OS9 and firmware–REDICULOUS

[justjess22]

I have a G4 AGP. It has

Radeon 9000 card
160G startup drive with an additional 20G drive
Runs 23" cinema display
Runs Tiger
Presto Gigabyte ethernet card

I'm finally ready to install my NEW Mercury processor (1.5Ghz)
with copper heatsync. Sounds goood, right?

THEN to my disgust I find out that I HAVE to HAVE OS9 installed
to detect which firmware I'm running, and that I CANNOT DETECT
this with OSX.

So let me get this straight.
I'm running Tiger. My machine is awesome.
And I have to install the oh so PRIMITIVE and ANTIQUAITED OS9
just so that I can put a new processor in?????
RIDICULOUS!!!
Does anyone feel my pain??? Is there a way around this?

Will I have to reinstall OS9 with Panther or with Tiger?
Disgusting!

 

[FoxyKaye]

Feeling that pain - there's some technical explanation that eludes me about why you can only do firmware updates for chip upgrades under OS9. Had to do it for my Sonnet G4/500 on my Blue/White...

My suggestion would be to move any data you have on the 20GB drive over to the 160, pull the 160, and install OS9 on the 20GB drive (make sure the 20GB drive is the "Master" drive on the IDE cable). Then when you're done, you can return the 160 as if nothing happened, reformat the 20GB and move your data back.

Yep, it's a PITA.

 

[jeremy.king]

Ridiculous.

I thought the BootROM version in System Profiler was your firmware version?

 

[justjess22]

Right now I'm using my 160G as my master, and my 20G as backup.
My 20G has NOTHING on it, so I'm wondering if I can just install OS 9
on it to see which firmware I have.
Or do I HAVE to install OS 9 on the master drive to do this??

 

[killmoms]

Right now I'm using my 160G as my master, and my 20G as backup.
My 20G has NOTHING on it, so I'm wondering if I can just install OS 9
on it to see which firmware I have.
Or do I HAVE to install OS 9 on the master drive to do this??

Do what FoxyKaye said then, pull the 160, set the 20 to master, and install OS 9 on it.

 

[justjess22]

Do what FoxyKaye said then, pull the 160, set the 20 to master, and install OS 9 on it.

When you say, 'PULL' do you mean literally removing the 160G?

 

[applemacdude]

I dont think you have to cahnge anything boot from the cd, install it on the 20gb and set firmware from theere

 

[Chundles]

That does strike me as more than a little bit odd, but I'm sure there is a logical explanation for it.

ps. Please change the title of your post so it says "Ridiculous" not "rediculous" the word stems from "ridicule."