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Help With Reinstalling OS X On G3

Posted: Mon Oct 20, 2008 9:46 pm
by p645n
First the disclaimer -- I know NOTHING about MAC's except I turn my black MacBook on & it works -- neat machine!
My next door neighbor has a beast though -- it's an old G3 & he wants to get it up & running -- know nothing me has offered to help -- and there's problems!
So what happens is when we start a reinstall of a non-original disc copy of his OS you get both text from the install disc & text from the old OS appearing on the screen.
I thought that I'd download a copy of OS X 10.3x (that I knew wasn't corrupt) for him. Then I'd help him install it over a wiped hard drive.
So my question is how to wipe the disc & then proceed with the install -- OR better yet does anyone know of a tutorial I can use?
Thanks in advance.
Edit:
Someone just told me 10.4 would install on the G3 -- can anyone confirm this is a good choice or is it like running XP with 128 megs of memory on a Windows machine?

Re: Help With Reinstalling OS X On G3

Posted: Mon Oct 20, 2008 10:18 pm
by SNM
What kind of G3 is this? Apple doesn't support running OS X on anything older than the Blue & White G3 towers.

And while I'm not sure, I think the newest version they can run is OS 10.2. Macs have a long service life, but trying to get this thing up and running any modern programs is likely to be more trouble than it's worth.

Re: Help With Reinstalling OS X On G3

Posted: Mon Oct 20, 2008 11:13 pm
by Forge
I have an iMac G3 that won't take anything newer than 10.3.X.

Best boot-n-wipe for Macs would likely be booting off the OSX CD/DVD, and opening Disk Utility before the installer gets going. Right after you select the language to use, before you start the installer for real, go to the 'tools' dropdown from the top (memory a trifle fuzzy here). Open disk utility and there's a bunch of good stuff in there. Pick the disk (not the partitions on it) on the left hand side, and I think the second or third tab has the option to wipe the bejeezus out of the disk. A simple wipe is more than enough, unless you need to obliterate all traces of kiddie pron or something.

Re: Help With Reinstalling OS X On G3

Posted: Mon Oct 20, 2008 11:35 pm
by p645n
Thanks guys for the replies!
I just found out the machine a White iBook is a G4 not a G3.

Re: Help With Reinstalling OS X On G3

Posted: Mon Oct 20, 2008 11:52 pm
by Forge
Anything with a G4 can run any Tiger (10.4), and barring a few corner cases, all G4s should be Leopard (10.5) capable as well.

I recommend Leopard only for the ram-heavy machines. I have a G4 iMac with 768MB that handles Leopard OK, but I wouldn't try it on anything less.

Re: Help With Reinstalling OS X On G3

Posted: Tue Oct 21, 2008 4:32 am
by derFunkenstein
SNM, 10.2.8 is supported on the beige G3 towers as long as your CD drive is Master and your HDD is Master on separate IDE channels (it won't boot on a slave drive in those machines).

To install OS X, just pop the CD into your little iBook and hold the C key while it powers up, letting go once you hear the optical drive going and not letting go until you see the Apple logo *and* the little spinning wheel below it. Once you see those, you can let go of C. After you choose your language, go to the Utilities menu and pick Disk Utility, use it to wipe the drive. That's true of 10.3 through 10.5 (earlier versions had it elsewhere, but since this is an iBook G4, I don't think it supports anything much older anyway).

I wouldn't put Leopard on a PowerPC Mac - I had it on an iBook 1.33GHz (12", with the Radeon 9550, 1GB of memory) and it was dirt-slow compared to Tiger. I also wouldn't put Panther on it, as Tiger (10.4) is faster than anything that came before it. So stick with 10.4.x if at all possible.