[scotto12]

hi. i'm new at this, so please bear with me. i know nothing about macs, but i am trying to switch over from being a PC user.

i am wondering what operating system to buy for a power mac G4 sawtooth that i was recently given. (it came with an old os9 on it.) with the imminent arrival of leopard, i had originally thought that OSX tiger could be found cheap on ebay or elsewhere. but it seems like it's still selling in the $100+ range. so for an extra few bucks, i could buy direct from apple and be certain that i'm not buying a pirated copy or something. leopard will be the same price as tiger is now.

so the question is... should i just wait for leopard to come out? or is there some reason that i should stick with tiger for the G4?

here are the machine's specs:
powermac G4 (agp graphics)
1.2GHz sonnet encore processor (aftermarket upgrade)
832MB RAM

thanks in advance, any advice is appreciated.

[Big Mac]

It's probably going to take some time after release to see how well Leopard runs on upgraded G4s.

[Max_Doubt_M'Wham]

While just about everyone is keenly anticipating the release of Leopard, there are some who prefer to sit back and wait a little bit longer until the bugs have been sorted out. I fit into this catagory. I'm craving for the new Mac OS but I also still love Tiger and would rather stick with what works for the moment, then upgrade later.

So, in your case, I agree with the previous poster and recommend Tiger. I found a relatively cheap Retail Version on eBay:

Retail Version of Mac OS Tiger

[OreoCookie]

If you take a peek at the system requirements, you'll find that your system might not even be supported (upgraded systems might be recognized as stock by the installer). In any case, it'll run eventually. If you mind your machine now, it might be ok. Just keep in mind that in any case you won't be able to use some of Leopard's technology.

[scotto12]

thanks, guys. i ordered tiger from the apple store with my student discount.

[bowwowman]

Well, it seems as though EVERY time a new version of OS X comes out, there are a bunch of people who bring up that "not supported on cpu-upgraded machines" nonsense...

and after so many years of listening to that crap, I have to say that it is TOTAL BS......... Even back when I had a G3/350 smurfbox w/ 10.0 on it, I upgraded it to a G4/550 notta problemo! Did the same w/ a Sawtooth, went from a stock 450 to a DP 450 while running 10.2 & 10.3, then later to an OWC 1.2GHZ, again, notta problemo! And now w/ a QS from the stock 867 to an OWC 1.6 & Tiger........smoothest upgrades I've ever done !!!!!

Now granted, Apple wont help you w/ support for these situations, but OS X just WORKS, regardless of the cpu, so long as you have everything else up to spec.....ie ram/video card/HDD that is.......

And other than the already publicly known requirement for a minimum 867mhz cpu, I have not seen or heard of any other technical reason why Leopard will not be able to run on older machines, upgraded or not............

[adamfishercox]

Because the installer looks at a serial number or something, not the actual speed of the CPU. The serial would tell it the stock CPU speed, and if it is below 867 MHz G4, it would not install.

[Lateralus]

Originally Posted by bowwowman 

Well, it seems as though EVERY time a new version of OS X comes out, there are a bunch of people who bring up that "not supported on cpu-upgraded machines" nonsense...

and after so many years of listening to that crap, I have to say that it is TOTAL BS......... Even back when I had a G3/350 smurfbox w/ 10.0 on it, I upgraded it to a G4/550 notta problemo! Did the same w/ a Sawtooth, went from a stock 450 to a DP 450 while running 10.2 & 10.3, then later to an OWC 1.2GHZ, again, notta problemo! And now w/ a QS from the stock 867 to an OWC 1.6 & Tiger........smoothest upgrades I've ever done !!!!!

Now granted, Apple wont help you w/ support for these situations, but OS X just WORKS, regardless of the cpu, so long as you have everything else up to spec.....ie ram/video card/HDD that is.......

And other than the already publicly known requirement for a minimum 867mhz cpu, I have not seen or heard of any other technical reason why Leopard will not be able to run on older machines, upgraded or not............

Indeed. You beat me to the punch here.

There are a number of developers reporting total compatibility with their upgraded machines. As is always the case.

In fact, I know with certainty that if you install Leopard on a machine with a processor upgrade that was originally too slow to be supported and then remove that processor upgrade and swap back in the original, Leopard will still boot.

[Lateralus]

Originally Posted by adamfishercox 

Because the installer looks at a serial number or something

No, it doesn't.

[adamfishercox]

I read somewhere that the Leopard installer does... I'll see if I can dig it up. It wasn't a serial number, but I didn't have a better word for it.

[Lateralus]

No. I am telling you first hand that it does not. And a number of other developers running on upgraded machines will tell you the same.

If you read any thing of the sort, it was unfounded speculation.

[adamfishercox]

What the OS X installer does isn't check how fast your processor is running; it looks at the model number of your Mac and compares it to a list of "bad" machines that are officially rated as too slow. So if you've got an upgraded CPU and your box is actually fast enough, well, it won't work.

How to tame a Leopard - The INQUIRER

It does say there are several ways around it, and I don't doubt you that it can work, but this does make sense...

[Lateralus]

I'm done repeating myself.

[jgraphix]

Ok, new here...I just recieved my Leopard pack to upgrade, I am on a G4 733 processor, I tried to install and it said I could not and to check the read me document. Well it didn't say specifically why I couldn't install but it does say that it requires 857 processor. If, like you say, I can work around this...how?

Thanks in advance for any advice
MJ

[bowwowman]

ask & ye shall receive

hackityyackyackUgo....... ohyeagottanwannaneedhavesomeohyea!

lookie here: macosxhints.com - 10.5: Bypass the installer's system requirements check

AND a ps for everyone else: Leopard installed & works great on my upgraded QS (from stock 867 to Powerlogix 1.6ghz) !!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Eug]

Some of you guys are too dogmatic about this CPU-upgrades-definitely-will-work thing. Leopard would NOT install on my G4 1.7 GHz Cube (1.25 GB RAM), whereas Tiger installed just fine. I've heard the same from several Cube owners with CPU upgrades. Furthermore, even one of the techs from Sonnet says he can't install Leopard directly from the install disc on his CPU-upgraded TiBook either. Sonnet's official stance is that their CPU upgrades are supported by Leopard, but obviously this is not necessarily the case 100% of the time.

However, Leopard will indeed install on my Cube... now that I have (re-)flashed the motherboard firmware. There was a glitch in the clock speed reporting to the OS. It didn't matter for actual usage of real apps, except for those that happen to check the clockspeed... like the Leopard installer. I've used this Cube since 2004 and through several generations of OS X with the same firmware. Now it's 11/2007, and I had to install a 2007 firmware to get the Leopard installer to work. I'm just glad Sonnet has continued to fine tune their custom firmwares over the years.

However, even before the firmware update, installation wasn't a big problem. One could use target mode from another G4 Mac, or boot off an external Firewire drive, or else just hack the install disc to bypass the clockspeed check. I'm keeping my hacked install disc around for my G4 450 Cube.

It should be noted that one can create a bootable G4 drive using only an Intel Mac. It's a bit of a tedious process, but it works just fine and it doesn't take any hacking skills whatsoever. I used my Core 2 Duo iMac with just Disk Utility to create such a drive, and it booted fine on my Cube.

EDIT:

YourMacStore comments on Leopard installation glitches with GigaDesigns CPU upgrades:

We know many folks out there have already installed the newest OS, but for those of you who are still waiting, and unsure if you can, we’ve got some information for you. After checking out many of our different systems, we did find something that was a bit odd. For those folks who’ve got their systems set up a specific way, yet meet the system requirements, Leopard will refuse to install.

So, we’ve found two of these configurations…at two processor speeds that are common out there. If you’re running 1.8 GHz with a bus speed of 100MHz or 1.4 GHz with a bus speed of 133MHz…your Apple profiler can show you what the problem is. If you haven’t, open it up. You’ll see that these two configurations cause an issue with the profiler, because it will list your clock speed at ZERO. Leopard will see this and think to itself, “Wow…not only is this computer not new, it’s apparently missing a pulse!” and then refuse to install on it.

Now this issue has only appeared on the Giga Designs CPUs that we have here, but can easily be corrected by manipulating the dipswitches on the card to change your bus speed. We’re not going to list instructions on how to do that here, but will ask you to reference your owner’s manual for the CPU upgrade and see how the configurations can be inputted. Once Leopard is installed, you can easily change the setup back to what it was prior to the install with no visible effect on Leopard (that we’ve seen).

Also, for those of you using the Giga Meter application that helps to fix this issue for you on your system…there’s an issue you need to be aware of as well. Giga Meter is an extension…so when you boot up the Leopard disc, it’s not going to be active on your system…and therefore won’t be correcting the issue that causes the Apple profiler to misread what your clock speed is.

----

As for performance, YourMacStore wasn't too impressed with Leopard on a 450 MHz G4 Mac, but MacsOnly says it's OK. Oh and they had problems installing Leopard too on an upgraded machine.

We have two PowerMac G4 Cubes that we still use from time to time. One is a completely stock 450GHz PowerMac G4 Cube and the other is an upgraded 1.4GHz PowerMac G4 Cube with an Nvidia GeForce2 MX graphics card. We have used the stock Cube as our office server running Mac OS X Server 10.4.10.

We could not get Leopard to install from the installation DVD on either Cube. The installer stopped right away on the stock Cube displaying the message that Leopard can not be installed on this Mac. The installer got a bit farther on the upgraded Cube but quit early in the process stating that it could not validate the contents of the 'BaseSystem' package.

So, we formatted an 80GB external FireWire drive with the Apple Partition Map scheme, creating 10GB and 64GB partitions. Then we installed Leopard on the smaller 10GB partition using our 12" PowerBook G4 and updated it with Software Update. Finally, we booted the Cubes from the external FireWire drive and used Carbon Copy Cloner v3.0.1 to clone the Leopard installation from the external FireWire drive to the internal drives of the two Cubes. The stock Cube has only a 20GB drive, the reason for creating the small partition on the external FireWire drive. The upgraded Cube has an 80GB drive.

Both Cubes are now running off Leopard on their internal hard disk drives and they are running well, even the 450MHz Cube. It is obvious that the installer has been specifically designed to prevent the installation on Macs with CPUs slower than 867MHz even when they have been upgraded with a faster CPU, better graphics card, larger/faster hard drive and 1Gb of memory.

[Andrew Stephens]

I installed Leopard on my wife's 12in G4 Powerbook 867Mhz and it runs just fine. It's not noticably slower than her Tiger install and spaces makes it work better for her on the small screen.

However I also installed it on my 1Ghz G4 Mirror Door tower and it ran like crap! So so slow with windows barly able to move around the screen. Ended up reverting to Tiger.

I wonder why the Powerbook is happier with Leopard than the nomianlly faster G4 tower.

[Big Mac]

Strange, doesn't make much sense, Andrew.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by Andrew Stephens 

I installed Leopard on my wife's 12in G4 Powerbook 867Mhz and it runs just fine. It's not noticably slower than her Tiger install and spaces makes it work better for her on the small screen.

However I also installed it on my 1Ghz G4 Mirror Door tower and it ran like crap! So so slow with windows barly able to move around the screen. Ended up reverting to Tiger.

I wonder why the Powerbook is happier with Leopard than the nomianlly faster G4 tower.

Which GPUs?

[Andrew Stephens]

PB has 1.25GB of RAM 40GB HDD and runs an NVIDIA GeForce4 420 with 32Mb of DDR. The tower has an NVIDIA GeForce4 MX with 64Mb of RAM. It only has 756Mb of Ram so that may be the trouble.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by Andrew Stephens 

PB has 1.25GB of RAM 40GB HDD and runs an NVIDIA GeForce4 420 with 32Mb of DDR. The tower has an NVIDIA GeForce4 MX with 64Mb of RAM. It only has 756Mb of Ram so that may be the trouble.

Hmmm...

Well, the requirements for Leopard are 512 MB so 768 MB is OK but may be a bit limited. I was originally planning to use just 896 MB in my second Cube, but maybe I'll have to rethink that.

FWIW, Leopard runs quite well on a 1.7 GHz Cube (with only a 100 MHz bus), but that thing has a GeForce 6200 with 256 MB DDR2, and 1.25 GB RAM. This is with a 20" screen. My main problem is that the Eject key on my older Apple Pro Keyboard doesn't work under Leopard, so I have to use the Finder or a menu extra or dragging the disc to the trash to eject.

P.S. What is the size of your tower's screen? Do you run dual monitor? I found with many machines, dual monitor slowed things down even back in Panther.

[Andrew Stephens]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Hmmm...

Well, the requirements for Leopard are 512 MB so 768 MB is OK but may be a bit limited. I was originally planning to use just 896 MB in my second Cube, but maybe I'll have to rethink that.

FWIW, Leopard runs quite well on a 1.7 GHz Cube (with only a 100 MHz bus), but that thing has a GeForce 6200 with 256 MB DDR2, and 1.25 GB RAM. This is with a 20" screen. My main problem is that the Eject key on my older Apple Pro Keyboard doesn't work under Leopard, so I have to use the Finder or a menu extra or dragging the disc to the trash to eject.

P.S. What is the size of your tower's screen? Do you run dual monitor? I found with many machines, dual monitor slowed things down even back in Panther.

Nope, tower runs a 19in Lacie crt screen. It's got to be the RAM but I'm not upgrading it. I'll stick with Tiger on this one.

[raytibbitts]

I tried a clean install of Leopard on my Powerbook 12" G4 1.5GHz
I can't really tell if there is a speed difference, and I even waited until Spotlight finished indexing. Safari seems quicker, but I'm not sure.

My friends' MacIntels were just so much snappier than my Powerbook, even before Leopard, and I am a little disappointed that theirs are now all the more responsive. Mine is still great, but there's just not any perceivable enhancement on my Mac, while theirs do feel EVEN quicker on Leopard!

I just don't like a lot of the new look. And just like when OS X first came out, I am disappointed in the sparseness of user-defined interface options. It is just not "tweak-able" enough. It looks really dreary. There needs to be an option to choose something other than 'flat-grey and fuzzy transparent'. (I still miss a lot of the options from OX 9.) A good start would be some color other than aqua, and a set of themes to choose from that allow switching from all brushed metal (Tiger's Finder), to stripey white (Tiger's Mail), to Leopardy Grey with better color (Tiger's iTunes) and, a nice NIghtVision theme that uses and intelligent color pallete of blacks, greys, and reds.
Plus, the dock takes up even MORE space (and on a 12" screen ever pixel is missed.) And it's too expensive in Europe, I mean dammit, the Euro buys a dollar and a half.

[robby2k]

I am a relative virgin to computing generally; I've used Windows at work, and before that My only experience was of RISC OS and Amstrad PCW, and a Mac Classic II!!!!!!! In 2003 I got an Emac 700 Mhz, 128 MB Ram, Mac OS 10.2.8 (Jaguar). I recently put an extra 512MB memory in (total 640MB), and courtesy of ebay, upgraded to Tiger. It runs beautifully; some 3rd party apps (e.g. Google Earth) are ever so slightly slow, but anyone running a puter with a processor less than 800+Mhz should go for Tiger, in my opinion. I've had my Emac from new, and I hope that with my upgrades, it should last for another few years yet.

Hope this helps