[justthefacts]

Folks,
I have a StarMax 4000/160 Tower in immaculate shape given to me by a friend. Problem: I can't upgrade the OS.
Problem: Trying to upgrade the OS from 8.1 to 8.5, the installer freezes during installation.
What I did: booted off StarMax CD; performed low-level reformat of HD, reinstalled original system software (7.5). Rebooted, upgraded to 8.1. Worked fine up to that point. Afterward, upgrading to 8.5, the installer freezes halfway.

Before I reformatted the HD and started over, I upgraded to OS 9.04, but upon startup, I'd get a system extension error and prompt to restart. Could a driver have been written to the disk on that install?

Also, I can't get this computer to boot off any CD but the original. Not OS 9, or FWB's HD ToolKit.
I'm suspecting an incompatible HD driver. Any helps, hints, etc.?
-SB

[Captain Obvious]

Where are all these OS disks from? Are they all retail versions of the operating systems or are they system disks that came from other Macs?

And why are you trying to go from 8.1 to 8.5? That's not really what you should do. Either go from 8.5 -> 8.6 or 9.0.4 -> 9.1
Forget the 8.1 its not necessary to upgrade it to that unless you want to keep it at 8.1

[cbr600f4]

I had no problem with 8.5 on my Starmax. Only problem was with the CD driver. Make sure you have enough RAM!

Nick

[justthefacts]

Originally posted by Captain Obvious:
<STRONG>Where are all these OS disks from? Are they all retail versions of the operating systems or are they system disks that came from other Macs?

And why are you trying to go from 8.1 to 8.5? That's not really what you should do. Either go from 8.5 -&gt; 8.6 or 9.0.4 -&gt; 9.1
Forget the 8.1 its not necessary to upgrade it to that unless you want to keep it at 8.1</STRONG>

These are all original retail Apple OS CDs, not copies.

I think the upgrading problem may be that I need to make the drive HFS+. But I can't boot off any CD but the original StarMax CD (7.5.3). Not 8.1, 8.5, 9.0 or FWB ToolKit. Is there any way to make the drive that format without booting off a CD?

And the computer has 80mb of RAM (which should be sufficient).

[ 10-23-2001: Message edited by: justthefacts ]

for Starmax owners, you should go to http://www.mcg.mot.com/ and search for starmax and cd where you will find info on why there is a problem. If you upgrade your operating system, you'll have to swap out the new apple cd extension for the original 7.5?? version that originally came with your Motorola OS CD. You really will find this info here at this motorola website...but search for it.