G4 Sawtooth won't/can't install 9.2.2 Universal.

[monkspeed]

Hello all,

I have a G4 which I managed to install Tiger onto but its just too slow, so I tried to put 9.2.2 on it which I got from your site here.

I burned the iso on my pc with verify on and it burned successfully.

I'm trying to install 9.2.2 to a completely new HD (old drive disconnected) but the disc always has the same outcome, as soon as the desktop appears, it changes to a blank screen and the monitor goes off...

I tried to be clever and booted into tiger with both drives connected, then dragged across the entire disc contents onto the new freshly formatted drive and again disconnected the tiger drive, and it boots to the desktop and goes black screen...

After some digging around and disabling all extensions, and control panels, I can boot successfully if I hold shift key down, but cant figure out what's causing it. My gut says monitor problem with too high a resolution for my monitor to work but I moved all prefs to the trash and still the same thing.

So if anyone can help me I would be grateful, I would love to get this mac going with 9.2.2.

Many thanks.

Apologies for any spelling errors as I'm using my phone to post.

[DieHard]

Please burn and try this install..

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=807.0

if it works, it can easily be patched to 9.2.1 and then 9.2.2

[Jakl]

Which macos9.2.2 universal did you use to try to install onto your mac G4? And which image did you try to drag over to the disk?

As diehard suggests the 9.1 universal or the one below will definitely work as well.

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=808.0

If you can access your new disk from a macosx volume - open up the image below in OSX and copy contents to your hard drive then open up "start up disk" control panel choose the OS9 disk(system folder) and restart the computer.

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=1037.0

[monkspeed]

Thanks both of you for your replies 

Diehard > I'm just currently trying the drag & drop method Jakl suggested, if that doesn't work I will burn 9.1.

Jakl > I've tried 9.2.1 but it doesn't even boot from the cd rom?
This is the iso I used: http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=2765.msg17151#msg17151


Also I'm not sure if this is the case, but I read while surfing last night that Sawtooth can have USB problems which puts it to "sleep" and you can't wake up from it, which got me thinking about my problem which really does look similar, is it possible the USB drivers is the one causing the problem? Come to think of it, it is the last extension that loads just before the desktop disappears...

[monkspeed]

I've just tried the drag & drop and the same problem persists, as soon as the blue background picture loads, the screen goes black and off, BUT this time it powered back on for the apple registration thing, I pressed command + Q to quit and then it went black again...

Resolution problem?

EDIT:

OMG You will not believe the problem, it was down to the monitor settings... I plugged in my 24" PC monitor into the mac and it fired up straight away, the setting was on 1920 x 1080, but the monitor I use on the G4 supports max 1440 x 900, but there is no such option so I had to select 1024 x 768 @ 60hz but at least it shows now!

Is there a way to add the 1440 x 900 @ 60hz profile?

Thanks.

EDIT EDIT:

OK not good news, I just restarted and the screen went off at the same place again, it didn't save my resolution information! What do I do??

[Knezzen]

Try holding down shift while booting. This should disable all extensions (including graphics drivers). See if it gets you further.

[Jakl]

Yep you knocked it on the head there. Monitor resolution settings. Try what Knezzen said and see if there maybe some conflict between graphic card extensions and your monitor.

What I would've liked to have seen is where in the Registering process the screen would blank out again, if it did (i.e. before you used command + Q) - would've been interesting to see the result. :-)

[monkspeed]

I can boot up fine with extensions off but the system is not very usable with everything disabled?

EDIT:

OK so I've traced it to the 'Monitors' control panel, if I remove that then I can see, but with a rubbish resolution. I downloaded a utility called 'Switchres', it has allowed me to add my own custom resolution, and delete the ones my monitor couldn't use... It seems to be OK at the moment using 1440 x 900, even with the monitors CPL added back in. Bit of a head scratcher and drove me crazy for a while there but it's okay at the moment.

Thanks for the help and suggestions.

Now to learn how to dual boot tiger and OS 9.2.2 

[Knezzen]

I can boot up fine with extensions off but the system is not very usable with everything disabled?

Correct, but you have narrowed down the problem to extensions, probably monitor or graphics drivers.

Have you tried zapping PRAM? Hold down Command+Option+P+R while the computer is turned off.
Press the power button while continuing to hold the buttons down. Release the keys when you hear the boot chime for the second time.

This should reset your resolution settings when booting off CD. Install it while the screen works and tweek the settings on the harddrive when the installation process has finished

EDIT:

I see you edited your post while I was writing. Great that you solved it . You can switch OS with "Startup Disk" in OSX or OS9. If you want to choose OS at boot you can start the computer with the Option key pressed. This should give you a boot menu with OSX and OS9 as boot options.

[monkspeed]

I can boot up fine with extensions off but the system is not very usable with everything disabled?

Correct, but you have narrowed down the problem to extensions, probably monitor or graphics drivers.

Have you tried zapping PRAM? Hold down Command+Option+P+R while the computer is turned off.
Press the power button while continuing to hold the buttons down. Release the keys when you hear the boot chime for the second time.

This should reset your resolution settings when booting off CD. Install it while the screen works and tweek the settings on the harddrive when the installation process has finished

Hi there Knezzen,

I did zap the pram before, even though it resets the resolution while booting up, soon as the desktop loaded it still went blank again... Maybe even though the resolution was low, monitors was selecting too high a refresh?

EDIT:

I see you edited your post while I was writing. Great that you solved it . You can switch OS with "Startup Disk" in OSX or OS9. If you want to choose OS at boot you can start the computer with the Option key pressed. This should give you a boot menu with OSX and OS9 as boot options.

I've put both OS's on one 120gb drive now, I previously was still using the 20gb that came with the Mac from new, noisy!