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sopranojam851

Q: PowerBook 540c issues installing Mac OS 8.1

Hello,

I have a PowerBook 540c with 36 MB RAM and 512 MB hard drive.

It had Mac OS 7.6 on it, but kept freezing randomly while using, so I figured I'd reinstall the OS.

I got a copy of Mac OS 8.1 (since I see that this is the max supported OS), and it's on CD Rom. So I connected an external CD Rom via SCSI and it's booting to the install disk OK. But everything about the install is taking about 30 times longer than I would expect.


I tried finishing the process last night and it stalled halfway through installation. did not continue past.

I've never used SCSI aside from this, so not sure if it's expected or not. But does it really take 12 hours to install 200 megabytes of data from a SCSI CD-ROM onto a PowerBook 540c?

To be sure it wasn't corrupt data on my hard disk, I zeroed all data on the hard drive before initializing and did a low-level format. I changed the SCSI ID from 3 to 2, reset the power manager, and rebooted to the SCSI drive, but it's still sluggish.

This is purely a hobby, no big deal. I'm just curious if external SCSI CD-ROM installs are normal to go this slowly, or if my machine is possibly causing the issue?

iMac 20" early 2008, Mac OS X (10.6.5)

Posted on Dec 7, 2010 8:24 AM

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Q: PowerBook 540c issues installing Mac OS 8.1

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  • by Grant Bennet-Alder,

    Grant Bennet-Alder Grant Bennet-Alder Dec 7, 2010 12:15 PM in response to sopranojam851
    Level 9 (60,904 points)
    Desktops
    Dec 7, 2010 12:15 PM in response to sopranojam851
    Most CD-ROM drive enclosures have two connectors. One gets the data cable. The other one should get a SCSI Terminator device. If your second connector is empty, that could cause exteremly slow operation of everything on the Bus, including the Hard drive.

    An OS 8 or 9 install usually completes in well under an hour.
  • by sopranojam851,

    sopranojam851 sopranojam851 Dec 7, 2010 12:41 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Dec 7, 2010 12:41 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder
    Yeah, there is a terminator cable, and it won't work any other way (I tried swapping them, wouldn't show up)

    It's speeding up now...... thanks! I'll see if the computer is any more usable once this is done.