I Want to Upgrade to OS X !

[fraps]

Hello all, i'm very new to macs so go slow.

I'm working on a mac for my friend, it's a power macintosh G3, it has many upgrades, including some strange MaxPower G4 processor upgrade, my friend's uncle gave him this as a gift.

The machine is good enough to run mac OS X so i aquired mac os x 10.2 on discs, the machine is currently running 9.2.2 and we really WANT to upgrade it, i've researched that to upgrade you need to re-partition your hard disk, this mac currently has a 40gb hdd in running 9.2.2 but to re-partition your hard disk you apparantly need Mac OS 9 on disc !? Basically... I do not have it and don't know where to buy it or how much it costs, is there any way someone can guide me through partitioning it without the 9 disc ? any way at all !?!

Thanks.

 

[Horrortaxi]

You can partition/set up a drive with any OS install disk--it doesn't have to be 9. They all have the same utilities on them. You'd need the OS 9 disk to install OS 9 though--it doesn't come on the X disk.

You don't need to make a partition for OS X. Some people will advise you do it, but there is no need. Apple puts them together in the same partition. Just boot from your OS X install disk and follow the directions.

 

[fraps]

In the OS X installation it complains of the hard disk not having a clean 8GB's at the beggining or something :S not sure where the utility is.

 

[Makosuke]

Originally posted by fraps
In the OS X installation it complains of the hard disk not having a clean 8GB's at the beggining or something :S not sure where the utility is.

Horrortaxi was wrong, and you are correct; early G3 computers like the one your friend has required any partition with X on it to be in the first 8GB of the disk (note the "within" part--you should probably go with 7.5GB to be safe).

If I remember correctly, when you boot up from the OSX installer disk, if you go to the menus at the top of the screen one of the options should be "Run Disk Utility". That will (of course) launch Disk Utility, which should let you re-partition the hard drive.

Assuming, of course, that there's no data on the disk that you care about, since it'll get completely erased.

You probably also want to try and track down a copy of an OS9 install disk (a lot of Mac users probably have one laying around), so you can run classic on the machine. Not required, though.

 

[fraps]

Great All i need to do is get into OS X setup now, i'm having trouble getting in :S is it hold C on bootup ?

 

[fraps]

When i'm in 9.2 and i insert the 10.2 disc, i get Press restart to install etc, and it loads start up disk and just sits there :S

 

[Horrortaxi]

Originally posted by fraps
When i'm in 9.2 and i insert the 10.2 disc, i get Press restart to install etc, and it loads start up disk and just sits there :S

How much RAM do you have? Just for fun I tried to install Jaguar on an iMac with 64MB (requires 128 min) and it acted the same way.

Makosuke: You're right. I've installed Jaguar on 4 old G3's and know about the 8GB partition. I spaced when I read the original post and didn't realize he had a 40GB drive. I thought he just wanted seperate partitions fo r 9 and X.

If you will only use OS X native applications then you don't need 9. It's good to have "just in case" and only takes up a couple hundred megs--but if you haven't got it you haven't got it.

You don't happen to have a spare hard drive laying around do you?

 

[fraps]

Ok i was working on it through the early hours of the morning and here's the outcome, since you guys are on the other side of the world i guess you're asleep now.

I booted to OS X setup and wiped the hard disk completely and re-partitioned it.

I then installed OS X and it said press reboot at the end of the installation.

Now the problem is -

When it boots it loads the old 9 screen with the smily mac in the centre of the screen, if i put my OS X cd back in it loads a 9 screen with a disk with a question mark on it.

I have seen nothing of OS X so far.

I have over 300mb of RAM in this machine and a spare 12gb hard disk lying around.

It seems now whenever my hard disk is plugged in it doesn't boot os x setup, when not, it does.

 

[lmalave]

Originally posted by fraps
Ok i was working on it through the early hours of the morning and here's the outcome, since you guys are on the other side of the world i guess you're asleep now.

I booted to OS X setup and wiped the hard disk completely and re-partitioned it.

I then installed OS X and it said press reboot at the end of the installation.

Now the problem is -

When it boots it loads the old 9 screen with the smily mac in the centre of the screen, if i put my OS X cd back in it loads a 9 screen with a disk with a question mark on it.

I have seen nothing of OS X so far.

I have over 300mb of RAM in this machine and a spare 12gb hard disk lying around.

It seems now whenever my hard disk is plugged in it doesn't boot os x setup, when not, it does.

Press "x" when rebooting. On dual-boot systems, that forces the system to boot into OS X instead of OS 9.

A separate question, though: repartitioning your 40GB drive will erase everything on it. Are you sure you want to do that? Maybe you should install the 12GB disk, move all the existing OS 9 Stuff to that drive, then use the 40GB drive for OS X.