9600 and Xpostfacto

According to the [xpostfacto specifications page|http://eshop.macsales.com/OSXCenter/XPostFacto/Framework.cfm?page=Compatib ility.html] it should run on a 9600. You might want to peruse hte page yourself on provisos regarding support for various features. They also have a tech forum which would probably be a good place to post questions about having all your drives on a PCI card. I know that getting OSX to run on older machines can be a touchy business, especially when you get away from the non-standard configurations.

Your description does not sound like you are using up XPostFacto correctly, but perhaps you are just being brief.

Have you run the XPostFacto Application under OS 9, and asked it to boot from a CD that is present to install onto a drive that is present?

From inside XPostFacto running under OS 9, you select "Boot from this CD and Install on that Hard Drive". Once you say OK, it should create a "Helper" disk on the candidate Hard Drive, write some stuff like a modified BootX and some kexts on it, boot from it, and begin running the Installer. No intervention should be required.

You cannot boot from the CD. (If you could, you would not need XPostFacto!) The "Helper" disk is what you need to boot from.

Darwin, which Mac OS X uses to boot up, does not actually use a loadable SCSI driver to get itself booted up. It relies on a "standard" built-in driver to get going, then may add a .kext for better performance when running Mac OS X.

Your SCSI driver may be inadequate. You may want to consider installing a modest sized IDE drive to get going, then seeing if you can clone it to your SCSI drives.

Timoots, first read the Xpostfacto Forums and find which release is more compatible with your 9600. Then by far the easiest method of installation is to find a Mac that will run and install OS 10.2, in your case preferable a graphite tower model.

1. First the drive must be Erased and Formatted to OS 9.

2. Remove the hard drive from the 9600 and install it as a second (slave) drive in the tower or in an external fire enclosure.

3. Install the Xpostfacto software on the hard drive, then install OS 10.2.

4. Now reinstall the hard in the 9600.

JG

ps. I just read Grants post that the HD in the 9600 is SCSI, I did not know this. anyway as he said maybe you can make a clone.

Message was edited by: Joe Gordon

I installed several different version of Mac OS X, 10.2, 10.3 and 10.4, on Beige G3s using SCSI drives.

I was never able to get them to boot directly from an ATTO UL2D card, a card that was never sold in that Mac. (Your note about seeing "can't open" jogged my memory.) I was able to get them to boot from the built-in SCSI Bus, and was able to get them to run using a drive on the ATTO card once booted up. I was also able to get them to boot from an IDE drive and use a pair of SCSI drives on the ATTO card for a RAID array using Mac OS X built-in RAID software. I do not remember whether they would boot from the ATTO or Apple-branded ATTO Express PCI PSC card -- for some reason I did not want to use that card.

One other suggestion I left out of my previous post was to move your Boot drive to the built-in SCSI Bus and see if XPostFacto can Install from there. I do not think an older version of XPostFacto will solve your "can't open" problem. If you have other troubles, you may want to try an older version of XPostFacto in the hopes that it was debugged with the 9600 in mind and will work a little better.

UL2D users: Support for the ATTO UL2D drops out at around 10.3, so that particular card reverts to the default driver and becomes much slower.

I'm getting the last laugh here.

I'll counter you with a, "told you so!" 😉

+especially when you get away from the non-standard configurations+.