won't boot install CD in Beige G3

[SteveB]

I've been trying very hard to install the MacOS X beta several times over the last month or so with no avail on my Beige G3. I have an original MacOS X Beta disk, and I've tried booting while holding down the 'C' key. The CD-ROM spins up for a few seconds, waits, and then the machine hangs.

My configuration is a desktop G3 with 512mb RAM, a late Rev C motherboard, 4Gb & 10 Gb hard disks (both IDE). The processor is a 400 MHz IBM G3 (original Apple part for B & W G3).

I've tried disconnecting the 4Gb hard disk so that only a 10Gb disk is attached to it (with a 9.0.4 install, it's HFS+ formatted with Apple's formatter), tried rejumpering the CD and booted as Master and on another occassion Slave, zapping the PRAM, manually selecting the the MacOS X disk as my startup disk. Nothing works, it just hangs upon startup, or sometimes tries the CD and ends up booting OS9 from the Hard Disk. From MacOS 9.0.4 I tried running the setup program, but unfortunately it says quits with an error (can't select the CD as a startup device).

I even tried copying over the entire CD to my hard disk but I couldn't find any way to have the 'System Folder' on the CD become the sanctioned system folder under MacOS 9 (without having a System & Finder inside the folder, but that kind of defeats the purpose). I also tried selecting an external SCSI CD to boot from, but that was also in vain.

Any suggestions?

 

[zpincus]

I ran into this problem, too.
Running the CD as master on one IDE bus and the drive I wanted to install to as master on the other pretty much fixed it when I installed the PB.

However, when I tried to install 4K17, this didn't work. Then I remembered about how somtimes IDE can be fussy about where master and slave are positioned on the chain -- master supposedly needs to be at the end of the chain and slave (if any) needs to be in the middle. This didn't cause a problem for me with PB, but it did for 4K17... no idea why the diff, but maybe you want to make sure that the CD is master at the end of one chain and the HD is master at the end of the other?

Zach

PS. Copying the CD contents won't work because the CD has special hoopajoops that allow it to boot properly. The OS 9 finder will "fix" these hoopajoops if it has write access, so that's why the install won't work from a HD. (I think "hoopajoop" = "hacked-up blessed system folder" but I may be wrong...)
Your thinking was right about the master-slave thing, so the only additional caveat is that you need to install OS X on the first 8 GB of whatever drive you choose.