iMac G4 upgrades - freezing during Tiger installation

[dalekusa]

I recently got a care package from OWC with some upgrades for my iMac G4 700 MHz. I got two 512 MB sticks of ram (one DIMM and one SO-DIMM) and one of their SSD upgrade kits (120GB). After installing all that, I installed Mac OS 9.2.2 just fine. But, when I went to install OS X Tiger using a DVD I burned with an image of the Macintosh Garden, it always keeps freezing in the middle of installation. The picture just stops, I can’t move my mouse or put in any keyboard commands, and the drive just stops, making noises. The fan is still going, and it’s still receiving power, but it’s like the computer just stops in place. I’ve tried removing the SO-DIMM and burning a new DVD, but at some point, it always happens. About the only thing I haven’t tried is putting the original DIMM back in. Is there anything else that could be wrong?

 

[dalekusa]

Update - I tried erasing the leftover files from the failed installs, but it froze again as it was counting the files in the trash. I got to thinking, what about the internal DIMM? I put the original 128MB DIMM back on the logic board, and sure enough, it completed the trash emptying, and installing OS X worked! I guess I’m contacting OWC for an exchange tomorrow.

 

[greystash]

I'm glad you found the problem. OSX installations must utilise a lot of memory because I've had this happen many times and the problem has always been faulty RAM.

 

[mloret]

Update - I tried erasing the leftover files from the failed installs, but it froze again as it was counting the files in the trash. I got to thinking, what about the internal DIMM? I put the original 128MB DIMM back on the logic board, and sure enough, it completed the trash emptying, and installing OS X worked! I guess I’m contacting OWC for an exchange tomorrow.

Do you know if this would work the same with a 1ghz iMac g4? Did you literally just install the SSD and then boot from the DVD holding down C?

 

[akator70]

I upgraded my 2003 1.25GHz G4 iMac 17" several years ago with a IDE to SATA adapter, a 256GB SSD, and the max (2GB, 1GB internal and 1GB at the bottom plate). I installed 10.4.6 from the retail Tiger DVD with no issues.

 

[Andyb66]

I upgraded my 2003 1.25GHz G4 iMac 17" several years ago with a IDE to SATA adapter, a 256GB SSD, and the max (2GB, 1GB internal and 1GB at the bottom plate). I installed 10.4.6 from the retail Tiger DVD with no issues.

Hi Akator70. I picked up a 17” 2003 1.25GHz iMac G4 and installed a 256gb WD Green SATA SSD connected to a red startech IDE to SATA adapter. I used Carbon Copy Cloner v2.3 to clone the drive setting up 2 partitions on the SSD. One for (currently 10.3.9) and one for Leopard (which I’d like to upgrade to Sorbet Leopard eventually). The weird thing is that my classic mode no longer works in 10.3.9. I click Start Classic and it appears on the screen briefly and then disappears. Did this happen to you?

 

[akator70]

^ No, I haven't had any issues with Classic or anything else. That said, I've currently only got the single partition with Tiger installed. Classic works but I've always preferred to use boot into 9 (currently that's a G4 Mini, TiBook, and G3 iBook) for reliability. For many years I setup multiple partitions with different OSes, but over the last few years I've decided to go with a single OS on each machine because I've found fewer (sometimes unexplained) hiccups that way. (It also gives me an excuse to use more and different Macs.)