[Anubis IV]

I need a little help here.

I got a phone call this morning from my dad, who recently purchased a new 14" iBook to replace his aging 500MHz G3 12" iBook. Anyway, he wanted to preserve all of his settings and prefernces from the 12", so after he backed up his 12" to an external 120GB HDD and backed up all of the apps that came with the 14", he attempted to "Restore" the 14" system using the backup he had made of the 12" onto the external HDD. Now, on startup, he gets kernel panics pretty much regardless of what he does or what discs are inserted. It seems that he's managed to completely bork the thing by using his system from the G3 12" iBook to Restore the system on his G4 iBook.

Anyway, booting in single user mode causes a kernel panic, as does regular startup and attempting to startup from a disc. He can reach the Startup Manager if he holds down the Option key on startup, but when he tries to startup from there using one of his system discs he always gets a kernel panic. I don't know, but with my limited experience it seems as if he's botched up his drivers or something and now it can't recognize and devices at all.

So, he's willing to just wipe the 14" HDD and start from scratch with it, but he doesn't seem to have any way to go about doing that since we can't get past the startup with it. Any idea how to get past these bothersome kernal panics and eiher recover or wipe the HDD? I'm in the middle of having him install a copy of OSX onto the external disc in the hopes that we can boot from it via Firewire, but I don't know that that will work. Any suggestions at all, no matter how strange, would be appreciated since I really can't think of any ways to make this situation much worse.

Many thanks.

EDIT: My dad just sent me a copy of all the text he receives when he boots up in Verbose Mode. Keep in mind that he copied it by typing it in manually while on his 12", so if there is an error in there it could just be a copying error and not a real issue. Anyway, I don't know if this is useful, but just in case, here it is...

standard timeslicing quantum is 10000 us
vm_page_bootstrap: 61100 free pages
mig_table_max_displ = 68
IOKit Component Version 7:6
Sun Oct 10 12:00:05 PDT 2004; root (rcbuilder): RELEASE_PPC/iokit/RELEASE
extension �com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily� cannot be found
can't determine immediate dependencies for extension
com.apple.driver.AppleMacRISC2PE
Can't determine immediate dependencies for com.apple.driver.AppleMacRISC2PE.
Couldn't alloc class �MacRISC2PE�
panic(cpu 0): Unable to find driver for this platform: �PowerBook6,5�.

Latest stack backtrace for cpu 0:
Backtrace:
0x000836E4 0x00083BC8 0x0001EDA4 0x00276524 0x00256724 0x002564FC
0x00256F78 0x002575EC
0x002477A4 0x00247768
Proceeding back via exception chain:
Exception state (sv+0x00B0C780)
PC=0x00000000; MSR=0x0000D030; DAR=0x00000000; DSISR=0x00000000;
LR=0x00000000; R1=0x00000000; XCP=0x00000000 (Unknown)

Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 7.6.0:
Sun Oct 10 12:05:27 PDT 2004: root:xnu/xnu-517.94.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC


No debugger configured - dumping debug information
MSR=0x00001030
Latest stack backtrace for cpu 0:
Backtrace:
0x000836E4 0x00083D94 0x0001EDA4 0x00276524 0x00256724 0x002564FC
0x00256F78 0x002575EC
0x002477A4 0x00247768
Proceeding back via exception chain:
Exception state (sv=0x00B0C780)
PC=0x00000000; MSR=0x0000D030 DAR=0x00000000; DSISR=0x00000000;
LR=0x00000000; R1=0x00000000; XCP=0x00000000 (Unknown)

Kernel Version:
Darwin Kernel Version 7.6.0
Sun Oct 10 12:05:27 PDT 2004; root:xnu/xnu-517.9.4.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC

panic: We are hanging here. . .

[msuper69]

How was the backup of the old iBook done? Just copying the files won't work. You need to use a program like Carbon Copy Cloner. But even then I think you will have problems trying to use an OS X system from that old Mac on a newer one.

Best way to upgrade from an older Mac is to use the Panther Setup Assistant described here.

[Anubis IV]

He says he did it using Retrospect Backup and that he maintained relatively regular backups but just used his most recent one for this Restore. I know about CCC, and I would've recommended the same thing to him (had I been there when it happened, but alas, I'm away at school), but he did all of this on his own. Thanks for the link as well. It'll hopefully be useful in the future.

[Dr. Smoke]

He should be able to startup from the Software Restore and Install disc that came with his new iBook G4. Boot from it as he would from any CD. He might want to try resetting the PRAM first. He can then wipe the drive and restore the original software for the iBook G4.

Once he has restored the based software of the iBook G4, he can use the Setup Assistant as msuper69 suggests.

What happened is when he Duplicated the old Mac's backup onto the new Mac's hard drive, the old Mac's Mac OS X install has the drivers and kernel extensions for a G3 iBook, not his new G4 iBook. That will cause the G4 iBook to panic every time since it is running hardware different from that of the system from which the backup was made.

When one installs Mac OS X, it installs all the drivers, kernel extensions, etc. for the specific Mac on which Mac OS X is being installed.

[tooki]

In short: the OS on the old iBook is too old to run the new iBook. Just use the setup assistant.

tooki

[Anubis IV]

Thanks guys. Many thanks, in fact. He actually didn't get those CDs with the computer, but we're trying to get a copy of them from the person he bought the computer from. Just in case, are there any other possible solutions to the problem aside from using that particular method? If not, I'll just post here if/when we run into any more troubles with the CDs and the like.

Anyway, I figured it had something to do with drivers when we couldn't even boot from the System Discs...never thought of kernel extensions being something that would've messed up as well, but I suppose I have plenty to learn about the underpinnings of the OS still.

Again, many many thanks.

[tooki]

It's not that they're messed up -- it's that they're old and don't include support for the newer hardware.

tooki

[Anubis IV]

That's what I meant. I really need to work on using the proper terms, especially when in an environment that demands their use in order to avoid confusing situations. Anyway, yes, I understood them to be old (and thus unusable due to varying generations of hardware and the like) as opposed to corrupted or "messed up". Thanks for taking an interest in making sure I learned and understood what was going on though, tooki!

[CharlesS]

The thing that doesn't make sense, though, is that he would be panicking even when booting from a CD.

Does using command-option-shift-delete to bypass the startup disk's driver from loading cause you to be able to boot from the CD? If not, does the old iBook have FireWire ports, or does any other Mac you have access to have FireWire ports? If so, run a FireWire cable from the G4 iBook to any other Mac, then start up the G4 iBook with the T key held down. The hard disk will appear on the other Mac's Desktop, and you can reformat it or do whatever you like with it.

edit: whoops, I didn't catch that you don't have the CDs that were supposed to come with that machine. I'd definitely try FireWire Target Mode as described above.

[Anubis IV]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
Does using command-option-shift-delete to bypass the startup disk's driver from loading cause you to be able to boot from the CD?

Don't know just yet, but I'll get back to you on that once we get a copy of the CDs in. I had actually never heard of that particular key-combo on startup, so it could be useful in the future, even if not here.

Originally posted by CharlesS:
If not, does the old iBook have FireWire ports, or does any other Mac you have access to have FireWire ports? If so, run a FireWire cable from the G4 iBook to any other Mac, then start up the G4 iBook with the T key held down. The hard disk will appear on the other Mac's Desktop, and you can reformat it or do whatever you like with it.

When I first talked to my dad, he said that he had already tried doing just that with his old iBook (which does have FW) and with my younger brother's iPod (which has Panther installed on it). After we started looking for a solution, one of the first things I had him do was to install a copy of Panther on his external HDD and try to boot from that. Nothing worked though, from what we could tell...it just panicked.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Anubis IV:
When I first talked to my dad, he said that he had already tried doing just that with his old iBook (which does have FW) and with my younger brother's iPod (which has Panther installed on it). After we started looking for a solution, one of the first things I had him do was to install a copy of Panther on his external HDD and try to boot from that. Nothing worked though, from what we could tell...it just panicked.

Here you have the same problem as before - your G4 iBook came out after Panther did, so you will need the Panther disks that came with the machine in order to work with it.

Once Tiger comes out, you will be able to use the plain old Tiger install discs. But the stock installation of Panther doesn't know about your G4 iBook nor how to boot it, since it came out before your iBook G4 did.

Of course, installing on the external hard drive and then updating it to 10.3.6 might work, since 10.3.6, I believe, postdates your iBook. Not sure, though.