Failing to install Jaguar on Power Macintosh G3

VicNor

VicNor

Tinkerer
Apr 13, 2022
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Sweden
Introduction
I’ve recently gotten a Power Macintosh G3 Desktop 266 MHz, 384 Mb RAM with a working 4Gb hard drive with a semi-corrupt partition. After some investigations I found out that it had a failed install of Jaguar (10.2.3) on it. But the hard drive also had a working version of OS 9.0 installed.

Setup
I installed my trusty CF to IDE adapter with a CF card that I once prepared with OS 9.2.2 for my iMac G3. The CF card is set to slave after the internal CD IDE drive that is set to master. (which is OK for OS 9). The internal hard drive is on a different IDE bus and connector, and set to master.

I've formatted the internal hard drive because it couldn’t be repaired with Disk First Aid. Also, I wanted a fresh drive to install Jaguar onto.

The internal IDE CD ROM sounds like a meat grinder, so instead I used a known good external SCSI CD ROM (AppleCD 300i Plus). It shows up on the desktop in OS 9.

Problem
I used an install CD that I've found on Macintosh Garden, and that I used with success on my iMac G3 a couple of months ago. But when I boot with it get the grey Apple logo and then the forbidden symbol. When I restart the computer the screen remains black. For the computer to boot at all I need to remove the PRAM battery.
IMG_20221021_185407.jpg


What do I need to do to get Jaguar installed on my G3? The computer got ROM version $77D.45F2.
 
VicNor

VicNor

Tinkerer
Apr 13, 2022
41
25
18
Sweden
Yesterday I worked on the Power Mac. I tried to install Jaguar through my BlueSCSI (which has a CD-ROM mode), but got the same behavior as the real SCSI CD-ROM when I booted the install CD. Forbidden symbol from the installer, rebooting and only get black screen - removed the battery, waited half an hour.

I exchanged the internal Apple CD-ROM for a Samsung CD-RW, which surprisingly worked just fine with the computer and Mac OS 9.2.2’s default drivers. Since you have to wait half an hour for the PRAM to clear when you remove the battery - to get the computer booting again, I went straight for XPostFacto. Although I managed to install Jaguar, it was a bit weird and dysfunctional.

First of all, when the installer rebooted midway the install, instead of continuing the install on the Jaguar drive it booted right into OS 9. Secondly, when you want to change boot drive in OS 9 - the computer freezes and you must reboot. You can only change boot drive with XPostFacto. When it finished installing Jaguar, it somehow was in English despite I had chosen Swedish and the install process was in Swedish. In Jaguar I switched boot drive in Settings to OS 9.2.2 and rebooted. I got to a happy Mac for a split second before the computer rebooted itself. Now it didn’t see any of the IDE drives and gave the blinking ?-floppy. The computer struggled to even power on the spinning hard drive. I pressed the Reset-button (next to the PCI slots) on the logic board, but got the same behavior. I turned off the computer and removed the PRAM-battery and waited another half hour. While waiting I imaged the Jaguar install from the hard drive and put an OS 9.0 image there instead so I wouldn’t get trapped in a boot-loop with Jaguar. The computer booted in the OS 9.2.2 without issue.

I get a feeling that this is an Open Firmware issue? I remember that I had problems installing Tiger on my iMac G3 due to bad install CD’s (Maxell!) and not having the latest firmware version installed. Since I’ve found the latest Open Firmware for my iMac on Apple’s website, I checked it for the Power Macintosh G3 as well, but didn’t find anything.

I’m not sure how to proceed with installing Jaguar on this Diva of a computer.
 
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speakers

speakers

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Nov 5, 2021
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peak-weber.net
Yes, these beasts are challengingly temperamental; there lies their attraction to some of us! OpenFirmware deficiencies are a real problem for OSX although OS9.2 is somewhat better placed. But your hardware config is a major factor too. I have a desktop and a tower so I've done a perhaps a half a dozen installs of Jaguar and Tiger -- including several failures. Expect frustration!

I find it handy in XpostFacto to set always to boot into Open Firmware. That gives you the option to continue to boot OSX via "0 bootr", or to boot into OS9 via "bye". Also, if things get really horked (as they do), the OFW command "set defaults" followed by "reset-all" are useful .. and ultimately "init-nvram" clears everything - including the patches installed by XPostFacto to be able to boot OSX.

When, or if, you do get Jaguar installed, be sure to downland and install the 10.2.8 combo update.

For bonus points, try installing Linux or NetBSD.
 
VicNor

VicNor

Tinkerer
Apr 13, 2022
41
25
18
Sweden
I’ve finally managed to install Jaguar! But I cheated…
IMG_20221027_192204.jpg

I’ve done several experiments with removing combinations of the RAM sticks (2x 64M vs 256M), removing the firewire card and the CF adapter. It didn’t do much difference. I also gained a bit experience with Open Firmware. Instead of removing the battery and waiting half an hour when Open Firmware prevents you from boot and just gives you the black screen, you just type “bye” at the prompt (press <alt><cmd><o><f> when hearing the chime) and it’ll boot into OS 9. (If you don’t set a start disk, you need to go into Open Firmware every time you start the computer for it to boot)

Partial success
With the firewire card and CF adapter removed, I plugged in the Apple CD-ROM that sounds like a meat grinder and it managed to actually boot the installer from CD. But it didn’t get very far since small pieces of plastics from the CD mechanism broke loose and started to rattle around inside the unit and the install CD looked pretty scratched up afterwards.

Although the Apple IDE CD-ROM seems to have died, I came to the conclusion that it would be impossible to continue to install Mac OS X on the machine without another Apple IDE CD-ROM.

Windows to the rescue
Thankfully, there’s virtual machines! I already had an image of the hard drive that I wanted to install on, so I opened it and an install DVD of Jaguar in QEMU. The installer only froze once, while reformatting the image. When the install was done I wrote the image with the fresh Jaguar install onto the physical hard drive and put the hard drive back into the computer.

It works well now when switching between OS 9 and Jaguar. Open Firmware isn’t making a fuss and isn’t being problematic. Also, I replaced the Apple CD-ROM with a Samsung CD-RW (with some minor adjustments for it to physical fit the computer’s bezel).
 
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VicNor

VicNor

Tinkerer
Apr 13, 2022
41
25
18
Sweden
speakers said:
Sounds more like lateral thinking. Congrats!

How did XPostoFacto figure in? Did you apply its patches from OS9 on the real machine after the virtual install, or did you use XPF in the VM to assist the virtual install?
Click to expand...
Thanks! I did spent "some time" turning every stone that I could turn. When you run out of options you have to improvise.

Well, I didn't. Just the reboot process was too cumbersome. Even if I would get used to reboot via XPostFacto to get into the other OS, I would probably forget sometime and that would get me annoyed when the computer would freeze up. Also, that I got the wrong language was a bummer (Maybe I just forgot to check Swedish when I deselected every other language in the installer to save space?)

At least my QEMU reports itself as a 900MHz G4 with 512M of RAM. The gestalt-ID is 406 (PowerBook G3, Wallstreet II/PDQ?). I would imagine that the Open Firmware clone - OpenBIOS - that QEMU uses, does what it can to prevent Apple software to detect incompabilities. So it was literally just the image of the drive and the DVD (Apple's Internal Edition of Jaguar).
 
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