[rhansen_x]

I am trying to install Panther on a 400 mhz blue and white. When I start the install, the spinning wheel of lines goes for about 30 seconds and then freezes.

I have tried different video cards, hard drives, cd rom drives, removed all scsi adapters, and even put a new battery in out of desparation. The media is good, I used it to install Panther on my PowerBook.

Does anyone have a solution or suggestion?

[nerd]

I just installed in on a 350mhz B/W with no problems. The computer has the stock Zip drive and the CDRW that came with my Dual 533 G4. Oh yea, it has a a Motu 322 card installed. Basically I'm trying to say is I installed Panther with all these things hooked up. I know it doesn't help much.

Brad

[Cadaver]

Originally posted by rhansen_x:
I am trying to install Panther on a 400 mhz blue and white. When I start the install, the spinning wheel of lines goes for about 30 seconds and then freezes.

I have tried different video cards, hard drives, cd rom drives, removed all scsi adapters, and even put a new battery in out of desparation. The media is good, I used it to install Panther on my PowerBook.

Does anyone have a solution or suggestion?

I had a similar problem quite recently. I bought a new 60GB HD, some RAM and a 900MHz G3 CPU ZIF (to replace the working-but-slow original 350MHz one). Installed all, along with a spare 32MB Radeon Mac Edition PCI card I had, and while Panther would boot off CD perfectly, I'd get continuous kernel panics whenever I tried to boot off the HD. Occurred no matter what combination of RAM or ZIF module was installed. I spent almost 4 hours trying different combinations of RAM, CPU modules, CPU speeds (the PPC750fx is software clockable), video cards, PCI slots, etc. Could not figure out why it would boot just fine off the Panther CD, but it would die as soon as I attempted to boot off the freshly installed HD. Even tried installing Jaguar, and while it was slightly more stable, apps would still spontaneously crash apps and lockup.

It turns out, for what ever reason, OS X 10.3 did not like the new hard drive that was in the machine. Of course, I didn't think of this until I'd already spent 4 hours on other theories. I have not been able to verify that drive on a different machine, but I put in an older spare 20GB drive (known to be good), and bingo! Panther installed and runs just fine.

While I'm taking a long time to get to the point, I'm thinking in your case the problem may be related to bad RAM, since that seems to be the only thing you didn't try swapping. Do you have a working OS now on that machine? Is it OS9 or X? If you don't believe it to be the RAM, make sure the firmware is up to date. Version 1.1 is the most current and available on Apple's website.

BTW, the 900MHz blue & white G3 - with a PCI Radeon (the faster original model) in the 66MHz slot, 576MB of RAM, 7200 rpm HD, Panther, and the PCI/Quartz Extreme hack - actually runs really, really well. So well, in fact, that I'm going to take it to work so I don't have to use the POS Dell "they" provide for me!

[rhansen_x]

I will try different RAM. I happen to have some "laying around". What is the quartz hack you mentioned?

[rhansen_x]

You know, I am at wits end. I have tried all I can. I got this thing for nothing and I may just stick to Jag. I have wasted enought time and done enough searching on other sites and haved ended up back at the same spot.

I have never had such a frustrating mac experience.

[Hash]

I have a BW upgraded to its limits and did not have such experience.

There are some possible reasons:

1. if its 1st gen BW, it has faulty IDE chip which corrupts data if you add another hard disk. It also maybe incompatible with newer hard disks. For that matter, use PCI IDE controller and move all your hard disks to it. It is safe.


When changing all that stuff, did you reset parameters? on startup, press option command p r.

Then, also reset nvram.

[rhansen_x]

Did the pram - how do you reset the nvram?

[ThisGuy]

Originally posted by rhansen_x:
Did the pram - how do you reset the nvram?

restart with command+option+O+F
when open firmware screen shows up type this:
"reset-nvram" then press enter
"reset-all" then press enter