Panther Won't Run After HARMONi G3 600MHz Upgrade

[jentax]

Hi all! I tried to upgrade my 266MHz revision C iMac with the HARMONi G3 600MHz + FireWire 400 upgrade, and I followed the proper procedures. I loaded into 9.2.2 and was told that the installation was successful. The clock had been set to some time before the 1980s. That was the only strange thing I noticed. I tried to load into 10.3.2, but there were random freezes. First, it froze on the gray Apple logo and pulsator. After a hard restart, it froze on a blue screen. Then it stalled on the login window. I booted off the Panther installer CD and First Aid found no problems, and I repaired a few permissions that were incorrect (but only two permissions were wrong, and with help files). I restarted to get a kernal panic. Then another. Then everything ran, only my login items (Safari and iTunes) unexpectedly quit. Then my system logged out/in on the fly (because my desktop picture changed, and it's set to change on login) and the Finder unexpectedly quit. Another restart gave me an endless cycle of the Finder restarting itself. I tried clean installing Panther, but during the 98% of Writing Files for Processing Base System Part 2, I got the message "There were errors installing the software. Please try installing again." I went bare bones and tried installing the necessary components, BSD subsystem, Internet Explorer, and StuffIt Expander. Same error. Any ideas as to what is going on, and how I can get functionality in Panther? I have two partitions: System, which had 10.3.2 and 9.2.2, and now has nothing except a few files and folders that I was afraid to move, like var and sbin. Then, I have Data, which has my symlinked X Users folder, my swapfiles, and a backup of my Panther system. I have an 80GB hard disk and 512MB of RAM. Any help for getting my computer working again would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Arden]

Did you update your firmware before upgrading to OS X? The first thing you should do is boot back into OS 9 and download the firmware update for your computer (should be Open Firmware 4.1.7, or something like that... look on Apple's support sub-site). Also, see if there is a firmware update that came with your upgrade card. Then you should be able to use OS X with no (or at least fewer) problems.

 

[andychrist]

I don't think your iMac required any firmware update other than the boot-rom thingy that came with the Harmoni. From your description of events, I take it you had Panther previously installed with OS 9 before installing the Harmoni, and it had been running okay? And problems with Panther only emerged after the installation? From what I have gleaned from various other sites relating to iMac upgrades, as well as my own experience installing the PowerLogix iForce, a possible culprit may be the lithium battery that is mounted on the motherboard. When old machines have their power disconnected for servicing they can lose their PRAM settings if the battery is weak or dead. That would explain the odd date and time you were seeing. (In my case, an old battery had been giving my system "Settings Alzheimer's", and I was lucky enough to have replaced it before upgrading.) There have also been reports about being unable to install Panther after a Harmoni upgrade, while being able to use the Harmoni if it is installed after Panther. Thus your first attempt to run Panther may have been flummoxed by a past-its-prime lithium battery, and your attempt at a clean install may have been thwarted by the Harmoni and/or battery.

Then again, there have been reports of defective (and also of perfect) Harmonis
posted at

http://forums.xlr8yourmac.com/action.lasso?-search

There you will notice that even customers who reported less than successful results with the Harmoni still rated Sonnet highly and said that they would buy from them again.