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PowerPc G3 B&W Mac OS 10.4.11 ethernet bug

JeneaseP

JeneaseP

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 28, 2019
10
13
Hello everybody,

I am new to Macs all together (never touched one in my life), and am at the same time amazed and frustrated. I found a PowerMac G3 Blue and White laying in a dumpster and decided to take on the challenge.

To my amusement it actually runs beautifully, and even got to play Wolfenstein 3d, Doom, and Tomb Raider on it. I was chocked and fell in love with it. Its it in mint condition.

Here are the specs:
PowerMac G3, Blue and White,
450mhz processor,
516mb Ram (two 128mbs and one 256mbs)
ATI Rage 128 graphics
Three Hds, 9gbs each, on PCI to SCSI adapter (IBM Apple, Viking Quantum, and a Seagate)
PCI Serial adapter
Two firewire ports (onboard)
two 1.1 UBS ports (onboard)
Sony CD rewritable drive on ATA onboard port
Iomega 100mb ZipDrive on slave ATA onboard port

After cleaning it and reinstalling all the components it booted up right away with Mac OS X 10.3. The person that threw it out had lots of graphic design material on the other Hds, none that interested me. So I immediately erased the drives and installed Mac OS 9.1 in one of them, to try some vintage games (it´s on the seagate one).

It ran beautifully.

So I then decided to Max out it´s potential, and did some research on which OS was the latest one it could handle, and downloaded and installed Mac OS 10.4.11 on the third HD.

He comes the weirdness....

It installed the whole thing perfectly, including the updates to 10.4.11, and as soon as I plugged the network cable it stopped booting up to OS 10.4.11 (just freezes in the splash screen forever). But boots just fine on the other two OSs with the network cable in. If I boot up without the cable, it boots up fine, then I plug it in and it freezes. So I can´t connect to the internet for the life of me with OS 10.4.11. Its works fine with 10.3, and with 9.1. Does not open pages because of security issues of course, but navigates in google search engine just fine. But With OS 10.4.11, just gets very slow and does not even let me shut down, take the cable out and it runs smooth again. Its so frustrating.

Does anyone know the fix for this?
 
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Have you tried wiping that drive and reinstalling again? Sometimes installs can go bad.

If that doesn't work, perhaps the fault lies in where you 'downloaded' 10.4.

If you didn't get it from Macintosh Garden then you may have a bad copy.
 
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eyoungren said:
Have you tried wiping that drive and reinstalling again? Sometimes installs can go bad.

If that doesn't work, perhaps the fault lies in where you 'downloaded' 10.4.

If you didn't get it from Macintosh Garden then you may have a bad copy.
Click to expand...

Hy eyoungren,

First of all, thank you sooooo much for your reply....

I did that, a couple of times already (whipped the HD and reinstalled), and even began to believe that it was perhaps a faulty Ethernet adapter, but then I tried 9.2 and Debian Linux, and the adapter is working fine with them. So I think you are right and the problem lies on the installation media, perhaps the drivers coming with it are not compatible with my Blue and White.

Meanwhile, it took me days to find a MAC OS 10.4 CD set that actually booted from the CD drive, and this is the only one that I could do it with.

Do you have a link to download a better CD set of MAC OS 10.4 that actually boots from the CD and is compatible with the G3 blue and white?

Thanks again...

Diniz (Jenease)
 
I would try a PRAM reset first and foremost :) (hold down the cmd option P and R keys when you hear the computer chime, keep holding until you hear it chime a second time then let go of the keys)

by splash screen do you mean the Apple logo you get on boot? is it before or after you get the little spinning gear?

and if you hold down CMD V when the computer chimes, does it boot into verbose mode and if so can you post a picture of where it stops? :)
 
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Thanks for saving the old B&W from the dumpster.:)

As @LightBulbFun mentioned verbose booting may tell us what's going on with your ethernet.

Also, opening the system preferences, deleting the ethernet device and rebooting may fix the issue, or removing the network preference file and rebooting, tho you may need to reopen the network preference pane and let it detect and add back your ethernet port.

Code: 
sudo rm -f /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/NetworkInterfaces.plist
 
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LightBulbFun said:
I would try a PRAM reset first and foremost :) (hold down the cmd option P and R keys when you hear the computer chime, keep holding until you hear it chime a second time then let go of the keys)

by splash screen do you mean the Apple logo you get on boot? is it before or after you get the little spinning gear?

and if you hold down CMD V when the computer chimes, does it boot into verbose mode and if so can you post a picture of where it stops? :)
Click to expand...


Hy LightBulbFun,

I don´t have a Mac Keyboard, and no key combination seem to ever work, even trying the supposedly equivalent PC keys for them. My workaround for that has been holding a button on the front of the case and getting the OpenFirmware to get the command line for that. Through there I have been cleaning all the vram and pram, and also resetting everything. Then when I boot again I get the OpenFirmware window and type boot CD. That´s how I got it all booting from the CD, reinstalled OS 10.3, 10.4 and 9.2, also tried Debian linux for PPC. All work perfectly to navigate the internet except 10.4. OS 10.4 does not boot when the Ethernet cable is plugged in at all.

By Splash screen I mean the apple logo at the spinning gear, it just stays there forever. If I get the cable out, it boots normally, then I plug it back in and if freezes (no matter at what point, including while installing). But that only happens with 10.4.

I thing that it is driver incompatibility from the install media I am using.

It would be very appreciated if I could get a reliable installation media. But it has been a hassle to find.

Thank you so much

Jenease
[doublepost=1561843450][/doublepost]
DearthnVader said:
Thanks for saving the old B&W from the dumpster.:)

As @LightBulbFun mentioned verbose booting may tell us what's going on with your ethernet.

Also, opening the system preferences, deleting the ethernet device and rebooting may fix the issue, or removing the network preference file and rebooting, tho you may need to reopen the network preference pane and let it detect and add back your ethernet port.

Code: 
sudo rm -f /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/NetworkInterfaces.plist
Click to expand...


Thanks both DearthnVader and LightBulbFun,

It saddens me deeply to see how much hardware gets thrown in the trash here in Brazil, that makes it very hard to find parts for any old computer as well, like dimm memories, G series processors, PCI cards... very sad... This is a very wasteful country. But I will try to save whatever I can...

Anyways... will try my best to get the verbose info and post the pictures...

Thanks again...

Jenease
 
LightBulbFun said:
I would try a PRAM reset first and foremost :) (hold down the cmd option P and R keys when you hear the computer chime, keep holding until you hear it chime a second time then let go of the keys)

by splash screen do you mean the Apple logo you get on boot? is it before or after you get the little spinning gear?

and if you hold down CMD V when the computer chimes, does it boot into verbose mode and if so can you post a picture of where it stops? :)
Click to expand...


Hi LightBulbFun,

Here is the picture of where it stops in verbose mode....

Thanks...
 

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so its freezing right as the ethernet controller is initialized by the driver and a link is established,

have you tried another ethernet cable, or plugging the other end into another port on the router/modem/whatever?

also what does the logs in console.app say when you plug the ethernet cable after the system has booted?
 
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LightBulbFun said:
so its freezing right as the ethernet controller is initialized by the driver and a link is established,

have you tried another ethernet cable, or plugging the other end into another port on the router/modem/whatever?

also what does the logs in console.app say when you plug the ethernet cable after the system has booted?
Click to expand...

Hi LightBulbFun,

If tried other cables and ports, I don´t know where to retrieve the cosole.app file. Newbie here... But usually after I plug the cable, even after booting, I can´t do anything. It´s completely unresponsive.

I´ll try to delete the ethernet information, using this:
sudo rm -f /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/NetworkInterfaces.plist

I´ll post the result shortly...

Thanks
 
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DearthnVader said:
Thanks for saving the old B&W from the dumpster.:)

As @LightBulbFun mentioned verbose booting may tell us what's going on with your ethernet.

Also, opening the system preferences, deleting the ethernet device and rebooting may fix the issue, or removing the network preference file and rebooting, tho you may need to reopen the network preference pane and let it detect and add back your ethernet port.

Code: 
sudo rm -f /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/NetworkInterfaces.plist
Click to expand...

Hi DearthnVader,

Tried the code without the cable plugged in, then I plugged it in and tried to open System Preferences, rendered completely unresponsive, just the icon of the System Preferences bouncing up and down, tried to restart and it just wont....

But thanks, I think I really need to reinstall with another media... Since OS 10.3 and 9.2.2 are both working fine with the ethernet cable, and navigating normally.

Does anyone have a link to download OS 10.4 for the Blue and White G3?

Thanks a million,

Jenease
 
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JeneaseP said:
Thanks... That explains why I thought the keyboard was the issue... What a dope!!!

You guys are awesome...
Click to expand...

I had a feeling that may of been causing you some head scratching! (I knew from the fact you could get into Open Firmware/verbose mode that your keyboard was probably fine) its a common thing that catches people out with these early NWR Macs :)

there's a secret boot picker you can get from the Open Firmware command prompt by typing "multi-boot" tho :)
 
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LightBulbFun said:
I had a feeling that may of been causing you some head scratching! (I knew from the fact you could get into Open Firmware/verbose mode that your keyboard was probably fine) its a common thing that catches people out with these early NWR Macs :)

there's a secret boot picker you can get from the Open Firmware command prompt by typing "multi-boot" tho :)
Click to expand...

Yes it was driving me bonkers lol... Thanks for te tip... Still burning the Cds to try them... Can't wait to see whats gonna happen...

Thanks a million
 
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LightBulbFun said:
http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/mac-osx-mac-os-10-ppc

here you go :)

its worth noting that the G3 BW does not have a boot picker which you can get to via normal "hold alt/option" means
Click to expand...

Thank you for the links... Downloaded everything, burned the new CDs and installed... But had to install without the cable. For some reason it does not boot the CD with the cable in. Driving me crazy here, really can't understand since the ethernet card is working perfectly with Mac OS 9.2 and X 10.3. Makes no sense...

But lets see if I can at least use it after it's installed...

I'll keep you posted..
 
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