G4 DA Running Leopard 10.5.7

[chriskleeman]

So, short story:

Finally got around to cloning my MBP via SuperDuper to my modified G4 DA, running a Hitachi Enterprise SATA drive from a FirmTek SATA controller, the DA has a 1.47 GHz upgrade G4 processor.

Runs pretty well so far.

However, when I used Software Update, I got an endless cycle of reboots that wouldn't stop. Tried all the usual, safe boot, tried to reset the PRAM, finally the only thing I could do was to disconnect the SATA drive and start up from an ATA drive with an OS 4.11 partition. Then, I shut down, re-connected the SATA drive, and tried to Smart Update the Leopard partition again. No joy. The drive partition was not showing up in Startup Disk. Finally, I used the Restore Files command in Super Duper, which erased the partition and started over.

So I'm writing this from the successfully re-cloned Leopard partition on the SATA drive, and wondering if Software Update was trying to update Intel architecture? I know that I'll have to dump Acrobat Reader, as that program is different in the PPC architecture.

Anyway, food for thought.

Chris  

[gunug]

Way to go Chris; I need a little more detail about how you did this and what problems you had to solve!  I'd like to put a SATA into one of my G4's (it's a 750MHz clock singile processor object) and I don't even know what I can get away with on it.  I've got a 1.5GB SATA drive to try it out but don't know the parameters that need to be used and problems.

[chriskleeman]

Hi John,

Krissel is the real expert here, she was the first of us to successfully clone her MBP drive to her G4.

Basically, she and I are running pretty much identical G4 DA's. We are both using OWC G4 processor upgrades running at 1.47 Ghz, we both have Enterprise level SATA drives, controlled by a Firmtek SATA PCI card. She has a better video card with 64 MB VRAM, her original video card was only 16 MB. Mine was a slightly later model with a 32 MB video card that seems adequate at present.

Basically, she cloned her MBP Intel architecture OS 10.5.7 drive to an external drive, and then cloned that drive to her G4. I've done the same thing, but somehow I believe she updated to 10.5.8 on the G4 after the original cloning. AFAIK, she's still running 10.5.7 on the MBP.

When I tried to update to 10.5.8, I got the problems I referred to in my first post in this thread... so I'm wondering what method she used to update to 10.5.8, which is, of course, as far as one can go with the PPC architecture.

Hope that sheds a bit more light on it for you!

Best,

Chris  

[krissel]

Hi all.

I've been running the cloned OS for so long now I almost forgot it wasn't native to the G4.  I have recently updated the MBP to 10.5.8. Not sure why I waited but I think I wanted to see if it killed any apps on the G4 before I did it on the MBP.

Anyway, I ran the update to 10.5.8 on the G4 through the normal Software Update and encountered no problems at all. I've also run all the security updates, etc. with no difficulty. I just let the software decide what was next and let it do its thing. Of course I have been updating over a long period and not all at once.

I'm a bit confused though. You said you were doing a "Smart update" on the partition.  ?
How did you get Leopard onto the SATA drive in the first place? From an external drive or directly cloned from the MBP?

When I did it I cloned to an external formatted APM and partitioned. One partition got the clone from the MBP. I then cloned that to a wiped partition on one of the SATA drives in the G4 while booted to Tiger on the G4.  Then I booted to it and cloned that one to another SATA drive on the G4 so I have two Leopard installs. One is now used as a backup drive to which I do an update with SuperDuper.

After installing the .8 update it is normal for the Mac to double boot.  Did yours do more than that?
I'd look for any pkg receipts for the update and trash them. Then try the update again. If it still doesn't work via Software Update, get the combo updater and see if that works.

http://support.apple.com/downloads/Mac_OS_..._8_Combo_Update

[chriskleeman]

Hi Kris,

I cloned the MBP to an external Firewire drive, which was also formatted with the APM. Then, just like you did, while booted from Tiger on the G4, cloned that external drive partition to the SATA drive in the G4. All drives involved are formatted APM.  Then I booted from the cloned partition on the SATA drive, and viola, was running Leopard on the G4.

After I ran Software Update to try to get to 10.5.8 on the cloned partition, the G4 kept rebooting over and over and over instead of the usual double boot. Went on for an hour. That's when I powered down, unplugged the SATA drive and rebooted from a Tiger partition backup on an internal ATA backup drive. The SATA drive has 3 partitions, one for storage, and a Tiger partition and now the cloned Leopard partition.  

In retrospect, I don't know what I was thinking using Smart Update on the Leopard partition on the SATA drive in the G4 from the external MBP backup... just letting SD do it's thing I guess, but there is, of course, no way to smart update a 10.5.8 drive from a 10.5.7 drive   I was attempting to restore the original cloning I had done to the SATA drive, but apparently didn't have my thinking cap on at that moment!

So, using the Restore All Files in SD wiped the drive clean and re-cloned the Leopard partition to the SATA drive in the G4. And again, I did that booted from Tiger, going from the external Firewire drive to the SATA drive in the G4.

So, maybe I'll try the Combo updater and see if that helps.

Thanks as usual!

Chris K

[krissel]

Can only guess that the .8 update did not take and caused the reboot problem.  Googling shows many people having to do it more than once to get it to work.

If running the combo from the G4 doesn't work you may want to try to run it from the MBP to the G4 via FW target disk mode.

Let us know how it goes.