Blue Screen on G4/450 Dual

M

mfessenden

Registered
I get a similar thing when trying to boot the machine from the OSX Install CD... I get either a frozen blue screen (pointer won't move) or something that looks remarkably similar to an NT blue screen.... messages about kernel and such.

I called Apple about the problem and the wanted to charge me $50 to tech shoot this, but that seems a bit much. Configuration is 30g drive, DVD-RAM and 384 RAM... everything but the mouse and keyboard taken off of the system. Any ideas? What's Apple's return policy? This seems like a lot of trouble for a beta...

Michael
 
I have a G4 450 with DVD-ram drive, 256megs, 26 G, Wacom graphic tablet, and a cable modem.

I couldn't get my G4 to boot off the install CD until I remembered that on my old Power Computing rig that I couldn't boot off the cd unless from a cold (power down reboot). => This morning in installed X without apparent problem until I got to the restart. I now boot through the notices that it is loading software on a gray background screen then it goes to blue and I hang.

Finally had to boot off the OS 9 cd and then set startup to OS 9 to be able to use the computer. What gives?
 
Thanks for the reply... not sure if I actually tired booting fresh from a shutdown or not. I have had a hell of a time tring to get this installed.... pulled the Apple SCSI card, a 256M DIMM, a Lightwave dongle and all my USB periphrials (sp) off in case something was messing up the install.

I get different results every time I try, but usually the install freezes even before the Install Screen comes up. Most often I get liitle black writing on the screen telling me of debugging and kernal errors (kind of like the NT/2000 error screens. One of the more cryptic mesages says "panic... we are hanging here".A few times they came up during the first part of the install, and the message prompted me to hit 'r' to reboot or 'c' to continue. I continued (still able to use the mouse and click buttons)and got the installer to actually install part of the OS, but my DVD-RAM drive went silent about halfway through, and the machine was pinned again.

The worst part of all this is that Apple won't even help me unless I pay their tech support fee of $49, which I think is ludicrous (for a $30 product). Customer Support holding times at the Apple Store are incredible (last call I waited an hour before I hung up.) I think my only option here is to just send it back, I really think that I have spent enough time on this beta and can wait for the real thing. I figured that there should be no hassles on a machine which is only a month old... but it seems this OS has a lot of funny little restrictions as to what it will and won't work with.

Whew... been wanting to get all that off my back.

Michael
 
Okay, maybe you missed the part where they said 'beta'. Beta software is buggy. It will be picky, and it will have problems! You need to have patience. My suggestion first:

Those without a non-upgrade g3 or g4: DON'T EVEN BOTHER, UNLESS, you are willing to spend a lot of time and patience on this project.


Those with a g3 or g4. It will work. You need to have patience. You should strip your machine down to it's factory shipping specs. Extra HDs out, SCSI peripherals out, extra non-stock video cards out, extra RAM out, at least to the point of 128MB, speakers, USB stuff (It is notoriously unreliable with OSX B), Firewire peripherals, and all other expansion cards.

You will not be able to use USB and Firewire HDs for boot, so you definetely don't need them there during install. USB printers are not going to work very well until companies do drivers.

Install on an HFS drive. UFS drives have bugs with them. In my experience, if you use a UFS, Classic and Explorer, and various other things are caused huge difficulties. BUT. If you install on HFS, first thingyou need to do after install is boot into OS X, then into OS 9, and then to OS X again, and make sure the boot works all three times. If it doesn't, you've got a problem. After you boot into OS9 the first time, you may lose your ability to boot into OS X off HFS. In this case, you may have no other choice but to stick strictly to OS X, not ever booting to 9 (as I am doing), or to install on a UFS, where this particular problem doesn't exist, but the above involving Classic and IE are there.

If I think of anything else, I'll mention it. The simple fact with OS X, is that it is in BETA right now, and there are problems. It's what happens. It's why companies very rarely release software as a PUBLIC beta, and Apple is the first major company to release an OPERATING SYSTEM as public before final. Linux doesn't count.
 
Originally posted by macboy73
Okay, maybe you missed the part where they said 'beta'. Beta software is buggy. It will be picky, and it will have problems! You need to have patience. My suggestion first:
Click to expand...

They are charging $30 for a system which won't install easily on their flagship machines, I know as I have a G4/450MP with similar problems to those mentioned above. If this "beta" software is so damn flaky, they should be paying us to debug the shit.

My system is about as vanilla as you can get, yet it still won't restart after install. Harp all you want about this being a beta, but it's payware and should at least install on a G4 with negligible difficulties. I'm not going to give up on it, but I also don't need people telling me I should expect this behaviour from software they are SELLING to customers.
 
While I can appreciate that this software is beta, I am more than a little surprised that I cannot install this thing on a brand new (still has some of the plastic-on-the-front machine) G4... you would think that Apple would have some sort of documentation on this. I mean, did they not even try to install OSX on these new G4s?

To further aggrevate matters, their tech support won't even talk to you without first paying them $49.... this is the point where I usually say "it's easier to return the thing and get my money back" because I really feel that I am being taken for a ride here. I have taken everything off my machine... PCI cards, memory... everything but the keyboard and mouse... and still I get the same errors (which I have posted below, as I understand that no one can fathom a guess as to what's really wrong without seeing the actual error.)

Methinks Apple has taken one too many cues from Microsoft these days.... and this is coming from a devout Apple fan.

The Error:

panic(cpu 1): Unexpected exception type
backtrace: 0x00085e08 0x0002d368 0x00091d64
Debugger (panic)

Waiting for remote debugger connection
Options..... Type
------------ ----
continue.... 'c'
reboot...... 'r'
 
Whether apple tested them or not, I am using OS X PB right now on my PowerMac G4 DP. It's just a beta thing, it will be fine in a well perfected final version.
 
One other thing I'll drop in here. The only other thing I could possibly thing of as for your copies not working on my same configuration, is that you have pirated your copies. Sorry, but that's my only other guess.

Did you catch the HFS UFS stuff above? I have had serious probs with UFS partitions, and HFS partitions.

But if you are getting a panic screen, there's something else up. there has to be. Even the pirated thing doesn'tmake any sense (you've got to be honest enough to pay $30 to apple after dropping 4 grand on a G4 huh?

That sounds a lot more like the CD is defective. You could try going and holding down the option key at startup, and then pick the OS X CD. It takes a while and seems like it has frozen, but WAIT! It spends time looking for a Mac OS X Server Netboot server. It takes a couple of minutes.

Next, did you try to boot off of it by holdingdown the C key? You should try booting into OS 9 and double-clicking the OS X install icon on the HFS part of the install CD.

That's my next best guess.
Clark
 
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