Try a different CD drive to install OS X on Beige G3

Mar 09, '04 10:15:00AM

Contributed by: smashing

Like many I have endured the frustrations of attempting to install OS X on a Beige G3. Recently I needed to do a fresh install of OS X Jaguar on a beige tower (Rev C) that I knew to be receptive to OS X. I had successfully, if somewhat time consumingly, installed it on this machine in the past.

This time round it was proving to be very unreceptive. I checked the usual suspects: Removed all non essential PCI devices, stuck to a single 128mb stick of RAM, unplugged a SCSI zip drive for the heck of it, made sure the drive and CD were on separate IDE busses, and both set as master, ensured I was installing on a less than 8gb 'first' partition. It just didn't want to go. I tried every combination of zapping the pram, booting into open firmware and resetting it, pressing the CUDA switch again. Still nothing. I then moved to my final 'bright' idea - X Post Facto. I used the 'latest stable release' 2.2.5.... and that wouldn't work either.

Finally something told me that the system might not be liking my Sony DVD-ROM (even though I had used this in the past to install OS X on the same machine). Fortunately I had my original, if somewhat flakey Apple-branded Sony CD-ROM lying around. I put that in, and it booted into the installer first time. Since I'm partial to 'look a gift horse in the mouth' disease, I immediately turned the machine off and switched back to the Sony DVD-ROM to try that again. I wanted to be sure it was the change in hardware that was making the difference. Sure enough -- black screen of death. I switched back to the original CD-ROM, and it booted again first time. Success!

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