few months and check on XPostFacto’s development, I bet it will be easier by then. Panther is great, but 10.2.8 is no slouch, so don’t feel too rushed.
Sam: My internal SCSI connector has nothing hooked to it… All my guts are ATA / IDE, even my zip drive… The only thing I used my SCSI for was my external storage harddrives and scanner (which I dearly miss), so as far as SCSI termination settings, there’s none… Now, is there some type of SCSI setting inside my desktop that I need to adjust or change, because when I do a system profile querry, SCSI doesn’t appear anywhere… Seems like systme 10.2.6 isn’t seeing the SCSI buss at all… Any suggestions or ideas ????
I ran 10.0 through 10.2.8 on my old Beige. (500MHz G4, 640 Meg RAM, ATI Orion video, Sonnet FireWire/USB card, external SCSI CDRW burner, Scanmaker X6 SCSI Scanner, external SCSI zip, ADB Wacom tablet, USB optical mouse, external Firewire DVD burner, 23” Mitsubishi monitor. etc etc etc.)
Somewhere around 10.2.3, I started hitting nasty performance problems. But the endless upgrade treadmill marched on, and I did too, hoping the problems would be resolved. Then at 10.2.8, something went awry, and I would have problems, mostly not being able to find the boot device, hangs during OS X reinstalls, etc. I bought a new Logic Board, new ROM, nothing seemed to fix it. I elimintated RAM as a cause by swapping with other machines. I got it back up and running for a couple of months, then when I had dual-booted back to Classic, I couldn’t get it to find the OS X volume again – back to re-format, wrestle with install. XPost Facto didn’t even help. I eventually found that my PRAM battery was getting sucked dry. Over the space of a couple of weeks. This happened with both Logic Boards, and didn’t happen under Classic.
That’s when I bought my dual 2GHz G5. I hit my limit, and finally got sick of screwing around with it. I decided that I’d rather spend my evenings with my family, then cussing and sweating over the accursed box, waiting for it to reboot, etc.
$3000 well spent. Worth every penny. Just for the reliable sleep-mode alone. The Beige wouldn’t sleep, so I was constantly rebooting, and booting takes 2-5 minutes. And I couldn’t use iDVD. Bleh.
My teenage son is now using the Beige primarily as an Escape Velocity machine. (does all his other work on a school-provided Windows laptop)
ps. of course, my ADB Wacom was not supported in OS X. . .
Neil – I envy you! I’d love a new G5! Unfortunately, on my educator paycheck I can’t justify the cost yet…
However, this is what I was talking about when I mentioned this being a hobbyist computer. It seems you had uncommonly bad luck with your beige, but even so, the few times when I’ve had to curse and sweat over the beige have actually been kind of fun. I enjoy the troubleshooting and subsequent solution finding. Of course, I don’t have kids!
Enjoy your G5, lucky dog.
George Katele:
That is too bad that you sold your Beige G3. Most likely if you’d done an open firmware reset, it would have solved your problem.
In one of my attempts to install Panther on my Beige G3, I had a similar experience. I got to some point where the install wouldn’t complete and a reboot (even from the OS9 CD) would only give a system error bomb. The out was a reset. Several attempts got Panther running and I don’t regret a minute of it!
I would caution anyone who wants to attempt installing Panther on their Beige to be prepared for down time. If you can’t live with your G3 being down, don’t try it now. Sometimes the install goes without a hitch, in other cases (like mine) it took about two weeks, four formats of the HD and a lot of hair pulling before it came together.
Happy Macing!
I got Panther to install with XPost on a Beige with a G4 upgrade but could never get the cache to work. Nothing I tried (all available freeware cache controls) did the trick, and XPostfacto cache enable caused a kernal panic on boot everytime. I ended up erasing and reinstalling 10.2.8.
Which is a shame, because even with the cache disabled and no video card driver installed, the interface was clearly faster.