Getting OS X 10.4 on a DVD-Challenged Mac
From Nancy, following up on Installing Tiger on DVD-less iBooks:
Hi Charles.
I tried this again to see if I did something wrong, but I got the
same message: "Cannot install on this volume . . . Mac
OS X cannot start up from this volume", and it needed 15.5 GB of
space to install.
I tried the reverse method of putting my Intel Mac in Target Disk
Mode and the non-DVD iBook starting up attached with FireWire. I
clicked to install from the OS X 10.4 disc that appeared, but
when the iBook restarted to do this, I got a black screen with "debug
dumping" message and "Kernel..." message saying "We are hanging here"
and then wouldn't do anything else. I shut the iBook down and gave
up.
This iBook is running 10.2.8 (PowerPC G3) just fine, but I
want to connect it to an AirPort in the house, and that is reason for
upgrading to 10.4. The image below or attached shows the "Install"
option I used and the external hard (iBook) icon to the right which
shows up. Might the problem be that my desk computer is an Intel, or
does this matter?
Thanks for all your time and assistance.
Nancy
Hi Nancy,
I don't know for sure, but the fact your desktop
computer is Intel might well have something to do with it.
I assume you've attempted booting the iBook with the
DVD inserted in the other machine's DVD drive with the "C" Key held
down.
It would be good if you could find a PowerPC Mac with
a DVD drive and try connecting it to the iBook to help determine
whether Intel is the issue.
Charles
Smultron Is Open Source
From Ruffin in response to Hasta La Vista,
Smultron:
"Ideally, someone will pick up development of Smultron if Peter Borg
is agreeable to that."
Luckily he is, by definition! The source to Smultron is in Cocoa/C,
is available from Sourceforge. It is licensed under the Apache license,
version 2.0, so anybody who wants to can do most anything to the
app.
It is a shame Borg's hung Smultron up for now, as well as Hallon and
Lingon. Are we assuming gainful[ler?] employment? I started using
Smultron for PHP work after reading your recommendation. I still do 90%
of my editing in MacVim, but Smultron's Snippets made it easy when I
needed to make relatively consistent changes over many files. You're
also right on regarding how little real estate it takes on your screen
- and very little of my iBook G4's resources.
I'm hopeful it'll keep on chugging a while, and am glad to have
caught your recommendation. It's proven a great "fringe use" text
editor, and every good tool is appreciated.
Ruffin
Hi Ruffin,
You're right of course. It's Open Source.
My main Swiss Army Knife text application is still
Tex-Edit Plus,
but I do like Smultron a lot for the particular tasks I apply it to -
and haven't found anything yet that fills the bill quite as
satisfactorily.
Charles
iData 3
From Michael in response to Suggested NotePad Deluxe
Replacement:
I was going through my computer files today and found an item that
might be the missing link for you since the loss of NotePad Deluxe. This would be iData 3.
It appears to be almost as useful as Notae (it won't suck in URLs
and websites) but costs more.
Best regards, Charles.
Michael
myNotes
Also from Michael:
Not to inundate you with these NPD replacement suggestions, Charles,
but here's another one: myNotes.
Michael
Thanks for the tips Michael,
I'll check them out.
Charles
Pismo Doesn't Need a PRAM Battery
From Scott:
Just remove the Pismo's PRAM battery and dispose of it properly.
It's not even required. I'm typing this on a Pismo with the PRAM
battery removed.
Scott
Thanks Scott.
Charles
MainStreet, WallStreet, and Pismo
From Chris, following up on What
to Do With Old and Ancient Macs?:
Greetings, Charles,
It seems that I'm not alone in having more old computers than I know
what to do with here. I didn't think you had any Macs besides the three
Pismos, a PowerBook G4, and a new
Unibody MacBook that
you just had to buy before Apple unveiled the 13" MacBook Pro with
FireWire.
I also should have mentioned that my Pismo, with all its faults, was
actually a substantial upgrade from my very first Mac that I mentioned
in passing - you see, the neighbors gave me an unused MainStreet free of charge, complete with
its accessories, software restore disc, OS 9.2.1 and OS X 10.2 "Jaguar" discs, because with all
those iBook G4s and a MacBook around, there was no reason to use it.
Problem was . . . well, I called it "MainStreet" and not
"WallStreet" for a
reason. 2 GB hard drive (which was also loud, like the one in the
Pismo that would replace it). 32 MB of RAM that would barely support
the Classic Mac OS. 2 MB of VRAM and no S-video port. Main battery
that'll only last 10 minutes off of AC at best. The Road Apple-earning
cacheless G3/233 MHz. ADB and SCSI ports in a household full of USB,
DB-9 serial, and a few FireWire peripherals. (At least it had
ethernet.) No modem!
But none of that bothered me nearly as much as that passive-matrix
12" screen did. I just couldn't put up with the ghosting and awful
color reproduction at all, and later found that with a $100 budget, it
would be far more economical to just buy a Pismo that somehow squeezed
under that figure than to make the MainStreet a proper WallStreet (14"
active-matrix, 512 MB of RAM, a third-party G3 or even G4 upgrade, and
a larger hard drive, not to mention USB and AirPort PCMCIA/CardBus
cards for good measure).
However, that MainStreet is why I looked at the Pismo and not the
TiBook or iBooks. I fell in love with those module
bays at first sight and can't think of why laptop manufacturers in
general haven't made them standard already. (Lombard and Pismo lose points for
making the left bay battery-only and losing a CardBus slot, but they
make up for that with everything else.) The keyboard was the absolute
best I had ever used on any laptop, and perhaps even better than your
garden variety rubber dome cheap desktop keyboard (though I'd still
take my beloved IBM
Model M any day). Its apparent durability also makes the Pismo
(mine, at least, which is clearly worn over time from having previously
been a school computer) look downright flimsy in comparison with regard
to the hard feel of the screen lid and rear port door, though the hinge
had a little play.
All I knew from the moment I was introduced to it was that I wanted
something like it, just with better specs, integrated USB, FireWire,
and AirPort, and a screen I could tolerate. My research ended up
leading me to Low End Mac, and from there, to the Pismo.
The deal was pretty much sealed when I learned that almost all Macs
equipped with internal FireWire had this useful little feature called
Target Disk Mode, and the Pismo
was the first PowerBook to have it internally. (It also ensured that
I'd never even think of buying a relatively modern Mac without internal
FireWire in the process, like that iMac G3/350 or those recently
discontinued Unibody MacBooks, and makes me look at Macs in the laptop
market that much more because it saves me from having to try and yank
out the hard drive to diagnose it. It also gives access to optical
drives as well, which can be pretty handy in a few cases. The only
exceptions I'll make are for vintage machines like the 6500 and IIcx.)
In short, I do like Pismos, and it started well before I stumbled
across Low End Mac and your articles in a sense (though that kind of
fueled things along).
Where is the MainStreet now? Somewhere in the Philippines, where I
have relatives I've never even met in person. They'll probably
appreciate it despite the age, though I'm thinking that any hard drive
or RAM upgrades done to the Pismo will be hand-me-downs for that
MainStreet. (Going from 2 GB to 6 GB of storage and from 32
MB to 256 MB of RAM could at least make it that extra bit more useful.)
Who knows - maybe they'll get the Pismo too!
As for your Pismos being extremely hot-rodded with things like
G4/550 MHz upgrades, I'm guessing that you've had your machines for far
longer than I've had mine and upgraded them while they weren't too
depreciated, thus the cost in respect to the rest of the system didn't
seem too inflated. Going over nine years old, though, they seem to have
passed that point. The only upgrade I've done to mine so far was the
original AirPort Card. (I went that way because I wanted to keep the
external CardBus slot free, not to mention using the internal antennas
for potentially better range.) I may still look into a newer hard drive
and maxing out the RAM, but the G4 upgrades just aren't worth it unless
I see some major discounts. Thus, I must ask - on a nice 120 or 160 GB
5,400 RPM hard drive (though more likely to be a 40 GB 4,200 RPM drive
that's still fairly quiet) and the full 1 GB of RAM, will a G3/400
still provide adequate Tiger performance? (I doubt it will, but I have
alternatives; those remain for another email, though.)
I think I recall you saying that with a G3/500, you'd run Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger", but if it was a
G3/400, you'd run OS X 10.3
"Panther" instead. Too bad I only have access to Jaguar and Tiger,
and most OS X software nowadays requires Tiger as a minimum,
Panther if you're lucky. Some software even requires Leopard now.
It's kind of jarring when I look back on two of my PCs running an OS
that dates back to 2001 (albeit with three Service Packs and other
miscellaneous updates) still being able to run most of the latest
software, in terms of web browsers, Office suites, and the like, while
people who had to watch OS X evolve over the years had to pay a
full $130 or so for most major updates needed to run new third-party
software, 10.0 Cheetah to 10.1 Puma (free) and 10.5 Leopard to 10.6
Snow Leopard ($30) being the exceptions.
Finally, while this isn't quite Macintosh-related, after seeing a
YouTube demonstration video and watching the post-iPhone mobile
computing trends of emphasis on the finger completely eschewing the
ability to write and draw with a pen/stylus, I'm thinking of rolling
all the way back to an Apple Newton
MessagePad 2000/2100 as a suitable PDA, especially since the data
is stored in a nonvolatile manner. (I already have an
HP iPaq hx4700, which I do like to some extent and serves as not
just a PDA, but a PMP and MID just like the iPod touch. It's showing
its age, however, and the speed I desire can only be attained by
running WM2003SE, which has the flaw of hard-resetting every time the
battery runs flat - unlike the much older MessagePads I mentioned
earlier! WM2003SE also has no decent browser options, especially ones
that leverage the VGA screen. There's also my HP TC1100 Tablet PC,
but the battery life isn't long enough and it's too large to carry
around all the time.)
Why go through so much trouble to find a pen/stylus-driven device
rather than a pen-driven device, you ask? It all boils down to this - I
don't like paper. Too cumbersome and unwieldy for me, even if it
doesn't need batteries or calibration and never, ever
crashes.
-Chris
Hi Chris,
Thank you for the detailed and interesting commentary.
I used a MainStreet PowerBook for about three months at the end of
1998. I was an agent for a Mac reseller at the time, and it was my
demo. Mine did have a modem, however, and I quite liked it, even with
the passive matrix display and the cacheless 233 MHz processor.
Compared with the 100 MHz PowerBook
5300 that was my main workhorse at the time, the MainStreet was a
speed machine! It was what convinced me to buy my own WallStreet LE -
the 12.1" TFT display 233 MHz model with 512 KB of backside cache that
replaced the MainStreet in the fall of 1998.
I've written enough about that machine that you
probably know a lot of its story. Those 2 GB IBM hard drives that
shipped with the MainStreet and LE certainly did get noisy very
quickly. I pulled mine out and replaced it with a 10 GB Toshiba drive
with an 8 MB buffer cache, which was a big improvement and which
is still in the machine, which is now in the possession of my daughter
with OS X 10.4 "Tiger" installed on it.
I would personally rank the WallStreet keyboard as the
best computer keyboard of any sort that I've ever used, although the
Pismo keyboard is a close runner-up, and I'm a big fan of my
Kensington SlimType external keyboard as well.
I needed those two PC Card slots toward the end, which
I filled with USB and FireWire adapter cards.
I share your enthusiasm for FireWire Target Disk Mode,
but there was a SCSI-based predecessor called SCSI Disk Mode that earlier PowerBooks supported,
and which worked quite similarly other than the fact that SCSI is not
hot pluggable or as dependable connecting as FireWire is.
I also agree that it's getting very difficult to
rationalize spending any serious money on upgrading a G3 PowerBook,
although I still think a case can be made for Wegener Media's $200 G4 Pismo
upgrade for folks who really love the Pismo. I hope mine lasts a
good long time yet, but of course it's my "B-team" utility computer and
not my main workhorse, nor has it been for many years now.
I've somewhat revised my views on Panther versus
Tiger. The later versions of Tiger, say from 10.4.7 on up, seemed to be
faster and actually quite decent performers on a 500 MHz G3 Pismo, and
I expect would be adequate on a 400 MHz version as well. Panther simply
has too many limitations and software restrictions these days, plus
there's no way I would want to live without Spotlight and some of its
piggyback third-party derivatives.
I don't share your disaffection for paper - I love the
stuff and still compose a lot of my writing work longhand on paper and
then transcribe it to editable text using MacSpeech iListen. This time
of year on nice days I'm inclined to head to the beach in the
afternoons with a notebook and pen in my pocket and get some writing
done while enjoying the summer weather. It just wouldn't be the same
with an electronic device.
Charles
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