O.S.X. is dead
in [Mac Systems]
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From: Tony Winston on 15 Oct 2006 09:40 I installed O.S. X.46 onto two external La Cie drives a few months ago. I was able to start my desktop G4 several times using each drive, but now neither drive will start the computer after I choose the respective drives to be the start drives in my G4's O.S. 9.22 Startup control panel. When I try to start from the external drives, the still Apple logo appears on a gray background and nothing else happens -- even after five minutes of waiting -- forcing me to pull the plug out of the surge protector and to shut off the external drive that I was trying to start from. Why is this happening and how can I solve it? I hope this behaviour isn't exemplary of the reliability of O.S.X. Tony
From: matt neuburg on 15 Oct 2006 11:04 Tony Winston <unreal(a)address.com> wrote: > I installed O.S. X.46 onto two external La Cie drives a few months ago. > > I was able to start my desktop G4 several times using each drive, but > now neither drive will start the computer after I choose the respective > drives to be the start drives in my G4's O.S. 9.22 Startup control panel. If there's room, install X onto your internal drive instead. (X and 9 can coexist completely, without partitioning or anything.) Some external drives can't be used to boot X from, or do it only unreliably, so let's eliminate the external drives from the equation. m. -- matt neuburg, phd = matt(a)tidbits.com, http://www.tidbits.com/matt/ Tiger - http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/tiger-customizing.html AppleScript - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0596102119 Read TidBITS! It's free and smart. http://www.tidbits.com
From: Jon on 15 Oct 2006 11:30 Tim McNamara <timmcn(a)bitstream.net> wrote: > My understanding is that you can't boot OS X from an external USB drive. On present-day Macs you can. At least Intel Macs and I believe recent G5s, possibly other models. But the OP's G4 certainly cannot boot from USB. SO the point is valid as far as he is concerned. -- /Jon For contact info, run the following in Terminal: Mail: echo 36199371860304980107073482417748002696458P|dc Skype: echo 139576319600233690471689738P|dc
From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Anders_Ekl=F6f?= on 15 Oct 2006 11:46 Jon <see_signature(a)mac.com.invalid> wrote: > Tim McNamara <timmcn(a)bitstream.net> wrote: > > > My understanding is that you can't boot OS X from an external USB drive. > > On present-day Macs you can. At least Intel Macs and I believe recent > G5s, possibly other models. But the OP's G4 certainly cannot boot from > USB. SO the point is valid as far as he is concerned. Is it ? 1. OP never said the drive are USB. 2. OP states he has been able to boot from each drive. Thus I take for granted they are FireWire drives. And to Tim: My G4 at work arrived in June 2001 with Mac OS 9.1 only installed. 10.0.3 came on a CD. And that was not even a first generation G4. -- I recommend Macs to my friends, and Windows machines to those whom I don't mind billing by the hour
From: Mike Rosenberg on 15 Oct 2006 11:50
Tim McNamara <timmcn(a)bitstream.net> wrote: > OS X is, I think, the default on all G4 Macs and Macs > introduced after 1/1/03 aren't supposed to be able to boot from OS 9 > IIRC. He never said which G4 he has, but it's clearly one that boots from OS 9. > From the technical perspective- are the external drives FireWire or USB? > My understanding is that you can't boot OS X from an external USB drive. > There are issues with the chipset used in FireWire drives and their > suitability for booting, resulting in some FW drives not being bootable. The thing is, he _was_ booting from OS X previously, so he must be using compatible FireWire drives. I think you may be onto something in suspecting a hardware or OS 9 issue, though, because the odds of developing software problems on two drives simultaneously are very low. I would first try booting up while pressing the Option key and selecting one of the external drives from the choice that appears. If that fails, I would then try having only one external drive, and no other FW peripherals, connected at a time and see if the G4 will boot from at least one of them that way. -- <http://designsbymike.biz/macconsultshop.shtml> Mac-themed T-shirts <http://designsbymike.biz/musings.shtml> Mostly muckraking T-shirts <http://designsbymike.biz/prius.shtml> Prius shirts & bumper stickers <http://cafepress.com/comedancing> Ballroom dance-themed shirts & gift |