kmosx3: Beige G3 Panther installation.

Background:

1. Apple does not support Panther on a beige G3. In fact the official requirements are clear - the beige G3 does not meet the requirements to run Panther.

2. A piece of software, called XPostFacto (XPF), has been written, and is available at no cost, that allows the installation to be done. Information here:

http://eshop.macsales.com/OSXCenter/XPostFacto/Framework.cfm?page=XPostFacto.htm l

3. A number of people - including me - have successfully installed Panther on the beige G3.

4. The consensus among those who have done it is that installation of Panther (10.3.x) using XPF is considerably easier than installing Jaguar, which by the way is supported by Apple.

5. Another consensus opinion is that Panther's performance is superior to Jaguar's.

6. Running any version of X, on any Mac, could result in problems with peripherals, drivers etc. This problem is not unique to the G3, but anyone considering replacing OS 9.x with OS X on any Mac should be aware of the potential challenges after the installation.

Installation procedure:

I cannot pretend that the following procedure that I used is the only one, or even the most efficient, but it did work for me. I have done the installation on three different beige G3's.

1. Erase and partition the hard drive. (Make sure the drive is jumpered as "master" or it will not boot in X.) The drive I used was connected to one of the built-in IDE connectors, therefore the first partition was just under 8 gB, as required.

2. Boot from the OS 9.x CD and install it on the second partition.

3. Boot from the freshly installed OS 9. In the Energy Saver control panel, turn off everything so that no energy saving functions are active.

4. Download and install the following:
]OS 9 upgrades to 9.2.2. Install these.
]Stuffit Expander - keep this handy.
]XPostFacto.

5. Expand XPF and run it.

6. Follow the on-screen instructions provided by XPF which will tell you to restart for the installation.

7. In the Panther installer (last step but one) select "Custom" to avoid installing languages etc. that you do not want. I personally only select the first two custom options - the first one is greyed out and must be selected, the second is the BSD subsystem. The total I see for these selections is 1.1 gB.

8. Complete the installation following on-screen directions.

9. When the computer reboots after the installation, be VERY PATIENT. It may seem like everything is frozen, but it is not. This only happens with the first boot.

10. Upgrade 10.3 to the level you want - 10.3.5 is current, however the latest version that I have installed was 10.3.4. Others have upgraded to 10.3.5. I have not.

11. Enjoy!

One final acknowledgement: a number of people did this whole thing months before I did. I learned from what they posted here. I would urge anyone interested in doing the Panther installation on a beige to browse through the various posts that deal with the subject.


Eustace suggested I add my experience to her thread. I learned a long time ago to follow her advice.

I upgraded my Transmogrified Beige MT from 10.2.8 to 10.3.5 with the help of XPostFacto (XPF). Reading my profile shows you I have a G4/466 CPU installed, 768MB RAM, ATI Rage 128 Video Card, USB/FW combo card. What it doesn't show is the other stuff such as ACARD ATA/66 PCI card (with two drives attached), my SCSI peripherals, i.e. a Yamaha 8824 CDRW, a Quantum Atlas 4GB HD, and the factory installed Zip 100. I have a serial external modem. I have a DVD ROM and a CD/RW/DVD Combo drive on the on board ATA bus. I also have a USB HP 1210 PSC Printer/scanner, a FW HD and a FW DVD Burner. Alright, I admit it; I'm a geek and an anachronism. I include all this stuff here because I have had no problems with any of these devices, either in 10.2 or 10.3.

When I installed Panther, I began with a working Jaguar installation (10.2.8). The following lists my steps:

1. Made a complete backup of my Jaguar drive (this is the master on the ATA card) with Carbon Copy Cloner (just in case). In this case, it came in handy.

2. Ran XPF and prepared the HD for Panther installation.

3. Booted from the Panther (10.3.4) DVD using the internal Combo drive.

4. Not wanting to re-enter all my personal information and configurations, I chose the "Upgrade" option. I did not use the custom option, since I had 80GB of hard drive to work with.

5. Sat back and got some real work done while waiting.

6. Installation completed, and the Mac rebooted into Panther (or so I thought).

7. Now comes the trouble. The Finder kept crashing. Over and over. Couldn't stop it. Multiple reboots produced the same phenomenon. This verified my sanity.

8. Now the backup comes in handy. I booted from the backup I just created.

9. Initialized the volume where I had tried to install Panther.

10. Copied the backup back to my main drive, again using CCC.

11. Rebooted to the newly re-imaged drive. Ran XPF again, and booted from the Panther DVD.

12. This time I chose to do a clean install of Panther, but chose Archive and Install with the preserve network settings option.

13. This time- success. Everything works as it should.

14. I later upgraded from 10.3.4 to 10.3.5 using the downloaded combo updater. No need for XPF for this upgrade and everything still runs fine.

Panther is one sweet kitty, and I have never looked back.

Even with the Finder problem, installation of Panther was so much easier than my initial upgrade to Jaguar (which was without XPF). I didn't have to yank any cards, disconnect any peripherals, sit on the CUDA button, or anything.

Just to reiterate- I installed Panther on a drive connected to the ACARD PCI ATA card. And SCSI works fine.