upgrade my old mac G4 from OS9 to OSX

eeday · #1 May 16th, 2008, 01:10 AM

I have an old mac G4 400 mhz that's currently running OS 9.2 and apparently in order to get Verizon DSL I need to upgrade it to "OS 10.3 or higher". Will it work if I simply buy the Mac OS X 10.3 Panther software disc?.....I read in a forum that some people have problems upgrading directly from 9 to 10.3 unless I first upgrade to 10.1 or something in between but I can only seem to find the Mac OSX 10.3 Panther software for sale....

VirtualTracy · #2 May 16th, 2008, 05:28 AM

I successfully upgraded an iBook G3 466mhz from OS 9.2 to 10.3 and all I had to keep in mind for my particular Mac model was to install the Firmware Update first. The upgrade went without any problems and I purchased my Panther disc from eBay for a reasonable price.

Ensure the Panther disc is not an upgrade disc which would require you to already have Jaguar 10.2 installed.

Look for the Full Retail Bootable or Full Install Version which is the one you need and avoid any discs that have a gray label. AFAIK, both the upgrade and bootable versions of the Full Retail Panther set have black labels with a large white X on them.

You need to upgrade to OS 9.2 before you can install Mac OS X and as you are already at that point all you may need to research is whether or not your model requires a Firmware Update.

Basically, you have to be very careful as many vendors on auction sites will sell you a Panther set of discs telling you it'll work when it just won't.

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andychrist · #3 May 16th, 2008, 08:41 AM

You can run Tiger on that machine, albeit without the graphic bells and whistles (unless you upgrade the video card.) And 10.4.11 comes with Safari 3, whereas Panther only supports Safari 2. Just make sure you have enough RAM in it, at least half a gig, preferably more.

MisterMe · #4 May 16th, 2008, 11:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by andychrist

... Just make sure you have enough RAM in it, at least half a gig, preferably more.

Equally important is the hard drive capacity. MacOS X needs 10% of your hard drive free so that its virtual memory system can do its thing. The PowerBook G4 shipped with a minimum of 10 GB hard drive capacity. MacOS X 10.4 will be a very tight squeeze on a drive that small. However, hard drives are cheap. If you have a small one, then you should replace it with a drive with capacity of 120+ GB.

ElDiabloConCaca · #5 May 16th, 2008, 04:52 PM

Just to clarify a bit, there really is no "upgrade" from OS 9 to OS X... whenever you "upgrade" OS 9 to OS X, you're really just installing OS X alongside OS 9, and both operating systems can operate independently of each other... meaning, when you install OS X, OS 9 is still there and is still fully functional and independent of OS X.

VirtualTracy · #6 May 16th, 2008, 08:41 PM

I fully erased then partitioned the HD of my iBook G3, which meant that I was installing Panther on a clean drive. I did this because the iBooks HD was *only* 10GB and wanted to optimise HD space.

The G4 400mhz has a much larger HD, with a max HD size of 128GB's and 3 or 4 drive bays available ....