[Koralatov]

My quest to push my iMac G4 as far as possible continues apace. I came across Screen Spanning Doctor a while back, and I am seriously tempted to carry it out on my iMac G4. Currently, it's on Leopard, but I'm going to be replacing the HD as part of my future upgrade plans. Once I've cloned the old drive onto the new blank one, I may reinstall Tiger on the original and use Screen Spanning Doctor to enable dual displays (as it's a Firmware edit, it should be sticky). However, I'm really quite fond of my iMac, and I would hate to brick it.

Has anyone used it successfully on this iMac, or a very similar one? If so, how straight-forward was it, and did you do anything special?

[imitchellg5]

I use Screen Spanning Doctor on my iMac G5 (from before screen spanning was allowed) successfully with Leopard, so I would think it would work fine with yours.

[iMan G5]

Using it right now with my iMac G5. Resetting PRAM changes it back to mirror only. So when you zap PRAM you need to redo the screen spanning doctor.

[Koralatov]

Originally Posted by imitchellg5 

I use Screen Spanning Doctor on my iMac G5 (from before screen spanning was allowed) successfully with Leopard, so I would think it would work fine with yours.

That’s good to know. Just for clarification though, did you apply Screen Spanning Doctor before or after you installed Leopard? I’m somewhat cautious about using it under Leopard, as it hasn’t been updated in almost three years…

Originally Posted by iMan G5 

Using it right now with my iMac G5. Resetting PRAM changes it back to mirror only. So when you zap PRAM you need to redo the screen spanning doctor.

That’s really good to know; if worse comes to worst, I can always zap the PRAM and go back to the start.

Thanks for the input, both of you.

[imitchellg5]

Originally Posted by Koralatov 

That’s good to know. Just for clarification though, did you apply Screen Spanning Doctor before or after you installed Leopard? I’m somewhat cautious about using it under Leopard, as it hasn’t been updated in almost three years…


That’s really good to know; if worse comes to worst, I can always zap the PRAM and go back to the start.

Thanks for the input, both of you.

I did install it before, right when the app came out.

[Koralatov]

Originally Posted by imitchellg5 

I did install it before, right when the app came out.

I think the best plan would be to boot the iMac off a FireWire drive with Tiger installed on it, then use Screen Spanning Doctor; I’m not sure that it would play nice with Leopard. Thanks for the clarification!

[ChristophersDad]

Every post I have seen on this for the months I have been looking has been NOISE. This is a YES/NO question. We know what SSD is, who wrote it, what the version is, the compatibility, BLA BLA but the helpful twits just do not answer the actual question. THE ANSWER IS NO.

A note for future posters. If you haven't got anything to say, don't say anything at all.

Same configuration as original post. G4 20" USB2 Firewire 1.25 GHz SSD/external XGA NEC AccuSync LCD52V with TIGER. Want Leopard, get a new machine.

[Koralatov]

Originally Posted by ChristophersDad 

Every post I have seen on this for the months I have been looking has been NOISE. This is a YES/NO question. We know what SSD is, who wrote it, what the version is, the compatibility, BLA BLA but the helpful twits just do not answer the actual question. THE ANSWER IS NO.

So you’re telling me definitively that if I boot the machine from Tiger, install SSD and then boot up with Leopard, the machine won’t support spanning anymore? Reading your post, it’s clear that it works under Tiger, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to working under Leopard.

Same configuration as original post. G4 20" USB2 Firewire 1.25 GHz SSD/external XGA NEC AccuSync LCD52V with TIGER. Want Leopard, get a new machine.

That’s an absolute pile; I have Leopard on my iMac, I use it every day, and I’m really happy with it. Whilst you’re right that it runs way, way better on a newer machine, I’m really not ready to ditch my beloved G4 just so I can get marginally better performance under Leopard. Whilst Leopard might crawl on a lot of G4s, it runs fine on a 1.25GHz one with 1.25GB of RAM. So really, what you said about the other posts just being "noise" pretty much applies to the latter half of yours.

[imitchellg5]

Originally Posted by ChristophersDad 

Every post I have seen on this for the months I have been looking has been NOISE. This is a YES/NO question. We know what SSD is, who wrote it, what the version is, the compatibility, BLA BLA but the helpful twits just do not answer the actual question. THE ANSWER IS NO.

I love being reduced to a twit. This discussion was very relevant. When a group of people doesn't know the answer to a question, do they just decide to leave it alone? Nope! They strive to find the answer through research and trial and error. If it didn't work that way, we'd all be living in Europe in fur tents. Also being a grumpy, ignorant, and condescending ass doesn't contribute anything.

A note for future posters. If you haven't got anything to say, don't say anything at all.

Likewise.

Same configuration as original post. G4 20" USB2 Firewire 1.25 GHz SSD/external XGA NEC AccuSync LCD52V with TIGER. Want Leopard, get a new machine.

This thread is about using SSD with Leopard on an iMac G4. I'm glad you have the money to get a new machine just for a new operating system, but not everyone does, and it's extremely ignorant to just tell people to go out and buy a new Mac instead. Leopard isn't Vista, it runs fine on older Macs

[fmgtech]

I too have a G4 iMac 20" and have not been able to use Screen Spanning Doctor. No matter what I try after a few minutes when the machine boots, both screens start to blink alternating from solid blue to the regular desktop pattern. They will continue to do this until I unplug the Mini-VGA display adapter running the external display. Once I do this the regular display is fine. I have tried this under Leopard and Tiger and get the same result. I am beginning the think it might be a defective port. Is this possible. Would really like to keep my 20" G4 iMac but must be able to use two monitors. Thanks for any replies.

Frank
[email protected]

[ChristophersDad]

Originally Posted by Koralatov 

My quest to push my iMac G4 as far as possible continues apace. I came across Screen Spanning Doctor a while back, and I am seriously tempted to carry it out on my iMac G4. Currently, it's on Leopard, but I'm going to be replacing the HD as part of my future upgrade plans. Once I've cloned the old drive onto the new blank one, I may reinstall Tiger on the original and use Screen Spanning Doctor to enable dual displays (as it's a Firmware edit, it should be sticky). However, I'm really quite fond of my iMac, and I would hate to brick it.

Has anyone used it successfully on this iMac, or a very similar one? If so, how straight-forward was it, and did you do anything special?

Does it work or not? Yes or No (If you have no definitive test data then do not comment)

[ChristophersDad]

Or maybe not.

http://rocketmonkeyrodeo.com/blog/20...tor-w-leopard/

[ChristophersDad]

G4 20" USB2 Firewire 1.25 GHz SSD/external XGA NEC AccuSync LCD52V with TIGER (OS X 10.4.11). Wanted to upgrade to Leopard (10.5.5) without loosing the functionality of Screen Spanning Doctor (0.3.3).

I Googled all over the web, either no one had tried, or all information was theoretical. Thus my frustration in tone with an earlier post here. My final offering which I choose to share here is...

YES

It appears to actually work fine, with the following caution.

SSD (0.3.3) patches the Open Firmware of the machine. If the PRAM is ever reset, the functionality will be lost. I have concluded that you cannot apply the patch by trying to run it within Leopard. (see http://rocketmonkeyrodeo.com/blog/20...tor-w-leopard/).

So I suggest you do something similar to what I have done here.

My G4 iMac 20" USB machine initially shipped with PANTHER (OS X 10.3) which included CLASSIC support (OS 9.22). I upgraded to TIGER (OS X 10.4) and reinstalled the CLASSIC support. I came across SSD and tried it, fabulous, could never go back. Apple is now yapping about SNOW LEOPARD (10.6) so I wanted to push my hardware to the max OS X before it becomes orphaned.

Steps:

#1) Back everything up and do house cleaning with your files because you could loose everything. Back it off to optical media. I use PROSOFT's "Data Backup 3". Their "Data Rescue" program proved invaluable to me in the past.

#2) You will require an external firewire hard disk the same size or larger than your internal drive. Create a bootable image of your OS. Test the image, ie: reboot holding down the [Option] key. Make sure you can boot from your external drive.

#3) Install LEOPARD (10.5) on your internal drive and run any required software updates.

#4) Strip back any excess Applications & Files the TIGER environment. I am maintaining my TIGER environment just in case of a PRAM reset (which would deactivate SSD), maintaining substantial software investments not compatible with LEOPARD, and amazingly enough still running some CLASSIC stuff of my own creation.

#5) Within LEOPARD, configure "Time Machine" to use the remaining space on the external drive.

SO Koralatov's initial question...

"Has anyone used it successfully on this iMac, or a very similar one? If so, how straight-forward was it, and did you do anything special?"

Now has an answer.. YES it works!

[Koralatov]

Originally Posted by ChristophersDad 

Now has an answer.. YES it works!

Sorry I haven’t replied before now — I’ve not been online much of late.

Thanks for carrying getting a definitive answer on this. It’s much appreciated!