Okay, let's see if anyone has any more ideas to help me out here. First, I'm a PC guy by heart, and I work as a PC Tech for a living. I purchased a Mac about a year ago just to play with at home, and is not by any means my primary computer. I am semi-familiar with Mac OSX, having used Macs throughout college. The Mac I own is a PowerMac G4, 400mhz AGP. I have 1gb of PC133 memory, which are all matching sticks/brand and have passed through Memtest. The hard drive is a 20gb Seagate Barracuda, that came wiped with the system. AGP card is the original ATI Radeon 9200. It also has the original Apple DVD-ROM installed, though I will comment on my other endeavors further down the page. Now that I got that out of the way, my dilemna has been trying to upgrade this machine to Panther or Tiger. I understand Tiger may be too much for this system, but I've read other forums where people have gotten it to run on G3 Macs, so it seems like a possibility. At this moment, I have Mac OSX 10.2 Jaguar, completely updated, as the OS. Initially, as noted above, the system was shipped without an OS or any OS discs. I had first acquired Mac OS 9.2 and loaded it on the machine with no issues. From here, I updated the firmware, as was suggested in other threads, since it appears I cannot do so from OSX. After tooling around with 9.2 and living my glory days, I felt the need for "more". I first got ahold of the original Mac OSX 10.0, and installed it on my Mac. I completely wiped 9.2 off of the system. This was great, however, it was seriously lacking compared to other versions of OSX, especially since most software has a minimum requirement for 10.3. My next step was to get Panther CDs, which would not load on my system. I always get a blue screen with the progress balloon or circle, and it will spin forever. Not having a CD burner in the Mac, I tried different options using Transmac to burn DMG files using Windows, none of which worked either. (This was my only option at the time since DMG is not supported by 10.0 Disk Utility.) So, my Mac collects dust for a few months until I happen upon 10.2 Jaguar CDs. These loaded right up like a charm and I have my 10.2 system up to date. Now with the ability to use DMG, I tried to reload Panther. The discs read in OSX and give me the restart window, but alas, the same blue screen result. I also happened upon some full version Tiger CDs and gave them a try. Tiger is worse, as I get an apple screen (sometimes) before my Mac shuts itself off! I've tried several things to troubleshoot. I've swapped out the 20gb drive for a 120gb Seagate. I've swapped out the memory for different brands, or less memory, and still the same results. I've also removed the factory DVD-ROM and replaced it first with a Sony DVD+/-RW (which I have since returned to the store) and now a standard Sony CD-RW drive, which has worked fine with Disk Utility, making copies of Panther and Tiger, which also do not work! Having endlessly searched for answers, I've tried many other absurd and time wasting solutions, such as using a 2nd hard drive, partitioned with each DMG of the install discs, as well as the same concept with a firewire iPod. Still though, no success. I am familiar with resetting the PRAM, etc. and that did not help matters either. In fact, I once got an equivalent to the BSOD, Apple-Style, with a kernel panic, which has never returned after restoring my system to Jaguar. I know I'm playing with fire here, but I just don't understand why Panther won't load, at the very least. I know that Panther is old, but in comparison, nothing really works with Jaguar anymore (new versions of iTunes, Safari, etc.) Any other help or suggestions would be appreciated. If you need more information from me, or perhaps I missed a critical detail, just ask. I'm open to anything. Thanks for reading!
I would suggest trying to get the install and restore CD's that originally came with this Mac. Apple and eBay are possible venues. Otherwise, search btjunkie.org If you can successfully install the factory-installed OS, you may then be able to install 10.3 or 10.4.
It's called graphic resolution error. Let me explain. On g4 powermac's especially the towers when trying to load any version of mac os x most users received a blue screen of death. Yes i said death but no your mac isn't dead. Here is what happens. The graphics card during the installation of mac os x is placed into a resolution that the computer cannot handle until after the installation. Fix. Start your computer up with mac os x any version go into system pref. and select display and screen settings and set your resolution to 640x480 yes this is going to be a pain but once the installation is finished your resolution will return to normal. Once that has been changed select startup disk then select the mac os x cd icon and click restart and it will boot the mac os x installation correctly. Now on another note.... Make sure you upgrade your firmware before you go into tiger or your machine will give you issues. Bad news: You need 9.2.2 in order to upgrade your firmware.
Thanks alot susieqbbb, I was not aware of this and the countless hours of scrolling through various forums never spoke of this. I'll be sure to give it a shot when I get home from work tonight and report if it worked. *Crosses fingers* I already have the latest firmware, as I intentionally wiped everything and put 9.2.2 on awhile back for this purpose, but thanks for the heads up.
Sorry Susie, still didn't work. 640x480 was grayed out for the display. I'm going to try a flat panel I have laying around and see if I can get it to recognize 640x480, since I had to uncheck the "show recommended display settings" box to force 640x480. On the Panther disc, I still get the blue screen and the pointer, then the pointer disappears and the Mac equivalent to the windows hourglass comes on and seems to be in a loop. The Tiger disc gets past the Apple logo, goes to the blue screen with pointer and then shuts the system down. One thing I noticed, is that the resolution settings don't seem to be saving. The resolution is still high on booting the discs or booting into Jaguar (which is installed.) Thanks again.
