Installing 8.6 to a G3 PowerBook

I suspect there may be a problem with installing 8.5. You have to install it, then reboot and install 8.6 to do the upgrade. According to the specs on [this page|http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbook g3/stats/powerbook_g3333.html] the Lombard came with 8.6 originally. Installer discs will usually refuse to install on computers that came with a later OS, and if they will install there is no guarantee it will boot. You can always try if you don't mind that it might not work.

The other glitch might be if the person who installed Panther reformatted the drive at the time of the install and did not include OS9 drivers (I don't think it matters if you are using an earlier OS). You can check for this in Disk Utility but you might otherwise have to reformat the drive to install them if they didn't include them. I'd say there is a good chance they are there but it's another possible issue.

As you suspect, my Lombard G3 PowerBook (since given away) came with OSX 8.6.

You may be lucky and get it to work just enough to get OS8.6 on. I think it all depends on the Mac OS ROM file included in the System Folder.

As luck would have it, I still have a copy (not the original) of my install disc. Now here's the strange thing, the Software Installers directory has an OS 8.5 and an OS8.6 folder. So it looks like the installer installed OS8.5 and then updated it to OS8.6.

But, the OS8.6 Update tome does contain a new Mac OS ROM file. Even if it's not important, there may be issues with video drivers, otherwise the OS8.6 update just contains a load of DVD, AppleScript, Multi-Language and Networking updates.

Fingers crossed.