[andyeb]

I recently snapped up a Lombard 333 being thrown out at work, hoping to get it working for my brother-in-law (who is about to become a mac fan, although of course he does not know that yet ).

Anyway, I need to get Panther installed, since the existing OS 8 install is partially hosed and I have no OS 8 system discs (I also need to wipe the disc of company data). The problem is, I can't get it to start from the media-bay DVD drive.

What I have tried so far:

- holding down C when booting (CD spins up but then goes to OS 8 on the hard disk).

- going into OS 8 and running the OS X installer (which is supposed to then make the machine boot from the CD)

- going into OS 8 and setting the CD as the startup volume then rebooting

- tried two different OS X discs, tech tool pro 4 disc and 3 PPC linux install discs - guess it isn't the discs then!

- zapping the PRAM (i.e. opt+cmd+p+r at boot up) multiple times in a row

- going into open firmware (opt+cmd+o+f) and typing "reset-nvram" and "reset-all".

- disconnecting the backup battery (which I suspect may be dead actually) and all of the above again.

Now I read of one guy on the Yellow Dog Linux mailing list who had problems booting a lombard from the CD and eventually fixed it by wiping the hard disk.

After much faffing, I managed to boot Linux (using BootX from inside OS 8) and get into the YDL installer, where I was hoping to get to switch to a free console and use pdisk to flame the hard disk... but the installer locks up before I get there.

Any other suggestions?

thanks,

Andy

PS. lombard is definitely a "new world" mac right?

[pat++]

When you are under OS 8, what happens when you put Mac OS X CD in the drive? do you see the content of the CD? does the CD-ROM mount on the desktop? if not, then it might be that the CD-ROM drive is a bit picky. Try to make a copy of the install CD, and make sure you burn it at the lowest possible speed. Then try to boot from this CD and see if it works better. Had the issue once with an old iMac...

PS: I do think Lombard is a new-world Mac... I think all Macs with Open Firmware are

[SEkker]

Not all Lombards had DVD drives. And the DVD drives that were included in the stock models did not read DVD-R media. The lack of firewire on this machine does pose technical problems of this sort. Here's my solution:

Removing the internal HD is not difficult at all. I upgraded my Lombard to OS X by installing everything onto a new HD first (using a Pismo), then just swapped it in. Booted up great.

[andyeb]

Originally posted by pat++:
When you are under OS 8, what happens when you put Mac OS X CD in the drive? do you see the content of the CD? does the CD-ROM mount on the desktop? if not, then it might be that the CD-ROM drive is a bit picky.

strangely the DVD drive works perfectly with every disc I have tried in it, including the OS X install disc.

Try to make a copy of the install CD, and make sure you burn it at the lowest possible speed. Then try to boot from this CD and see if it works better. Had the issue once with an old iMac...

Worth a go I guess - an extra backup of the system disc wouldn't go a miss afterall.

PS: I do think Lombard is a new-world Mac... I think all Macs with Open Firmware are

Yeah, after doing some more digging around on the Internet, I eventually sussed this one. To date all of the macs I've played with have had open firmware, so I assumed that was they way they had always been!

thanks for your suggestions,

Andy

[andyeb]

Removing the internal HD is not difficult at all. I upgraded my Lombard to OS X by installing everything onto a new HD first (using a Pismo), then just swapped it in. Booted up great. [/B]

Funnily enough, I actually took the HD out of the machine last night in desparation to see if I could make it boot from the CD when it had no other sources to boot from - just ended up with the flashing question mark though.

Your idea is a good one and not one that I had thought of. The main problem is that I don't have access to another working machine - I have another dead Lombard (400MHz model) but that doesn't even boot OS 8... and doesn't have a CD or DVD drive with it .

The closest machine I do have is an 800MHz G4 iBook, but I'd rather not take that appart.

thanks,

Andy

EDIT: I'll get a cheap USB 2 drive caddy, put the lombard's hard disk in that, then use my iBook to install OS X on it

[andyeb]

Does anyone know if it is possible to do a network install of OS X using network boot? I have a couple of other OS X macs around I could use to act as a server, but am I right in thinking you need a copy of OS X server to do this?

thanks,

Andy

[SEkker]

If you can borrow or purchase an inexpensive 2.5" external FW HD case, you could install OSX by plugging the HD into your desktop. My apologies, that's what I meant to suggest, rather than place it internally in another machine.

[andyeb]

Originally posted by SEkker:
If you can borrow or purchase an inexpensive 2.5" external FW HD case, you could install OSX by plugging the HD into your desktop. My apologies, that's what I meant to suggest, rather than place it internally in another machine.

That's more or less exactly what I've done - picked up a USB 2 drive enclosure for 7.79GBP . Hopefully it should be here tomorrow.

Is there anything I need to do different (besides specifying a destination drive) during the installation? When installing OS X, do all the drivers get installed and setup for the system running the installer? Will I be likely to encounter problems later as a result of a different system running the installation?

One other question - is it OK to use the install discs that came with my iBook G4? Will it work? Obviously, I'll go out and buy a retail OS X pack once I've got it working properly, so the installation is legit.

Thanks for your help.

Andy

[SEkker]

I've only used the retail installer discs, so I am not sure if there is anything special about your machine installers.

I suppose you can always do an archive and install just to be sure after the fact, so long as the new OS you've installed at least lets you boot and use the optical drive.

[andyeb]

OK, I've got the lombard's hard disk in a USB2 caddy and have hooked it up to the iBook and booted from the installation disk, but when I get to the "Select Destination" step, it won't let me select the external disk:

"You cannot install Mac OS X onto this volume. You cannot start up your computer using this volume."

Does anyone know of a work around? Any way to say "I know what I'm doing, let me get on with it?"

thanks,

Andy

[SEkker]

You can always try cloning your OS X drive from your iBook, and then try using it for your Lombard, if it does not work to install on the external drive directly.

I suspect the problem is USB2 -- I've always used firewire external drives.

[andyeb]

Yeah, it would seem that macs can only boot from external firewire drives.

In the end, I managed to persuade another broken Pismo to boot into Target mode by disconnecting the PRAM battery, zapping the PRAM and pressing the reset button. I installed the lombard's hard disk in the pismo, then installed OS X onto it via firewire from my iBook, before swapping it back into the lombard. Frustratingly, the IBM travelstar hard disk in the machine worked perfectly throughout a soak test and during the install, but during the update to 10.3.6 it made the famous "click of death" noise once - time to hunt down a replacement on eBay methinks.

So now the lombard is booting into OS X , at least temporarily. The build-in ethernet seems to be partially fried (drops up to half the packets sent, although I can see network activity on the router). Fortunately the modem still works, which is what my brother in law needs really.

Now its time to get that Pismo booting. There is some kind of problem with the display light - stays on for a few seconds at boot up (enough to see the grey apple appear briefly) and then shuts down. I suspect a dodgey inverter board. This mac-fixing malarky is all good fun

thanks for your help guys,

Andy