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jld · May 2, 2004, 07:24 PM

I have a beige powermac g3 266 that I want to install panther on. Apple's website says built in USB is required, but is it really?

gorickey · May 2, 2004, 07:35 PM

Yep, it's required.

jld · May 2, 2004, 07:45 PM

Originally posted by gorickey:
Yep, it's required.

Will a PCI USB card suffice, and if so, should I get a specific kind, or will any old one do?

wataru · May 2, 2004, 07:55 PM

Originally posted by jld:
Will a PCI USB card suffice, and if so, should I get a specific kind, or will any old one do?

It's not USB itself that is required; they just use USB to differentiate Macs that can and can't run Panther. Any Mac that didn't come with built-in USB is too old to run Panther. No USB upgrade card will fix that.

There is a piece of software called XPostFacto that you can use to get Panther running on your machine, but I believe it doesn't work with the beige G3's video card right now. You may be able to get it going if you have a supported PCI video card, but there are other restrictions, too (like the OS X partition must be within the first 8GB of the drive) so you may or may not be able to do it. Even if you do get it running, it will run pretty poorly and will not be supported.

Arkham_c · May 2, 2004, 07:56 PM

Originally posted by jld:
Will a PCI USB card suffice, and if so, should I get a specific kind, or will any old one do?

It's not the USB itself that is required. Apple is using USB as a customer-identifiable attribute that describes motherboards that are compatible with Panther. If your motherboard did not include USB, then it's not part of the unified architecture that Apple supports for 10.3.

You might be able to get it to work on a beige G3, but it's not supported and will likely require a hack to get it to install.

jld · May 2, 2004, 08:00 PM

Can you guys suggest a version of os x that will support the beige 266 g3?

Catfish_Man · May 2, 2004, 08:08 PM

Originally posted by jld:
Can you guys suggest a version of os x that will support the beige 266 g3?

10.2, but it's a bit flaky. I ran 10.0.0 - 10.2.6 on a 233, but 10.2.0 and up behaved oddly occasionally. I don't remember what, but it wasn't anything major. Also, there's a program called XPostFacto that will allow 10.3 on beige G3s, but it's definitely a hack (as in, not something I would do on my grandma's computer).

CharlesS · May 2, 2004, 09:23 PM

The reason it requires USB is that the Macs with built-in USB ports are built using the New World architecture, which Panther requires.

Arkham_c · May 2, 2004, 09:39 PM

Originally posted by jld:
Can you guys suggest a version of os x that will support the beige 266 g3?

10.2.8 is rock solid and works fine on a beige G3.

wataru · May 2, 2004, 10:00 PM

Originally posted by Arkham_c:
10.2.8 is rock solid and works fine on a beige G3.

I've had weird stuff happen on 10.2, namely that .pkg installers just stopped working for no good reason. But other than that, it's worked just fine.

dampeoples · May 2, 2004, 11:38 PM

Originally posted by wataru:
I've had weird stuff happen on 10.2, namely that .pkg installers just stopped working for no good reason. But other than that, it's worked just fine.

it's been weird for me, up to my iDisk not even mounting. Nothing a log out/back in wouldn't fix though

CharlesS · May 3, 2004, 02:21 AM

Originally posted by wataru:
I've had weird stuff happen on 10.2, namely that .pkg installers just stopped working for no good reason. But other than that, it's worked just fine.

By "stopped working", what do you mean specifically? Could you give a more detailed description of the problem?

Langdon · May 3, 2004, 02:33 AM

X.2 installed with Xpostfacto on Beige G3s work pretty well. But it is a hack so it won't be glitch free. It may be minor things or it might be something pretty tough to fix. So long as this is not a computer you have anything vital on go ahead and install it.
I would not rely on it to be my primary machine and if you have work or school stuff on it back up what you need all the time. For web, email, and typing you should be OK.

It won't be fast and the cost of upgrades are not really worth it but as an experiment or second or third computer Xpostfacto will do just fine. I have an 8500 with a G3 card running Panther and it was not as hard as I thought it would be to install it. USB and Firewire work fine with PCI cards.

You might want to join the OWC xpostfacto forums or at least read what kind of porblems others have had before you try it.

jld · May 3, 2004, 02:41 AM

I went ahead and installed 10.3 on it, and it seems to be working fine. It is a completely trivial computer, meaning if it stops working, it won't matter at all, I'm only using it to run a slideshow moving picture frame for an extra LCD I have lying around.

wataru · May 3, 2004, 08:24 AM

Originally posted by Langdon:
X.2 installed with Xpostfacto on Beige G3s work pretty well.

You don't need Xpostfacto to run 10.2.

Millennium · May 3, 2004, 08:40 AM

Originally posted by jld:
I have a beige powermac g3 266 that I want to install panther on. Apple's website says built in USB is required, but is it really?

Not as such. It's actually all because of a coincidence.

The Beige G3s ran on a motherboard architecture codenamed "Gossamer" (the last revision is also sometimes called "Silk"). This was the last motherboard which used the traditional PowerPC Mac architecture.

The model introduced immediately after the G3 -the Revision A iMac- used a new motherboard architecture called "New World". It was originally supposed to be a stepping stone for yet another architecture called "Open World", which would have led to a revival of the clones, but the Open World project died with the last of the clone vendors. This architecture was used up through the first generation of Power Macintosh G4 machines, when they switched to something else.

Ahem. Anyway, Panther requires -or rather, it has only been tested with- the New World architecture. As it so happens, New World was the first Mac motherboard to feature onboard USB. The reason that Panther is said to require onboard USB is because this is the easiest way to tell if you have a supported machine (rather than having to spell out a long list of model names).

normdzn · Mar 8, 2005, 04:32 PM

Originally posted by jld:
I have a beige powermac g3 266 that I want to install panther on. Apple's website says built in USB is required, but is it really?

So...

How has your G3 mini tower been working? I am curious to find out. I am really tempted to install OS 10.3 on my Beige Powermac G3, "Gossamer". I would like to install it.

normdzn · Mar 8, 2005, 04:36 PM

Originally posted by Millennium:
Ahem. Anyway, Panther requires -or rather, it has only been tested with- the New World architecture. As it so happens, New World was the first Mac motherboard to feature onboard USB. The reason that Panther is said to require onboard USB is because this is the easiest way to tell if you have a supported machine (rather than having to spell out a long list of model names).

I think I will give it a shot...the machine is just collecting dust anyway...

If I could make it work maybe I can use the machine for email and such purposes.

jmiddel · Mar 8, 2005, 08:45 PM

I used OS 10.1.5 way back for over a year, rock solid and decently fast for everything but InDesign

romeosc · Mar 9, 2005, 09:07 AM

This site for good used Mac equiptment has good information on using OS X on older equiptment .

http://resale.headgap.com/osxnotes.html

Tsilou B. · Mar 9, 2005, 04:08 PM

Panther with XPostFacto runs great on these old machines. I have an old PowerMac 7600 with G3/233 upgrade card and very cheap PC firewire and usb cards ($10 and $5). Panther detected them without any additional driver. It also runs much faster than Yellow Dog Linux 3 on the same machine.
If you add a real PCI graphics card with 2D acceleration, you can even use the EyeTV (USB) in full screen mode. Unfortunately, ATI's cheapest Mac-PCI card is $129.

vexborg · Mar 10, 2005, 05:36 AM

Originally posted by Langdon:
X.2 installed with Xpostfacto on Beige G3s work pretty well. But it is a hack so it won't be glitch free. It may be minor things or it might be something pretty tough to fix. So long as this is not a computer you have anything vital on go ahead and install it.
I would not rely on it to be my primary machine and if you have work or school stuff on it back up what you need all the time. For web, email, and typing you should be OK.

Yeah, I did the same (installed 10.3 on a Beige G3 with a USB card), and the only strange thing is a message during boot, just before the grey apple appears, which says 'can't OPEN' - besides from that there's no problems

normdzn · Mar 11, 2005, 11:04 AM

Hi Y'all,

Thanks for all the help and the information fellas. I have decided NOT to install Panther on my Beige G3 minitower. The cons just outweigh the pros right now. It runs OS 9.2 perfectly right now and I am chickening out. I am not "tech savy" enough to do this. Anyways, that's why I have Ti book and sawtooth, i guess.

OpenStep · Mar 11, 2005, 06:20 PM

I hope this doesn't go too far off topic but IF onboard firewire is a requirement for Tiger this basically cuts off the Lombard PowerBook and the tray loading iMacs. Is there another logic board design jump from the lombard/early iMac/early G3 B&W (I think) to a Sawtooth or Pismo/PowerBook G4?