[Plant7575]

I have an imac G5 that came with OS X 10.3. I also have an early G4 Titanium Powerbook that came with OS 9. I would like to install OS X on the Powerbook. I have several questions.

(1) Can I use the OS X disks that came wity the G5 to install 10.3 on the Powerbook? or are the disks that came with G5 specific to that machine and therefore incompatible with the G4 Powerbook?

(2) The Powerbook has a 400 Mhz G4 processor. Can it run OS X 10.3? How much slower will it be than running OS 9?

(3) When I install OS X, what happens to all of my files and programs? Are the files preserved? Do my old OS 9 programs get saved in an Applications (OS-9) folder?

Thanks

[OreoCookie]

(1) Not likely. Apple usually ships install disks specific to that machine. You can buy 10.3 for very little these days, though.
(2) Yes, it can. Slower depends on what you mean by slower. If your main machine is a G5, than it will feel very slow. Not necessarily because OS X is so much slower than OS 9, but because a G5 is a lot faster than your first-gen PowerBook G4. It should be fine for browsing the web, e-mailing, coding, etc.
(3) Your old files will be preserved unless you select to initialize your harddrive during installation.

[jmiddel]

Am running OS X 10.3.9 on a G3 iMac and on a G5. Most things like wbe searching and wordprocessing are indistinguishable in speed. Of course I would not want to run Photoshop on it. The system disk was from a G4 tower I sold to someone who wanted to run Tiger on it, and thus was not interested in my 'old', yet rock solid 3.9. I needed to revive my iBook, so I installed the OS from the G4 CDs and it went just fine. So just try it. The two machines have different processors, architectures etc, and it's working great. Make sure to max out the memory, this will make a huge enormous difference.

Please backup all wanted files on another HD or optical media as no transition between 2 very different OSs is risk free in terms of data integrity!!!! Your apps will work under classic, better yet if you upgrade to OSX native ones. Good luck and enjoy.

[sknapp351]

I actually just installed 10.3 on my Lombard 400mhz G3. Yeah, it's slow but usable. What made all the difference was RAM. Even raising it to 192mb of RAM was noticable, I still intend to put another 256mb in.
SAm

[exonym]

My main system is a 12" G4 867, so I'm not exactly used to stellar performance in OS X, but 10.4 is also what I consider quite useable on my Pismo 400 with 320mb of ram. Mostly just for word processing, music, and web browsing (with the flashblock extension). It also runs Wipeout XL rather well.

[gikku]

I have Tiger running on a iBook G3 366mhz. Sure, it's around 5+ times slower than the G5 but it's fine for email, internet surfing, iTunes, widgets...

[sknapp351]

I just installed a 256mb PC133 chip in my Lombard, but OS X ( 10.3 ) only recognises it as a 128mb. I swapped it with another from a Ti-book and it still reads the same. I know that the Lombard only came with PC100, but I saw a few places selling PC100 and 133 for the Lombard. It runs significantly better, even if it says I only increased the RAM by 64mbs. Weird
SAm

[maní]

im gonna be loading OsX on a g3 B&W imac, im gonna upgrade it to 1Gb, my aim is to be able to run Creative suite 1 on it. Is this possible?

[bowwowman]

im gonna be loading OsX on a g3 B&W imac, im gonna upgrade it to 1Gb, my aim is to be able to run Creative suite 1 on it. Is this possible?

on an blue iMac, on a B&W tower.........

possible: yes/yes
usuable: barely/a little more so
pretty: NO/so-so

use panther for the iMac, Tiger for the tower