New to the forum, have Tiger problem!

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podboq

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I've got a 1998 model 300 mHz G3 with 448 of Ram, a 40GB HD and a 120 GB HD as well. My 40 has 10.3.9 installed, and it runs great. I just bought my 120 and Tiger, hoping to install Tiger on the 120, and have three OS's to choose from. Well I hooked up my new drive, and it works fine. I believe it's set to slave. It's mounted under my dual-layer Sony dvd burner.

So I start up off the Tiger disc, configure my installation, without printer drivers and X11 only, and proceed to successfully install Tiger, the computer restarts, and I get a blinking question mark folder alternating with a smiley mac face folder.. Startup reverts to the install DVD, or Panther, depending on if i leave the DVD in.

I startup in Panther on the 40 and open Startup Disk...the newly installed Tiger is there....but restart after selection fails.

So, I use Disk Utility to partition my 120 into an 7 GB partition on one side, the remainder on the other...Install Tiger again successfully, but restart fails at the blinking folder again...

Restart in Panther, and open the drive with Tiger installed, the system folder has a generic icon, NO X denoting a valid start up volume...

SO, can my 120 drive be set to master, at the same time my 40 is set to master, should I try that, might it fix the volume so it can boot?

Do I need 3rd party software or something to install a working OS?

There is purportedly a way to edit the installer script in text edit, so that Tiger doesn't see your machine as unsupported, I've verified it's the correct file I need to edit, it's pretty obvious, but once edited, and saved to the desktop, the new file won't copy over the old one, it says it does, but the text reverts back to the original somehow.

Other than this edit procedure, which when finished, you unmount the disk image, and burn it to produce a bootable dvd, edited to installed Tiger on unsupported machines, other than this, I'm at a loss as to what to do.

Any got any ideas?


p.s. one thing I haven't tried is upgrading Panther to Tiger ...I'd rather be able to install Tiger on it's own HD, and I'd hate to attempt an upgrade to Panther and have it fail, and have to start everything from scratch.
 
Launch System Preferences.
Click the Startup Disk preferences pane.
Select the System to want as startup.
Restart.
 
MisterMe said:
Launch System Preferences.
Click the Startup Disk preferences pane.
Select the System to want as startup.
Restart.
Click to expand...

I believe from his post, that he already went through that step, and it failed.

jb.
 
jbarley said:
I believe from his post, that he already went through that step, and it failed.

jb.
Click to expand...

Thank you for at least reading my post...

..I'm wondering if the problem is solveable at all...will wait and see what others say...
 
I think it has to do with setting the drive up to be master. I seem to remember cable select is the way to go. I may be mistaken though.
 
Cable Select is only an option on newer Macintosh models, like the Mirrored Drive Door G4 models. All prior models use the master/slave setup for IDE drives.

What exact model of G3 is this? Is it the Blue & White G3 model? If so, and it's an early B&W G3 model, then your machine may only support one IDE hard drive... this was a limitation of the "Revision 1" B&W G3 models... the "Revision 2" B&W G3 models correctly supported two IDE hard drives. I believe one easy way to tell is to look at the hard drive carrier sled that the stock hard drive is attached to -- if it's got brackets above it for mounting another hard drive directly on top of the stock hard drive, then it's most likely a "Revision 2". If it does not, then it's most likely a "Revision 1".

Try hooking up ONLY the 120GB drive and see if you can boot from it then (btw, you are not subject to the "8GB OS X limit", so formatting the drive out to a full 120GB partition is ok on this machine). If so, then you may have a "Revision 1" machine that only supports one internal hard drive on the internal IDE bus. There are ways around this if this is the case, such as adding a PCI ATA controller card.
 
It's a revision 1 B&W G3, 300 mHz, since I've got this new HD it's not had a problem seeing it, writing to it, or corrupting anything. I just used Disk Utility to "restore" a copy of my main start up volume to the 120, and the System Folder again has a generic icon, I've not actually attempted to restart from it yet, but it does show up in Startup Disk as a volume. After I post this, I'll try and restart from only the 120, after disconnecting the regular startup volume.

Hey, I also have the original 6 GB drive, ya think maybe I should install Tiger on that? Or maybe Partition my 120 into 2 sectors, one with Panther, one with Tiger? would that work?

I really really REALLY want tiger to work! But I really REALLY!! don't want to lose Panther in the process, it's what I was trained on...
 
It should work fine if you partition the 120 GB drive. However, I'd first try to only have the 120 GB installed and install Tiger on it. If it boots fine from that, you can go on and partition it. However, if you then have to get the stuff back from the 40 GB drive and reconnect that, you might end up with an un-bootable 120 GB again, right? :/
 
I think the order I should do things in IS, once I figure out if the 120 will boot is, Partition the 120 in equal parts, copy over my current system, then install Tiger on second partition. If both versions of X boot from my 120, and that lasts until I'm comfortable, then I can erase my 40 and use it as a media drive, the the shameful little 6GB as a emergency backup. Ok, I'll respond back in a bit after switching the drives, then i'll have more info.
 
EEither I'm doing something wrong, or, a second HD can't boot from the secondary ata controller...

SO, here's what I believe will work. I hooked my 120 up to the primary ata controller, it booted fine, I installed Tiger over Panther, as an upgrade, and it booted fine. Finder is MUCH quicker, and spotlight was takin it's time indexing, so that's cool.

Given that I can boot from my 120, after cloneing my Panther drive to it, I know that "Restore" works from Disk Utility, I'm going to clone Panther back to the 120, boot from there, erase my 40, partition it, Restore Panther to the First partition, and clean install Tiger to the second partition...verify both boot, then re-erase my 120 to use as my secondary backup drive, since it has the capacity. Route all my user preferences for saving and accessing my iTunes music and other stuff to the 120, so the 40 doesn't get jammed with stuff.

Any comments, or things I should look for?

Is there any easier way to do this? I'm reasonably sure "partitioning" a HD erased the directory from it, therefore, I can't partition my 40 while Panther is there....
 
I still think that it's because you have a "Revision 1" machine that the computer is having trouble with the second drive. Even though initially it "saw" and was able to format and use the secondary slave drive, you probably would have run into problems down the road: data corruption on that drive, unpredictable results, spontaneous dismounts, etc. The "Revision 1" machines were not meant to use two hard drives on one IDE bus as a master/slave combination.

Here is some more information on data corruption and problems with hard drives in the "Revision 1" B&W G3 machines:

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/G3-ZONE/yosemite/IDE/
 
So now my question is...why did Apple build a machine with 3 drive bays if it could only handle one HD with stock componants?

Considering the potential of corruption, would you suggest I clone Panther to the first partition on the 120, install Tiger on the second, and use the 40 GB as storage. After all, if I'm using the 120 for storage and backup, and it gets garbled, it wouldn't be of much use...
 
I got everything figured out, I used disk utility to Restore a copy of my original drive, at 10.3.9 to my 120, then I upgraded my 120 to 10.4.7, everything works great, now that I've got my 120 on the primary controller...i'm leaving the 40 disconnected...safer that way.
 
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