Jaguar on a g3

Hello, I was recently given a blue and white g3 with 500 mhz PowerPC g4 processor and 1 gig of ram in it. It had OS 9 on it and 2 scsi hd's. I bought a 40 gb western digital ide hd off of ebay, because I know OS X has problems with scsi. I have OS X 10.2 Jaguar cd's. When I try to install it, I can partition the drive, but after I select the options I want and click install it immediately says "There were errors installing the software" "Please try installing again". I have tried installing about 4 times with no luck. when it had OS 9 I looked at the specs of the system and was surprised that a g3 could have a PowerPC g4 processor. I actually got farther when I had the scsi drives in. I am new to OS X, any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

A G3 Blue and White has a 300-450 Mhz G3 CPU. If there is truly a 500 Mhz G4 it was a CPU Upgrade. Does it say what brand by any chance like Sonnet on the CPU?

Also I wonder if you have a Revision 1 motherboard. The Hard Drive controller is flaky on the Rev 1 boards and has issues with some hard drives with data corruption. It's a CMD controller chip. Does your machine have a Dual hard drive bracket where two hard drives can be mounted and an IDE ribbon with 2 drive connectors? Also look for a small square Chip that says CMD on it back by the PCI slots. It should say 402 on it if it's a Revision 2 board.

Here is a URL that shows how to tell if you have a Rev 1 or Rev 2 board.

xlr8yourmac.com - Photos of new B&W G3 Rage128 and dual Drive IDE bracket and Cable

OS 10.2 - Jaguar on a g3

I found the cmd chip, but it did not say 401 or 402, it says pci646u2, and a bunch of other numbers. It also had a pci ide card before, but I took it out. I uploaded some pics. Yes the cpu says sonnet Encore G4. It is a rev 1. it has 3 spots for hard drives. Yes, it is a yellow Manhattan ribbon cable. Thanks for the support.

I would try it with the PCI IDE card and see if it works. The pic of the IDE card was blurry so I could not see the brand or chipset, but if it was in the machine it might be OSX compatible.

It gets farther with the pci card. It is a Sonnet card. it got through the first part(the BDS Subsystem) it error ed right after the first part. I will try it again, and if I see the error again I will type it here. Thanks

This time it got past the error, but now it hangs on the apple logo. It appears to install the files, then has to reboot, but errors after the reboot. Thanks for all your help and patience. Does OS X have a problem with Zip Drives?

This is just a guess but all that garbage in that pic looks like something wrong with the Video Card.

The Built In Zip drives work great in OSX BTW.

OS 10.2 - Jaguar on a g3

The Video Card is an ATI Rage 128. The other error appeared again. Is there another video card that would be better?

OS 10.2 - Jaguar on a g3

Here is the other error.

Not wanting to dampen the party, but have you installed the Firmware Updater 1.1 which is needed prior to any attempt to install OS X? To do this alas you must be booted from OS 9.1 or a later version.

Here is a link on this:-

Mac OS X and the Blue and White G3 Firmware Update Problem

OS 10.2 - Jaguar on a g3

I got the installation to finish only to have it hang up during start up, it displayed the apple with the lines over it. I made 2 partitions one was 8 gigs and the other was 29 gigs. I knew it was to good to be true. Once again thanks for your help. Do you think a different version of OS X would be better?

In short no. OS X is not the problem, is a hardware difficulty and a revision 1 will do no better with Panther or Tiger sadly. Did you check out the firmware and if it has ever been updated? There was big problems when OS X was released and folks insisted on installing the OS without first doing the update which requires installation whilst booted from OS 9.

mxpxpxpx said:

Hello, I was recently given a blue and white g3 with 500 mhz PowerPC g4 processor and 1 gig of ram in it. It had OS 9 on it and 2 scsi hd's. I bought a 40 gb western digital ide hd off of ebay, because I know OS X has problems with scsi. I have OS X 10.2 Jaguar cd's. When I try to install it, I can partition the drive, but after I select the options I want and click install it immediately says "There were errors installing the software" "Please try installing again".

Click to expand...

From your original post it sounds like OS 9 is the only operating system (in your experience) that has worked for you on this computer.

When you were given this computer, were you 100% sure that nothing was wrong with it.

Sounds to me that if OS 9 works ok, and trying to install OS X does not...there has got to be some sort of hardware incompatibility issue.

It sounds like from this thread that your G3 B&W has a G4 processor upgrade.

I would do some research into whether this G4 processor upgrade is compatible with OS X, and if it is, whether you need to download & install OS X drivers, or need to do some sort of firmware update.

Hope this helps,

- Nick

Do check the firmware and be sure it's up to date. Can you reinstall OS9 or is that history? Firmware updates usually need OS9.

Also a good point on the CPU Upgrade. Some did need a driver. I will check that out for you and get back to you.

OS 10.2 - Jaguar on a g3

When I got the G3 it had 2 scsi hd's one 9 gig and one 4 gig. I read that you need a ide drive for OS X, so I bought a 40 gig. Before I knew that scsi drives did not work with OS X I formated the scsi drives, so I have an OS 9 cd and I am going to install it on the ide drive and do the firmware update. Thanks for checking on the processor update. whern I get os 9 back on the computer I will post the specs. Thanks.