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pete · Oct 24, 2003, 06:46 PM

I just spent many hours on the phone with my dad trying to help him install panther on his lombard 333mhz/10gig/512mb. During the first attempt, the installer gave an error message half way through and we had to restart. Of course there was no operating system on the machine at this point so we just got the question mark at startup. Tried to boot from the cd the way we had before but it wouldn't do it. Just kept grinding away with the question mark on the screen. NExt thing was to try to install jaguar and then panther over it. Everything was fine (jaguar installed without a hitch) until the last ten minutes of the installation process when suddenly the screen was covered with horizontal blue stripes. We had no choice but to reboot and then we rebooted into open firmware I think? My dad said there was lots of text and characters and at the end a message that said that " we're really hanging here " or something like that and that we have to restart. Restarting five times gave the same result. Gave up.

Any advice? IT was really frustrating

ourisman · Oct 24, 2003, 07:06 PM

Take a look at the Read Me file. It talks about which Macs are compatible with Panther. Does the Lombard have built-in USB?

Another possibility if nothing else works is to take the whole shebang to the Genius Bar at an Apple Store and pay them to install the thing.

bmhome1 · Oct 24, 2003, 07:07 PM

Try pulling 3rd party RAM and install with only original RAM. Then add RAM back after installed.

Eug Wanker · Oct 24, 2003, 07:11 PM

Originally posted by ourisman:
Does the Lombard have built-in USB?

Yes.

pete · Oct 24, 2003, 07:11 PM

it's suppose to be compatible as it has built in USB. Since it works with jaguar, I can't imagine it's the ram, but maybe that's worth a try...

goMac · Oct 24, 2003, 07:46 PM

I had the exact same problem with my Lombard.

I took out the hard drive, put it in my TiBook, installed, swapped back. It then worked fine. This is a major problem on Apple's part.

pete · Oct 24, 2003, 07:50 PM

Hmm, I can't do that since my dad lives in Europe. Do you have any idea WHY it worked that way?

Thanks

JonahLee · Oct 24, 2003, 08:11 PM

But I have the 500 MHz G4 upgrade chip in it, and 320 MB of RAM. Installed without a hitch and very quickly at that.

ApeInTheShell · Oct 24, 2003, 08:37 PM

I heard someone said the installation took up 8 mb vram?

I don't see why it wouldn't be compatible with your lombard if its compatible with my kihei..heh

However, i don't think either of our computers will take advantage of what Panther has to offer. Correct me if i'm wrong, just seems like the time to upgrade.

pete · Oct 24, 2003, 08:50 PM

You know, I think jaguar was pretty useable on the lombard. My girlfriend's pismo runs its excellently too. Unless you need a computer for intensive, hardcore stuff, I think the lombard and pismo still have a few more years in them....for web, email, word processing stuff.

Anyway, the problem persists...

King Chung Huang · Oct 24, 2003, 09:12 PM

Originally posted by pete:
You know, I think jaguar was pretty useable on the lombard. My girlfriend's pismo runs its excellently too. Unless you need a computer for intensive, hardcore stuff, I think the lombard and pismo still have a few more years in them....for web, email, word processing stuff.

I still use a Pismo (500 Mhz G3) everyday. It still gets a workout with WebObjects development and the occassional webcast. In fact, it's doing one tonight! (www.godinos.com)

JonahLee · Oct 24, 2003, 11:57 PM

There should be no reason you have to upgrade the laptop (though I do recommend the G4 upgrade, as it works flawlessly on mine). According to the README The Lombard should be find, but it might be like the first 10.2.8 update where the Lombard had horribly crashing problems. Perhaps they need a Lombard or two at Apple to test new releases on.

Has anyone reported this bug to Apple yet?

Eriamjh · Oct 25, 2003, 08:28 AM

Apple's own requirements page says "Powerbook G3 (bronze keyboard)". Does that include the Lombard?

pete · Oct 25, 2003, 08:55 AM

yes, it does include the lombard. If they meant only pismo, they would have written powerbook g3 firewire. Both machines had brown keyboard.

cal6n · Nov 2, 2003, 11:18 AM

Any advice? IT was really frustrating [/B][/QUOTE]

bmhome 1 is right on the money!

There's a minor glitch with the lombard (& maybe the pismo, I'm not sure) where the system will crash unless the top RAM slot is empty. So remove it, install panther, then replace it! I've just successfully installed on 2 lombards this way after suffering a horrible looking graphics crash on the first one.

Hope this helps

calvin

brachiator · Nov 2, 2003, 03:56 PM

FWIW, I'm successfully and happily running Panther on a Lombard -- 333mhz with 320M RAM and only a 4G HD. It runs pretty well, better than Jaguar, and the installation went without any hitch such as the ones described here.

I did have a problem getting the CD to start up for installation, but that I think is an issue of longstanding with my hotswappable MCE CDRW burner.

When I bought this machine though, I went through several motherboards and RAM upgrade modules, just to get it to work with OS9 (or was it 8.6), so maybe the RAMmy glitch was already dealt with in 1999.

good luck

bmhome1 · Nov 2, 2003, 04:43 PM

I installed Panther on a 333/512MB Lombard, problem-free and with a nice speed boost.

For several hours everything was fine, then suddenly the screen broke up into a random pattern of stripes and colors. Only pressing the reset button in back could shut it down.

Ran Disk Utility from another partition, and came up clean. Ran Panther again, stable for about another hour, then again suddenly the screen froze with a pattern of green vertical stripes in the center, requiring a reset again.

Disk Utility and repaired permissions from 10.2.1 partition without issues. Now running 10.2.1 without problems.

In several years ownership, there has never been a single screen/hinge/display anomaly in this Lombard ever until the Panther install.

I have seen issues reported with tower RagePro video cards and Panther. Could there be an issue with Lombard RagePro video chips and Panther also?

The failure of my Lombard's video driver and Panther seem more than coincidental. It also runs (so far) fine back in 10.2.1.

Uncle Skeleton · Nov 2, 2003, 05:15 PM

Originally posted by cal6n:
Any advice? IT was really frustrating

There's a minor glitch with the lombard (& maybe the pismo, I'm not sure)[/B][/QUOTE]

it installed (and runs) fine on my pismo with both RAM slots filled

cal6n · Nov 2, 2003, 07:15 PM

At the risk of repeating myself, the older powerbooks do not like RAM in the top slot when X is being installed but once the system's installed, they're quite happy.
What I've found works is to remove the RAM from the top slot (I left 256 in one lombard & 128 in the other), repair the OS partition from the installer disc utility, boot into jaguar & repair permissions, install panther & repair permissions, then finally re-install the RAM & repair permissions again.
Both lombards are fine. I'm currently looping an AVI film in quicktime from the CDROM in one to test & it's running a lot smoother than jaguar did with the same film! I'll leave it overnight to see if it's a time thing & if I get any crashes I'll post again but they've both been running really well, so I doubt I'll have to.

reneb · Nov 2, 2003, 07:59 PM

Folks:

I've got a 333MHz 512MB RAM Lombard, stock except a 20GB TravelStar HD.

Installing Pahther would freeze hard about 89% through 1st Disk. Clean install, Upgrade, didn't matter which type of install, it just wouldn't work. I also got those nasty stripes on m screen too.

I took out one of the RAM chips and install was fine and been running fine so far.

Recall that many Lobards had problems installing OS X 10.1? Some of these turned out to have faulty daughterboards that when replaced, worked fine. Perhaps Panther install is also picky about RAM or their is something up with hardware on Lombards and Panther . . .

waffffffle · Nov 2, 2003, 09:26 PM

Originally posted by pete:
My dad said there was lots of text and characters and at the end a message that said that " we're really hanging here " or something like that and that we have to restart.

Sounds like a kernel panic. try installing a minimal 10.3 installation and reformatting the hard disk first. Also try zeroing all data.

bmhome1 · Nov 2, 2003, 09:35 PM

What I reported above is disturbing because (again) Panther installed without issues, permissions were repaired, everything worked fine...for an hour, THEN failed video, twice.

That's nothing to do with RAM having to be pulled (common throughout Jaguar for Lombards).

Would reducing to thousands colors help (as it did with Wallstreets back in 10.1.5) avoid the video crashes?