PM 9500 MacOS X Install problems |
August, 18, 2002 3:04 PM |
ogihal |
Hi, I have a PowerMac 9500 with 464MB of RAM, an XLR 400MHz G3 upgrade and a variety of hard drives. I recently purchased an 8GB IBM SCSI drive which I have on Bus 0 Drive 0. I attempted to install OS-X on it about 10 times with about the same luck (i.e. no luck). The last attempt I Low Level formatted the drive with Drive Setup 2.0.3 (previous attempts were with 2.0.7 but I saw a note on this forum about using the version with MacOS 9.1) and partitioned the drive into 2 4GB partitions. The first partition is where I am attempting to install to. Both partitions are empty so I can do what is necessary to make this work. I am using XPF 2.2b14 and the last attempt I set Support OLD GDB, Throttle - None, Auto Boot, Input:none, Output:None, Install BootX and Extensions. It copied a bunch of files (last one PList Strings?) and then did a shutdown. The display lost signal for 90 seconds then got signal but stayed black for 15 seconds the lost signal for 15 seconds and when it came back 15 seconds later, MacOS 9.1 started to boot. I am attempting to load OS 10.0.3 and I have the 10.1 upgrade disks. Does anyone have any ideas?? I really would love to run OS-X, I believe I have all the necessary hardware even an USB board and Sonnet ATA 66 card. Thanks Hal Clark |
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RE: PM 9500 MacOS X Install problems |
August, 24, 2002 5:22 PM |
marcush |
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I have a PTP 225 upgraded w/XLR8 G4 450 SSE card and worked through similar problems to what you described about two months ago. If you look back to the first couple of months of posts you'll find my posts there. The PTP is essentially the same machine ans the 9500. I think the main exception is that the logic board cache is removable in the PTPs. I have been able to use the XLR8 cache enabler software v 2.61 under OS 9- 9.2.2 without problems from the start. I had trouble getting OS X to boot with L2cache config after upgrading to a G4. At the point I switched to Powerlogix's Cache Control X v 1.2. It has performed flawlessly through OSX 10.1-10.1.5. I also had to deinterleave my RAM, which was a major dissapointment. Once I did that and had Cache Control X installed all of my probelms dissapeared. About 3 weeks ago I realized that the root of my problems most likely was two 128MB OWC DIMMS. I discovered that they were incompatible after reading a post in the XLR8yourmac cpu upgrades database where Nate Bachman reported that reinstalling his Power Computing 1MB cache allowed him to re- interleave his RAM. I tried this myself and found that it worked, but that the system was unstable. Through a process of elimination I identified the pair of OWC DIMMS that were at fault. I removed them and replaced them with 4 matched 64MB DIMMS from OWC that I had in my Power Center Pro. There have been no problems since the switch and re-interleaving of the RAM. I presently have 768 MB installed and am getting moving memory performance measured by gauge pro of 81.9 MB/s. Before re-interleaving I was stuck at 50 MB/s moving memory. The jump in throughput, though guage pro says that it is not a measure of performance, is very evident. OS X is much snappier and applications open faster. Also, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, which stuttered and performed poorly under OS X prior to re-interleaving now runs just as well under OS X as it does under OS 9. BTW, I'm also going to see if OWC will take back those two 128MB DIMMS. If so I'll also buy another pair and max out my RAM to 1Gig. |
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RE: PM 9500 MacOS X Install problems |
August, 22, 2002 8:13 PM |
ogihal |
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I have read suggestions on other threads about the XLR-8 cache control being a problem. Is it a problme after the install of OS-X or before the install? I was under the impression that if you didn't install a cache control your system would just run slow, what else does it do? Still having install problems. Hal |
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RE: PM 9500 MacOS X Install problems |
August, 19, 2002 8:52 PM |
ogihal |
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Ryan, I tried the command-v with throttle set to 8, 10, 12 & 15 with Support Old GDB off. In all cases the machine rebooted into Mac OS 9.1. Actually faster (monitor only lost signal once) than the time I described earlier. I also tried an old version of Unsupported Utility X where I got a message before it shut down saying the kernal was not installed. All, I had successfully installed 10.0.3 on this machine with one of the OWC 128MB RAMs on a drive formatted with FWB's software about 2 years ago before I had the XLR-8. It ran but like a old dog, but it ran. When I added the XLR-8, I also attempted to install the 10.1 update CD and that is where I lost my working system. Of course I also had replaced my initial version of Unsupported Utility X so I had nothing to fall back on. I ignored X until the talk of 10.2 awakened my yearning for a new OS and here I am. Ryan do you still have the version of Unsupported Utility X that was out about the time of 10.0.3? It is before 1.0b8 which I do have (see error message above). I think it was b6. Thanks for the help Hal |
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RE: PM 9500 MacOS X Install problems |
August, 19, 2002 3:08 PM |
Tony.Scaminaci |
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I was the one with the XLR8 card headaches. I'm not sure that the card itself was the issue, but possibly XLR8's cache enabler software instead. A number of people here have complained that they couldn't get the 80 MB/s moving memory bandwidth that Gauge Pro registered with XLR8's driver installed. My belief is that it was just this fast bandwidth that was causing my grief with the XLR8 card. I never tried using the Powerlogix cache utility on the XLR8 card instead of XLR8's which was one mistake that I made. If I had been smart enough to try to slow down the moving memory figure to what it is today with my new Sonnet card (70 MB/s), the XLR8 card might just have been stable. In any event, I'm going to add back in the OWC 128MB DIMMs a pair at a time to see if the machine remains as stable as it is now. They just shipped me two replacement DIMMs which are going into the 9500 tonight. Tony |
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RE: PM 9500 MacOS X Install problems |
August, 19, 2002 2:56 PM |
OSXGuru |
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Try holding down command-v as the computer reboots (for verbose mode). You may get an error message of some kind. The behaviour you describe is typical of cases where the drive was formatted with FWB's software, but of course that is not your problem. Sometimes it is necessary to change the setting of the 'Disable Unit Attention' jumper on the IBM drives. Setting the throttle to its default value (8) or a little higher might help. Don't bother with the "Support Old GDB" option unless you understand what it does--nothing in the "Debug" menu will help with your problem. |
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RE: PM 9500 MacOS X Install problems |
August, 18, 2002 10:49 PM |
jeeypan952 |
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I have a PM9500 with Newertechnology G4 350 upgrade card,640 MB Ram, 5 hard drives including an IBM SCSI 9.1 G for OSX. I had problems installing OSX because the rams I bought from OWC were not compatible with my system. After removing those 2 128 MB rams I was able to install OSX. In addition, in the forum, somonw has described certain upgrade card might not be compatible with the OSX. |
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