Wallstreet and Tiger: no OS X 8GB "limit", issues if 512MB RAM installation

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Wallstreet and Tiger: no OS X 8GB "limit", issues if 512MB RAM installation

Since I felt that I could improve the performance of my [Wallstreet with Tiger|http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1390427&tstart=30], I decided to give a try to the break of the 8GB barrier as already reported in this forum so taking the occasion to substitute the 4200rpm 80GB disk with a 5400rpm one.

Again, acknowledgements to jpl, Tinkerman and others I do not recall for the helpful messages in the forum showing, if not else, that all this is possible. Unavoidable acknowledgements to the XPF developer too, of course.

I must admit that, while this time I was expecting a rapid installation after the method set out last time, actually I spent hours with any kind of issues of OS 9 either not installing or not booting even if from a disk cloned from the past working one. I was starting to think to some failed areas in the new disk but it appeared working in any other circumstance so eventually I realised that I was operating not only without the original CPU (Sonnet Crescendo 500MHz G4) but with 512MB of RAM and someone else already reported this as potential source of problems. Actually I realised it when, during one of the numerous serial attempts, the PowerBook remained with a black screen and suddenly produced the frightening "breaking glass sound", i.e. issues with the memory. Well, that was thrilling since I did not realise immediately what it was and I never heard it before...

So this time the method was the following:
- old disk removed from the Wallstreet and installed in a Firewire enclosure
- created three disk images on another recent PB G4 from the three partitions of the old disk (OS9, OS X, documents)
- new disk in FireWire enclosure, connected to the recent PB G4
- created two partitions in Utility Disk: 1GB HFS+, therestGB HFS+ Journaled
- installed new disk in Wallstreet
- reduced Wallstreet RAM to 256MB
- installed OS 9 from CD (and upgraded till 9.2.2) in the first 1GB partition together with XPF 4
- removed the disk and reinstalled in the FW enclosure
- cloned the old OS X disk image from the recent PB to the second big partition of the new disk
- reinstalled on the Wallstreet, started in OS 9, set XPF options as last time (Use Old NDRVs), boot in OS X
- copied all content of former third partition for documents in Documents
- restored the RAM to 512MB

Therefore the result is OS 9 in the first 1GB partition and OS X in the second 73GB and something partition. XPF mildly complained about the disk not having been formatted on OS 9 but setting OS 9 as helper was enough to satisfy it.

I am not 100% sure, say 95, but I have the feeling that, even after reducing the RAM to 256MB, the method to clone the old OS 9 partition to the new one did not work in the sense that the Wallstreet remained stuck at the question mark. Definitely it did not work with 512MB.

Summary (nothing new, just confirmations)
- OS X does not require to be installed in the first partition
- others (Tinkerman?) reported that this partition has to start in the first 8GB and not being included
- OS X partition can be more than 8GB
- watch out the RAM amount during installation (here it worked with 256MB but others reported 192 as maximum)

Hope this will help someone else.

Regards,

Giulio

PB G4 17" 1.33GHz, PB G3-4 500MHz Wallstreet, Mac OS X (10.4.11)

Posted on Apr 4, 2008 6:18 AM

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Answer 1

emfdb Author

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Apr 4, 2008 6:27 AM in response to emfdb

Few amendments added.

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Answer 2

jpl

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Apr 4, 2008 9:15 AM in response to emfdb

Giulio,

Thanks for the nice summary of a workaround to the 8GB limit.

Question: When you cold start or restart, does it always boot to 9.x first, then you select OSX as the boot volume and restart?

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Answer 3

emfdb Author

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Apr 4, 2008 10:34 AM in response to jpl

jpl,

(by the way, I still did not update the former discussion since the battery has not arrived yet)

I think I tried all the various combinations, cold boot included, and so far it has always booted in OS X. Now, after your question, I may have a minor doubt about the cold boot but I am rather sure I tried it (I can not confirm now). Through XPF I switched back and forth from OS 9 to OS X without problems.

Curious enough, the USB PCMCIA gets recognised under OS 9 but the USB mouse does not work... I checked the relevant USB extensions and all of them appear as installed and working. I am pretty sure that with the previous set up the mouse was working even under OS 9 (but I could have also chosen a different configuration of OS 9 during the last installation).

Regards,

Giulio

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Answer 4

jpl

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Apr 4, 2008 12:38 PM in response to emfdb

Giulio,

Thanks for the reply.

Two comments on the 9.x/USB issue:

-If you did not have the USB PC card inserted when you installed 9.x, the necessary USB extensions are not installed. The installer sees no USB and/or FireWire hardware, so the extensions are not installed. You can custom-install the USB and/or FireWire extensions during the install, but if you fail to do so, then update your installed 9.x to a later version (for example 9.1 > 9.2.2), you can no longer custom install these extensions from the installer CD.

-Be sure to uncheck 'allow processor cycling' in the Energy Saver control panel > Advanced Settings for both Battery and Power Adapter or the 'book will freeze when the USB PC card is installed.

If you do not have these extensions installed...

USB Support
USB Software Locator
USB Device Extension
USB Mass Storage Support
USB Mass Storage Extension

...your USB mouse will not work.

If the extensions are not installed, you can extract them from the MacOS 9.x CD using TomeViewer from VersionTracker. Mount your latest version MacOS CD on the desktop and extract the USB Adapter Card Support files (5-6 extensions) to your desktop. Drag all USB extensions to the closed System Folder where they will be placed in the Extensions folder.

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Answer 5

emfdb Author

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Apr 4, 2008 12:51 PM in response to jpl

Hi jpl,

Thanks for the very informative reply.

Actually this time there was no PC card inserted while installing OS 9 while I do not recall the past time. Still, during installation, I performed a custom install in order to add more options to the standard set and I paid particular attention to select the USB extensions, even with one of the upgrades that gave the choice to do so (9.2.1?).

I will be able to confirm whether all the extensions you mentioned are installed only on Monday but I would say I have all of them (and active).

I did not change the processor options, so they should be at the default value, but I have no freeze when I insert the PC card. Curious enough, it takes more time than before to be recognised and appear on the desktop. I will check and eventually change the options you mentioned.

More confirmations on Monday.

Thanks again,

Giulio

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Answer 6

emfdb Author

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Apr 7, 2008 5:25 AM in response to jpl

jpl,

I can confirm that actually it boots in OS X when shut down.

Actually now it is showing a very unusual issue that has never happened before. During the week-end I shut it down and I left it plugged to the adapter and also the adapter was still plugged though I removed power to the plug. When I pushed the power button, it did a sort of "p-r-r-r-r" sound and such sound was lasting as long as I was keeping the button down, i.e. no "boing" at all. I tried the usual PMU reset and PRAM zapping (not working since it did not reach even the boing) with and without the battery inserted: no way and strange sound again.

So I left it unplugged for a while without battery and eventually it restarted again and I could do some test. Lately I also noticed that, when going to sleep, it would not wake up and, if forced to restart, it was going again with the strange sound... Now it seems more lazy than before and it is refusing to boot even if I wait for more and more time...

As I said, never happened before. Maybe I could spend some (more) time to reinstall at least OS 9 or, better, reinstall everything from scratch using only 256MB of RAM.

By the way, there were five USB extensions installed though slightly different than the ones you mentioned: I will check as you suggested or, if I reinstall, I will do it with the PCMCIA card inserted.

Thanks for the suggestions,

Giulio

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Answer 7

jpl

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Apr 7, 2008 9:51 AM in response to emfdb

Giulio,

If you hear a kind of "buzz" when pressing the power button and the 'book won't wake or start, you may be experiencing the known problem with the sleep switch on the Wallstreet.

Briefly, here is the issue and one that is easy to fix: The Wallstreet's magnetic sleep switch sits next to the HD in the bottom case along the edge of the plastics. Some HD's have a magnet that can prevent the sleep switch from opening/closing normally. Usually the 'book works fine until you close the display; the magnet in the display trips the sleep switch but when the display opens, the magnet in the HD will not release the sleep switch.

Here is a link to the problem and a "photo" link in the article:
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/PBG3/wallstreet_harddrive/index.htm

You don't need brass nor do you need to place the metal inside the caddy directly on the HD. If you have brass, fine, but it doesn't have to be .04mm thick; a steel box cutter blade will also work...just be sure to degauss it (heat it red hot and let it cool), then just tape it to the caddy.

Before disassembly, you should be able to use a small magnet next to the 'delete' key to open the switch if you are having the problem; sometimes tapping the side of the case with a screwdriver handle next to the delete key will release the magnet.

Message was edited by: jpl

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Answer 8

emfdb Author

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Apr 7, 2008 11:21 AM in response to jpl

Thanks jpl, really kind and helpful.

I am afraid I never heard of this problem with the Wallstreet: tonight I will investigate further (by the way, I suppose that your URL should be [http://xlr8yourmac.com/PB G3/wallstreet_harddrive>). In the meanwhile, I discovered that, removing the DVD bay, the PB could be at least forced to reboot (I did not try to just wake it when I had the idea to remove the DVD bay).

... to be continued.

Thanks,

Giulio

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Answer 9

jpl

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Apr 7, 2008 7:21 PM in response to emfdb

Giulio,

Thanks for the correction on the link...mine is out of date. You may have an HD/sleep switch conflict that is just on the cusp, meaning the interference is marginal and does not happen all the time. Just jarring the 'book may release the switch, but the buzz when pressing the power switch is definitive.

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Answer 10

emfdb Author

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Apr 8, 2008 12:48 AM in response to jpl

Another installation procedure (still, similar to the previous one).

- reduce RAM to 256MB (some says 192 is better but now for me it was not feasible)
- with OS 9 CD: partition the disk,1GB/around 75GB, both HFS+ (there were few hiccups and I had to try more than once since the initialisation was failing and eventually I got a sort of ghost 5KB partition "for free")
- install OS 9 from CD to the 1GB partition
- update OS 9 to 9.2.2 through the installers
- mount disk in external enclosure connected to another system: initialise the around 75GB partition as HFS+ Journaled and cloned the old OS X partition to such partition (or install it for the ones that do not have such OS X partition ready)
- reinstall the disk into the Wallstreet and set up XPF (Use Old NDRVs); curious enough, here for the first time it said it could not boot from the second big OS X partition since it was "extending beyond the 8GB" or something similar still just choosing OS 9 as helper solved the issue
- restore the maximum RAM
- reboot in OS X

The OS 9 installation was done with the USB PCMCIA inserted and the USB mouse inserted in it. I do not know whether this was the solution (since also the previous time I selected all the USB additional extensions during OS 9 installation) but this time at the 9.1 update the mouse was recognised, not before, and it kept working since.

The Wallstreet just boots in OS X each and every time unless instructed to do differently through XPF.

The magnetic sensor issue still occasionally shows (apparently it needs "some time" or the Wallstreet just boots/wakes up nicely if just switched off or set to sleep). I will try to create some magnetic shield as already reported somewhere. Alternatively removing the two bays and waiting some five minutes or so does the trick.

What remains a bit unclear to me is the use of a magnet close to a hard disk, something I would consider the source of all evils if not properly done. I will study more, test and hopefully solve the issue.

Thanks,

Giulio

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Answer 11

Apr 8, 2008 2:02 AM in response to emfdb

I didn't read everything in this thread. Just a few comments. Sorry if it's been covered.

If your method was to install the drive into an external case and use another Mac do to the Mac OS X installation, you have bypassed the 8GB limit temporarily, but it is still there.

Your Mac will boot fine as long as all components of the system reside within the first 8GB of disk space. So immediately after installation, it is likely that the entire Tiger system fit within the first 8GB of disk space. After some disk usage, if a later system update installs a component needed during startup beyond the first 8GB of space, the Mac will stall during startup.

The 8GB limit is a function of the old IDE interface. During the startup sequence, only the first 8GB of disk space is useable. After startup complete and the OS takes over, the rest of the drive (up to the max size limitation) becomes available.

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Answer 12

emfdb Author

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Apr 8, 2008 4:27 AM in response to Kenichi Watanabe

Interesting point. I am surprised that it was not noted before since I read numerous reports on bypassing the 8GB limit (also here in the Discussions, e.g. from Tinkerman) without any mention to such issue, as far as I recall.

Of course now the system is below the first 8GB and most likely it will stay there forever or at least for a very long time. Still, if I am not wrong, others created the first OS 9 partition much larger than mine (maybe I remember some 5GB or so) therefore I would have expected to read at least some reports of malfunctioning. I am curious to know why so far nobody seems to have reported it.

Regards,

Giulio

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Answer 13

Apr 8, 2008 8:11 AM in response to emfdb

It has been reported...

There was a thread a while back (that I participated in) where the OP asked the same question. He did some tests and proved to himself that it was true. I had done the same tests a few years earlier.

What he did was copy some files onto the disk first, so that installing the OS would definitely exceed the 8GB limit. And he got an unbootable system as described in this Apple article.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25249

therefore I would have expected to read at least some reports of malfunctioning.

That article is Apple's response to the problem being reported by users. People tend to write success reports because they believe they have "broken" the 8GB barrier and are excited about it. They don't tend write follow-up reports if they have problems latter and it turns out the barrier was still there, just hidden. And with setting up older Macs these days, those folks may never use it enough for a system component to get installed above the 8GB point on the drive. So they never experience the problem.

My experience on this issue is with the tray-loader iMacs. It is possible that later revisions of Wallstreet (PowerBook G3 Series) used a newer IDE interface, and therefore do not even have an 8GB limit. Lombard and Pismo certainly do not.

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Answer 14

emfdb Author

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Apr 8, 2008 8:25 AM in response to Kenichi Watanabe

Yes, I was afraid it could have been a sort of "selective memory" issue and that I simply missed the reports. I will test (and hope).

Thanks.

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Answer 15

emfdb Author

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Apr 11, 2008 12:06 AM in response to Kenichi Watanabe

Sorry again but there is something I do not (or maybe I do not want to) understand.

Is this IDE interface something related to the PowerBook itself or to the CPU only? I am asking since, as I wrote above, I upgraded it so I am wondering whether in such case the 8 GB limit still applies.

Finally: in the former setup (the suggested 7.45 GB OS X partition, one partition for OS 9 and one for documents) there was no need to select OS 9 as "helper" while now it is required in order to boot from OS X: could also this manage to work around the 8 GB limit?

Thanks,

Giulio

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