Tiger on a Beige G3?

[kiag]

Anyone who has had success installing 10.4 on a beige G3, could you give me some tips? What installer did you use? I can get the installation started but it winds up stalling. 
 

I am using Xpostfacto 4.0. The computer is a Beige desktop, with a Revision 1 board but a Revision 2 ROM. Could the Rev 1 board be the problem? Upgraded G3 processor running at 400mhz. I am trying to install it on a scsi2sd 32 gb drive. 
 

I have tried a black label retail installer disk and the installation starts fine, but stalls at “Installing Essentials” “Configuring Installation”. The progress bar is still swirling or whatever you call it and the computer hasn’t crashed, but the installation makes no progress after that. I have also tried the 4 disk CD installer I found somewhere and it stalls in a slightly different place. 
 

I am pretty sure I’ve seen mention of people running Tiger on their Beige G3’s but I can’t find any relevant threads. Any help would be appreciated. 

 

[demik]

I have done this a few years ago.

As far as I remember, they were some issues with :

- accelerators cards with custom cache (thinking about a G4 @ 450 MHz in a beige which required some software to enable cache)

- dodgy SCSI terminaisons. Had to use an external terminator

I would try without the SCSI2SD too. It's a great product, but sometimes in doesn't run on specific computers. Can you try with an IDE drive ? (Or an IDE to CF). There are no benefits to use SCSI on this machine (except SCSI CDROM drives and external devices), as the IDE controller is faster

Can you paste the install log when it stops ?

 

[SiliconValleyPirate]

If it's any help I've got a Powermac G4 running Tiger pretty decently form 16GB a IDE to CF card adapter, so that might be an alternative avenue for you? IDE Is certainly less fussy although the IDE in the G3 Beige is molasses slow. It'd prove a point at least, though.

 

[kiag]

Thanks for the advice. I used the SCSI2SD because as far as I can tell the G3 won’t boot off of a slave drive, so it got complicated since you really need 3 boot drives (one for Xpostfacto, one for the installer disk, and one to install on). But I could install OS 9 and Xpostfacto on the SCSI2SD and install Tiger onto an IDE drive.  I have a spare drive, so I will try that. I will report the results when I can. Thanks. 

 

[demik]

I have acces to a set of beige G3 this week, I will give it a try just to double check

 

[jimjimx]

Are you installing on the 1st partition, and is it 8GB or smaller? 

(That is required)

 I did this years ago, also 10.4, using Xpostfacto, and it was a pain... I think it took 3 or 4 days..

And now that I think about it, I think I installed it to the first partition (8GB), with OS9 on the 2nd....

But, I used a IDE HDD.

 

[kiag]

So it is possible. I knew it should be possible but it’s nice to here that someone was successful. 
 

It seems like my immediate problem is the SCSI2SD that I am using. I haven’t been able to install OS 9 on it either. So I am looking at what other drives I have to try again. 
 

Jimjimx, do you happen to remember what revision board you had? Also, I thought the 8GB limit was an IDE thing and didn’t apply to the SCSI bus? Doesn’t apply in this case since I never got to the point of booting off the SCSI drive anyway, but I thought I could use a larger SCSI partition. 
 

Demik, that would be awesome. If you are successful could you tell me what installer disk you used?

Thanks for your replies. This is more difficult than I was expecting, but it will be cool to have Tiger and TenFourFox running on this if I can manage it. 

 

[demik]

Demik, that would be awesome. If you are successful could you tell me what installer disk you used?

Boom done ! 

Configuration :

PowerMac G3/233 Desktop

• Motherboard REV A
  
• Disks
  
  
  80 GB IDE (For Tiger)
  
• 2 GB SCSI (For Mac OS 9)
  
• 1 GB SCSI (Scratch + XpostFacto helper)
  

[*]RAM: 4 x 64 MB (192 MB)

[*]FireWire PCI Card



Issues so far:

- Don't try to read a DVD with a CD drive...

- Don't plug a G5 IDE DCD drive, they don't have an eject button...  Desktop

- Unplug Network while installing, this make the installer Kernel Panic on a busy network (see picture)



Notes:

- ISO downloaded from macintosh Garden (search for file with checksum 8a4633d7747ab3689d981973719306be)

- ISO burned to a 4.7GB DVDR

- Clear your PRAM for going back to OS 9

- Xpost facto boot settings 



Installation toook a while hour (not including printers drivers and media check). After that upgraded to 10.4.11 without issues (need to go back to Mac OS 9 and re-run Xpost)

And voilà: 



Hope you manage to do it on your side

Good luck !

 

[jimjimx]

Also, 

To switch between OS9 and 10, use xpostfacto. I remember there were difficulties when using the Startup Disk control panel. 
And why don’t you just use a single disk with a partition for each OS? Seems like that’d be a lot simpler, and faster. 

 

[kiag]

Success! A combination of switching from a SCSI2SD to a spinning drive and then following demik’s process, including using the disk image he used, got it installed. Thank you all for your help. I was beginning to wonder if my machine could run it at all. 

 

[demik]

Also, 

To switch between OS9 and 10, use xpostfacto. I remember there were difficulties when using the Startup Disk control panel. 
And why don’t you just use a single disk with a partition for each OS? Seems like that’d be a lot simpler, and faster. 

That was my test G3, got the SCSI drives lying around and stuffed them in the case. I was worried about the 8 GB boot limit. (Seems Xpost complains about that too)

@kiag Glad you got it working !