[butchfoote]

I spent all of Friday and most of Saturday setting up a very nice Wallstreet G3 with Mac OSX 10.3.9 for my daughter to use.

Here were the steps:

* Install 10.2 in a 7 Gig partition of a 32G IBM HD in the Wallstreet.
* Apply combo updater to 10.2.8
* All checks out well, sleeps, reboots runs fine.
* Install Firefox and a few other apps (iTunes, etc.). Apply software updater from Apple to bring everything to current releases (like iPod updater, Safari, etc.).
* Check the net. Runs great hardwired ethernet, via a Belkin wireless card as Airport or via a Belkin wireless internet bridge. Also I have a Maxtor 80 Gb external hard drive working fine off of a USB card in the PCMCIA slot. Net speeds seem fine. Hard to believe this is an 8 year old machine.
* Install Xpostfacto.
* Reboot and install Max OSX 10.3. All seems well. Apps and net work great. Machine still sleeps fine.
* Upgrade to 10.3.8 (via combo updater) and then to 10.3.9 via Software Updater in OSX. This also a applied a Java update. All seems well.
* Do back up of iTunes files from internal HD to external HD continue testing and running well.
* Go for a walk, come back and machine appears to be sleeping, but isn't. Takes a command-option power button to restart
* After restarting, all seems well, but machine won't sleep. If you try to sleep it, it requires same restart procedure.
* So I decided to verify and repair permissions. Instrestingly, the permission repair won't finish. It gets about 1/2 way through and reports that Disk Utility and the Disk Management program that actually does the work have 'lost contact' with each other. So I give up on the permission fix.
* Finish minor testing, mostly with iTunes (remember its for the daughter).
* Turn off for the night.
* This afternoon I moved the G3, HD, wireless bridge into daughters room and set everything up for her.
* I push the power on button on the Wallstreet and I get a funny sound. I try again and get the normal start up gong.
* G3 then does a power up to blinking Floppy.

At this point I've tried just about every trick I know to get the Mac to restart in OSX. It will boot fine from an old OS9 CD, but NOT from a Mac OSX Jag CD. Both disk partitions are visible and readable under OS9, so the disk appears good. When it tries to boot from the Jag CD, it tries to launch the OSX installer but dims the screen so you can just barely see the image and it doesn't respond to the screen bright button.

I'd think that this was a problem with the G3, but I don't anymore. I have another G3 that I went through exactly this about 6 weeks ago. I thought that the G3 had bit the dust and bought this other one. I think I made a mistake. I think that something in the OSX/Xpostfacto code get broken and toasts the startup info in the machine somehow.

Any suggestions?

[freakboy2]

is it an original HD? the hd might be toast.. that's what i would guess.

btw, if you get a big HD, that machine will all of a sudden become a lot faster.

[macgeek2005]

*Shudders at the memories of Xpostfacto and PowerComputing towers.....*

Unfortunetaly, my only answer to you is, that's too bad, and there probably isn't much you can do about it. It's Voodoo.

[Kyros]

Hmm, my brother is Xpost Facto-ing Panther on his Wallstreet, I'll see if I can ask him about it.

[Langdon]

It is a crapshoot with xpostfacto. Sometimes it works on the first try and other times you will spend days getting it to just install OSX once. If this project is worth the hassle to you then just cough up the money for the macsales support forum. There are people there with much more extensive experience and knowledge about the program than you will ever find here.

[Big Mac]

As much as I hate to admit, there is a valid reason why some machines are no longer supported.

[butchfoote]

The HD is an upgrade (IBM Travestar 32Gb). It's ok. I can boot to OS9 from the original G3 Cd and both partitions of the HD mount and can be used.

I was surprised it actually worked the very first time.

ALL of the odd stuff happened hours after Xpostfacto and the sw upgrades were done.

My guess is that the PRAM is shot or nearly so. I bet the Xpostfacto puts the info on where to boot to into PRAM and then it gets corrupted when power is actually off for an extended period of time.