Powermac G4 Firmware Won't Upgrade

[wmichaelb]

I was recently blessed with a Gigabit Ethernet dual 450 machine with 1.25 GB of RAM, 30 GB HD, DVD-ROM, ATI 9000 video card, studio display, and OSX 10.4, all for free. I have another similar machine that I radically upgraded some years ago, so I'm familiar with these very elegant machines. I'd like to wrestle with putting 10.5 or even Debian Linux, with which I've also had some experience, on this second G4, but the firmware needs upgrading from 3.3f to 4.28. I found that I need to run the firmware update software from an OS 9 partition because it needs an OS9 system folder to work. So I booted a retail OS 9 CD and ran the installer. What I got was an OS 10.4 install with Classic mode, but trying to run the installer from that mode gives me an error message stating that I don't need the upgrade for anything past 9.1. If I hold down the option key at boot, I get a screen with three icons: curly and straight arrows, and a HD. Clicking on any of these doesn't give me the option to boot 9.2. Do I have to completely reformat and wipe the disk to get *only* a 9.2 system to do the update? Or am I missing something else? Your experience would be greatly appreciated, and thanks in advance.

 

[cradom]

Does it show up in Startup Disk in System Preferences?

 

[wmichaelb]

cradom: that seemed like a wonderful idea, and I indeed found the 9.2 install as a possible Startup Disk preference. So I selected it, and was able to reboot into 9.2. Unfortunately, suddenly, my mouse would move the cursor, but clicking on things did nothing. I forced it off, and tried two different mice, both connected to the second rear USB port. The mouse worked fine in 10.4, so it's a software issue of some sort. But now I can neither install the firmware update nor change the Startup Disk preference back. Forgive my ignorance; is there a way to use the keyboard to select one of the top bar menu entries in OS 9?

Thanks for your quick reply.

 

[harryb2448]

Be aware that to run Classic OS 9 it was necessary to opt to include drivers at the time the hard drive was formatted and Tiger OS X.4 installed. Sounds like this was not chosen.

 

[wmichaelb]

Aah..fortunately, I have retail disks for OS 9 and 10.3, 4, and 5. Since there's no data at risk, I'll use the 10.4 install disk to reformat the drive and go from there. The previous owner runs a print shop and uses Macs as the controllers for his presses, so he likely had no use for OS 9.

Thanks for the quick response and good info!