Re: 300MHz b&w G3 Panther install problems

[Tom Baker]

My G4 behaved exactly the same way the first time I tried to install X: 
I got the "You must restart" screens, the freezes, etc. and I did all 
the stuff you've done to try to fix it with no effect.  I finally tried 
pulling the RAM chips and putting them back in one by one. Turned out 
one of the three RAM sticks was bad, at least as far as OS-X was 
concerned (it always worked fine in 9), because with that one chip 
removed OS-X installed and ran fine ever after. I found out which RAM 
chip was "bad" by trial and error. By the way I had bought name-brand 
RAM from a reputable dealer, too-- OS-X is just incredibly fussy about 
the quality of the chips. Apparently if there's the slightest flaw in 
them, X won't install or run.

Tom
On Aug 18, 2004, at 11:03 PM, Ron wrote:
Try pulling all your RAM except for the bare minimum. Retry the 
installer.

Ron
On Wednesday, August 18, 2004, at 10:54 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
wrote:

We're trying to install OS X (10.3 CD) for the first time on a 300MHz 
blue&white G3 tower (which, by the way, doesn't seem to appear as an 
option in Apple's specs).

80GB Maxtor drive erased fine, and the OS 9.2.1 CD installed fine. 
The 9.2.2 update didn't work properly in Software Update, but ran 
fine from the desktop after the reboot.

So OS 9 seems stable on this machine as would be expected.
BUT, OS X has been a nightmare. The first few times trying to install 
were greeted with a variety of behaviors:

- a white-lettering-on-black rectangle (in 4 languages) saying only 
that the Mac needs to be restarted

- OS X install failed with no error detail
- installer log revealed an error: "root:bootstrap_lookup(): unknown 
error code

- two other error messages (system rebooted itself before we could 
write them down) after a mostly successful install - this happened 
during optimization (log indicated that install was successful, but 
optimization failed)

At two early reboots, the system started to come up in OS X, then 
dropped into a full-screen console login screen.

Finally, after several reboots, the system mysteriously seemed to 
work for awhile, but then started to get the white-lettering-on-black 
message again. his now seems to be a persistent behavior, though we 
can still reboot into OS 9 and all still seems fine.

Any ideas? We've repaired disk several times. We zapped PRAM, we 
unplugged all peripjerals. The OS 10.3 CD boots consistently and 
seems to run fine, just something about the ability to get OS X 
installed successfully on the hard disk. Is this model inherently 
flawed or incompatible in some way?

Thanks,
Gordon

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