[gingrasst]

Hello. Any help would be much appreciated.

I purchased what I thought was a universal OS X 10.4 CD family set in order to upgrade two older computers I have with CD only drives. One was a iBook G4 and the other is a G3 "Blue & White." The upgrade went flawless on the iBook and seemed to go flawless on the B&W. However, upon restart, i end up at a massive Kernel Panic and i can't do anything. I started looking up on the web to see what the Hex codes given out were and they all seem to be about a iBook G4. I contacted the seller and long story short, they sent me the wrong pack of CD's. Yippee!

Now, my trusty B&W seems to have turned into a brick. It doesn't allow me to do any of the typical things like "hold C to boot from CD" or anything in order to revert the instsall back to one of my older OS X disk sets.

Do I have any hope of getting my computer back?

Thanks!

[angelmb]

Hello and welcome to the boards.

Which Mac OS was installed on the B&W previously to 10.4 ??
Did you have to run any firmware software update?
Does the B&W have any 3rd. party PCI card installed or some peripheral attached to it that might be the culprit here?
Which hard disk configuration does it have?, number of hard disks, are they ATA or SCSI ?

I was pondering about Target Disk Mode but B&W can't use it. Pity.

[reader50]

With the computer off, hold down the CUDA reset button on the motherboard for a few seconds. Then try to boot - the C-key command may work again, to boot from the CD drive.

You can also disconnect the power cable from the internal HD. The system should presently try the CD drive after failing to find the hard drive. Use Startup Disk on the install CD to select the CD. Shut down, reconnect HD, reboot from CD.

[gingrasst]

Originally Posted by angelmb 

Hello and welcome to the boards.

Which Mac OS was installed on the B&W previously to 10.4 ??
Did you have to run any firmware software update?
Does the B&W have any 3rd. party PCI card installed or some peripheral attached to it that might be the culprit here?
Which hard disk configuration does it have?, number of hard disks, are they ATA or SCSI ?

I was pondering about Target Disk Mode but B&W can't use it. Pity.

Thanks for your quick reply. Sorry for my delay.

The B&W was previously running 10.3.9. I'm can't remember if it tried to run some firmware updates or not. I have a bad feeling that it did though. And with it being what I learned to be a iBook only install disk, I worry that this is my problem, a B&W with iBook firmware.

As for PCI cards, the video is done by a PCI card, but is the one from Apple. That is the only one installed.

For Hard disks, it has two matching 9 GB SCSI drives, just configured separately, no RAID or anything.

[angelmb]

Originally Posted by gingrasst 

And with it being what I learned to be a iBook only install disk, I worry that this is my problem, a B&W with iBook firmware.

I am 99,9 % sure that the installer wouldn't let you apply an iBook firmware to a Power Mac.
Besides that, the only firmware I have been able to find for a B&W SCSI G3 is years older than 10.4

For Hard disks, it has two matching 9 GB SCSI drives, just configured separately, no RAID or anything.

Have you formatted the SCSI drive before installing 10.4?, if you happened to choose the UNIX file system (UFS) then, that might be the issue.

Is the SCSI card the one that came with the B&W or upgraded aftermarket?, cause SCSI support under Tiger was poor. There were workarounds though.

Still… let suppose the SCSI card is from Apple, and you have tried reader50 suggestions, then it's safe to say the misplaced 10.4 discs are to blame, albeit I wonder why the installer didn't advise you against it, sorta 'you can't install…'. So, you would need a retail copy of Tiger. What does the seller say about it ?.

[gingrasst]

Well, i did try what reader50 wrote and it got me to work on my old 10.3 disks. However now I am having some install issues because it says I can't install older software components. Seriously? I can't catch a break here.....

So I figured a simple install on the other drive would do the trick but, errors....... Again, seriously.......

I would format but I have a lot of stuff on the two disks that I can't afford to loose.

So.......I am looking for yet another 10.4 universal installer set. However, my issue is that I only have a CD drive and those are rare. I have my fingers crossed.

As for the old seller, we worked it out. They felt bad. Stuff happens.....

Thanks for the help!

[Big Mac]

You can just take the drive out and use it on a different Mac to rescue your files. Then reformat the drive and reinstall 10.3 if you have to go that route. It's a lot easier than the alternatives you're trying, quite frankly.

[reader50]

A basic DVD drive is pretty cheap too. $20-30. Be sure to get IDE if you replace the drive, they're getting less common.

[Mac Write]

You can't do an OS downgrade. You must do a format install (Not sure if Archive and Install will work or not). See of that works.