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MilkmanDan · Sep 28, 2003, 02:14 PM

I have a rev a 233 Beige G3 with 256 RAM. I put 10.2 server on a 40 GIG HD and than moved the drive over to the beige (It would not install directly on it). Anyhow I kept getting this white screen with text that says "can't boot" over and over again. So I used the IDE channel that the CD was hooked up to. That worked for a time. But after a day or so it wouldn't start up again. I've probably done three or four fresh installs of 10.2 server over the last month, and all seem to meet some demise. Is my motherboard going bad? OR is it just evil! Night of the undead Beige.

davidflas · Sep 28, 2003, 02:26 PM

what you may need to do is partition the drive with one partition being smaller than 8GB in size to ensure that your beige G3 can see 10.2, I have two beige G3s and that's what I had to do. Hope that helps!

MilkmanDan · Sep 28, 2003, 05:24 PM

Its not because of the 8 GIG beige problem, I did a fresh install on a blank drive, so that isn't the issue. Any other ideas?

davidflas · Sep 28, 2003, 05:50 PM

even if you did a fresh install on a blank drive, that's not a guarantee that OSX will be in the first 8gigs, I went through this myself...until I bought an ata133 card and solved the problem..

Severed Hand of Skywalker · Sep 28, 2003, 06:20 PM

Originally posted by davidflas:
what you may need to do is partition the drive with one partition being smaller than 8GB in size to ensure that your beige G3 can see 10.2, I have two beige G3s and that's what I had to do. Hope that helps!

If that is not it take out all but the factory RAM.

MilkmanDan · Sep 28, 2003, 08:37 PM

I reset the motherboard, took out the factory RAM, and put RAM in from my other beige. No dice. Its not the HD, because it boots up off a firewire drive. It booted up on the other beige, so its not a beige issue. The one IDE channel still says "Can't open" over and over again. Damn, what a world. So is it dead? Am I crazy? It did work last week, and now, nothing.

jasong · Sep 29, 2003, 07:08 AM

I just managed to get my Beige G3 to recover from this problem.

Here is what I did:

1. shut down the machine and pull every removable piece out of it. The memory, the extra video memory, 2 things that I don't know what they do (in-between the memory and the personality card). Including the battery and disconnect all the drives.

2. Let it sit that way, unplugged for 5 minutes or so.

3. Put the battery back in and reset the motherboard.

4. Put the minimum pieces of equipment back in that was needed to turn the thing on (this included a firewire/USB card since I can't find the original mouse)

5. Boot to the Mac OS X 10.2 (version 10.2) CD-ROM.

6. From the installer erase the disc (a 20 GB Maxtor) completely, including deleting the partition map, and set a new partition in the first 8 GB.

7. Install a bare bones system into the first 8 GB. This did not require the reboot and installation from the second disc.

8. Remove the CD-ROM and reboot. It took a few seconds to find the system, but it worked.

After I saw it launched, I skipped the reg process and shut down. Reinstalled the rest of my hardware, including my old system disc that I was trying to migrate from, and rebooted from the old system disk. I then used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone my original system disk over the new installation, shut down, removed the old disk, and rebooted. The system has run like a champ since (well, as well as a machine this old is going to run).

Stick with it, you'll get it work. It is just being old and ornery.

-- Jason

olePigeon · Sep 29, 2003, 04:27 PM

Try installing it normally using XPostFacto. It supports beige G3s now and fixes some pretty serious problems when trying to run OS X on a beige G3.

I haven't had a chance to try it out yet because I ended up giving my Jaguar CDs to my brother. I hope I can get them back and give it another whirl.

davidflas · Sep 29, 2003, 05:21 PM

Glad to hear that you found success, despite being officially supported, I have found getting X to work on my Beige G3's to be a bit troublesome, esp since I have a lot of upgrades..

olePigeon · Sep 29, 2003, 05:38 PM

I've yet to get it to install correctly. Only recently did I notice that XPostFacto does G3s now. Hope it works.

tooki · Sep 29, 2003, 07:05 PM

Originally posted by MilkmanDan:
Its not because of the 8 GIG beige problem, I did a fresh install on a blank drive, so that isn't the issue. Any other ideas?

To boot OS X on a beige G3, the partition that you install it on must be entirely contained within the first 8,000,000KB (ca. 7.8GB) of the disk. So you MUST partition, with a 7.8GB partition as the first partition for OS X, and the rest as another partition.

It is not sufficient for OS X to be installed within the first 7.8GB of a partition that's larger than that.

Otherwise it will not work, period.

tooki

MilkmanDan · Sep 30, 2003, 11:25 AM

Actually I think everything turned out just fine, after I gave up on the beige I had been working on (seriously, the motherboard on the last one is so dead). I now have a different Beige G3, slightly faster and a tower instead of a desktop. While trying to get stuff to work I had these problems in this order.

1) 10.2 server would install, but not boot after installation.

2) My own personal firewire case arced and fired, causing a bad smell and me yelling and cussing.

3) Computer would not startup (after installing 10.2 server on the HD via another computer), and I figured it was due to the SCSI internal Zip Drive.

4) Computer started up, and than didn't start up. Problem than found out to be the PCI Firewire card, which was working before, but now wants to be hell.

5) When 10.2 server was installed and working, the damn updates would not work. Many problems and cussing ensued. Problem fixed by doing the updated one part at a time.

This is what I have now. One 266 Beige G3 rev b Tower with the AV Personality card on it, 286 RAM, a USB PCI card and an 10/100 Ethernet Card, 40 GIG HD, running 10.2 server. And it ate my entire evening, in-between watching Stargate.

The Sad thing is, that my school has a room full of beige G3s (and some iMacs and B&W) that are not being used. I cried.

Thanks for all the help. I can finally get this darn webserver up and running for my department. Really, MacNN is my hero. Beige G3s can still be useful with some slight upgrades. No reason we can't put them to use somewhere, or give them to people who lack computers. Again, thanks to everyone who wrote in.