ALERT!! Running OS 10.3 Server on G5 problems

philsto

Registered
We are running OS 10,3 server on a G5. It came preinstalled with Tiger, so we erased, partitioned and installed...

Turns out we have completely lost the use of our superdrive (except to read CDs). The model is Sony GW-28 I believe (don't have the machine in front of me) but it's a recent drive... So obviously we wiped the driver by putting on the server software, but....

There are no separate drivers available for this drive!! Sony referred us to Apple, saying they supplied only the drive itself, not the driver, and Apple said the driver was "integrated" into the Tiger software, and could not be downloaded separately.

So we now own a new server/G5 without a superdrive. We could certainly install Tiger on the data partition and run it from there, but it's a pain in the ass, and i simply can't believe that Apple would not have thought of this scenario.

I'd love to get a solution to this (othr than having to boot into 10.4) but the support team said there was no other option.

Prove me wrong. Please.
 
Exactly. This is why its wise to never install an older version of the operating system than the one that came with the Mac. If I installed 10.3 or 10.2 on my iMac, the power management would be completely unsupported, causing the fans to run at full speed. I'd just go ahead and install Tiger.
 
My point was not that they include the driver, but merely that they make it available by isolating it and therefore allowing people who choose to run 10.3 on their computer to have access to the Super Drive. Not a big deal, I would have thought. Why would you include a super drive and not have the driver independently available? It still doesn't make sense to me.
 
Independent driver downloads is very Windows-esque. Apple users like not having to deal with drivers, but I agree, it would certainly help in this situation.

Did you try "PatchBurn," linked above?
 
philsto said:
My point was not that they include the driver, but merely that they make it available by isolating it and therefore allowing people who choose to run 10.3 on their computer to have access to the Super Drive. Not a big deal, I would have thought. Why would you include a super drive and not have the driver independently available? It still doesn't make sense to me.
The superdrive is a small thing, yes. But Apple never moves backwards by providing support for running a version of OS X that is older than the one that shipped with a Mac model. Should work fine with Server 10.4
If you have good IT support for Server, the client 10.4 can be configured with all the server setups through the terminal.
 
Yeah, if a machine ships with Tiger installed it won't run Panther versions of the OS. You may also find cooling issues trying to do this.
 
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