The unbootable Mac: G3 on Tiger

Does Tiger run on a B/W G3 400? It should! But I've been having trouble with my old G3 and Tiger. 768RAM 120GB HD. No, I'm not going to give up on it. It's great as a utility Mac while I'm rendering on my G4 laptop, etc. It runs FCP 3 very well too.

It goes to boot up and I get the progress bar as the OS loads. Then the progress bar freezes and just sits there.

I try to boot off the Tiger CD (I have it on CD format just for this purpose, the G3 doesn't have a DVD drive) and it just ignores it. The progress bar again freezes.

I try to boot into Safe Mode. The progress bar again freezes.

Any ideas how to boot this Mac without having to erase and install? I have some data I'd rather not lose.

I have a FireWire drive that I fashioned together. I think I may install an OS on that, disassemble it, then install it into the G3 and slave my old drive to that. Perhaps I can do a clean install on the old drive this way?

Anyway, that's the only way out, me thinks. Any other idears?

Kevin Monahan

Look at a piece of software called XpostFacto to see if this will help out your problem. The official Apple web site says a G3 with AGP Firewire ports will run Tiger, so ?????

Look over www.lowendmac.com for hints as well. Check out the Apple site as well for older G3 issues.

Much appreciated! I hope this baby will boot up with XpostFacto.

KM

Hi Kevin, I have the same machine. I dropped in a processor upgrade (G4-500) for about a 100 bucks and it works great. Panther was actually causing me issues, but Tiger runs amazing! I can run Final Cut Pro 4.5HD, Soundtrack, Livetype, Compressor, Iwork, etc. I dropped in 3 extra drives equalling 300 gigs plus the 60 gig system drive. I was a bit concerned about the heat in the tight quarters but that was easily resolved with a 10 dollar fan sold by MacGurus for the Blue and White. It sits on top of the processor heatsink and spins away. I've been using it for a year without any problem. It is powered by plugging into one of your drives. Very, very simple to install. The guys at MacGurus say they sell a ton of them.

Hey Bruce,
Thanks for the post. I haven't considered a proc upgrade, as I am usually against such things. I'm glad yours works and it's very tempting to check out. I wonder how much it is? I'll have to google it.

Actually, Jaguar and Panther didn't give me too many problems, but Tiger is a bear to install on this rig. It won't boot to CD unless it's an OS9 CD.

I was finally able to bring this baby back to life after doing this:
1)Taking the drive out of the box.
2)Installing it into a FW drive case.
3)Attach it to my G4 800 PB
4)Install the OS to the FireWire drive
5)Remove the newly initialized disk from the FW case.
6)Install the drive back into the G3.
7)Boot up on the OS9 disk.
8)Change the startup disk to the installed drive.
9)Reboot.

I actually had tried the above, and it didn't work until I booted into OS9 and changed the startup disk.

Man, what a pain in the neck!

Kevin Monahan