can't install Panther

E

erikv11

Registered
G3 Lombard (bronze), 400 MHz, 512 MB, 30 GB internal drive.

I was running 10.2.6. Used CCC to back up everything first, then tried to Archive and install Panther on top. Installer choked at the Asian fonts, crashed, can't reinstall Panther, always chokes about 2/3 way through. No external devices connected.

Drive10 says my HD is fine.

Zeroed the HD with Disk Utility from 10.2.6, using an expansion bay HD.

Panther installer crashes. I have two sets of disks - they both do it, so it isn't bad install disk. I can install 10.2.1 OK, but can't upgrade it to Panther.

What is going on? Suggestions? Am I stuck in Jaguar?
 
erikv11 said:
G3 Lombard (bronze), 400 MHz, 512 MB, 30 GB internal drive.

I was running 10.2.6. Used CCC to back up everything first, then tried to Archive and install Panther on top. Installer choked at the Asian fonts, crashed, can't reinstall Panther, always chokes about 2/3 way through. No external devices connected.

Drive10 says my HD is fine.

Zeroed the HD with Disk Utility from 10.2.6, using an expansion bay HD.

Panther installer crashes. I have two sets of disks - they both do it, so it isn't bad install disk. I can install 10.2.1 OK, but can't upgrade it to Panther.

What is going on? Suggestions? Am I stuck in Jaguar?
Click to expand...

I had 10.2.8 on my Mac and wanted to upgrade to Panther. It kept crashing during the install. It would not let me upgrade the OS, but it did let me do a clean install.

I backed up everything w/ CCC and I used the Panther CD to do everything. During the install using Panther, I had it clean out and zero before it installed it. I did not use my older 10.2 disk. Try using the Panther installation process to pre-format before installing.

kafene.
 
kafene said:
I had 10.2.8 on my Mac and wanted to upgrade to Panther. It kept crashing during the install. It would not let me upgrade the OS, but it did let me do a clean install.

I backed up everything w/ CCC and I used the Panther CD to do everything. During the install using Panther, I had it clean out and zero before it installed it. I did not use my older 10.2 disk. Try using the Panther installation process to pre-format before installing.

kafene.
Click to expand...

Oh, sorry I did not make this clear, I tried clean installs too, off the Panther disk as you describe. Same thing - near the end the Lombard freezes or goes to frantic colored lines on the display. Then I restart (but only from the CD), installer sees an upgradeable OS, but upgrade "fails. restart your computer" after which the CD no longer recognizes an OS. So time to reformat. Tried it 4 times, twice with each set of install disks, same thing.

All can think of is maybe there is a problem with the CD drive, so it always dies when it gets out to the edge of the disk? I have no way to test this odd idea, because I can't boot from an external CD (Lombard has no FireWire, I use FireWire from a PC cardbus).

My boot options are the internal HD or the expansion bay HD. Any ideas? I cloned my 10.2 back on for now but sure would like to upgrade - I bought a Panther license just for this machine!
 
Have a co-worker here who wanted to upgrade his older G4 (beige) (or maybe G3?) but it was just a little too old to support (although some other's on the internet were lucky enough to make it work). His Mac was not supported.

kafene.
 
No, it's not the Mac model... according to this page at Apple, the Lombard (bronze keyboard) is supported:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/upgrade/requirements.html

Have you tried removing any extra RAM -- maybe leaving in just a 128MB module or something like that? Panther seems to be a lot pickier about RAM than Jaguar was. I would try that, along with zapping the PRAM and doing a clean install on a freshly formatted hard drive. If that doesn't do it, well, we'll need to try something else!
 
Yes, Lombard is supported, I checked that before I bought. One thought - is it possible the internal HD, which didn't ship with my Lombard, is somehow incompatible with Panther? Doubtful I know, cuz it is fine with Jaguar. The drive originally came from a VST 30 GB expansion bay module. It is an IBM, that is about all I can remember. I swapped it into the machine, and out the 6 GB the machine came with into the expansion bay.

I will try the RAM replacement. A hardware problem makes some sense, RAM is easy enough to test. I only have two 256 modules and a 64 so I'll have to try it with one 256 at a time. But it may be a few days - the machine is back up with 10.2.8 (I upgraded after I cloned the 10.2.6 setup back on) and needs to be in use for a short while.

So I'll collect suggestions in the meantime, and post back as soon as I do the RAM checks -
 
I'm not completely sure, but I believe that Panther must be installed within the first 8 GB of the drive in order for it to be usable. Try formatting the drive with an 8 GB partition in the first section of the disk, and then having a 22 GB partition after that -- you can tell if it's the first partition on the disk by using disk utility and checking the graphical rendition of the drive -- the top most partition should be 8 GB or less.

Then try installing Panther on that 8 GB partition -- it just may work that way.
 
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