A Windows kind of night—on a Mac
It’s been unusual for me to have to spend a night troubleshooting problems since I’ve primarily switched to the Mac, but last night was an exception. I did wind up getting the completing original project I was after when the whole thing started, but I spent four to five hours working it out.
I’m using a 120GB LaCie external hard disk to backup two of my Macs and to support booting from Jaguar and running “Click N' Design 3 D”, my favorite CD/DVD labeling application. Mac development and support of that program stopped with the release of Jaguar (OS 10.2), and I have been unable to get the program to run under Panther or get the OS9 version to run under Classic. I had built a movie and burned two copies of it to DVD and wanted to use Click 3 D to build and print their labels. I booted into Jaguar last night with my dual 1.25Ghz G4 PowerMac without a hitch but then noticed that the machine was not finding my Epson R200 printer on my little USB 2.0 network. A ZIP disk drive is also attached to the network; and when I inserted a disk into it, it did not pop up on the PowerMac’s desktop as expected.
The connection to the USB network is via a SIIG USB 2.0 PCI card. To see if the problem was with the SIIG card or the USB network itself, I unplugged the USB cable from the card and inserted it into one of the PowerMac’s native USB 1.1 port. The ZIP disk popped onto the desktop. The SIIG card or something associated with it was the problem.
To determine if the problem was due to hardware or software, I replaced the card in the PowerMac with an identical one. The problem remained. To see if the problem was associated with the PCI slot, I moved the card to another. The problem remained. That pointed toward a software problem.
Traveling to the SIIG website, I downloaded the newest driver for the card and ran its installation routine. When I tried to reboot, however, the reboot hung right after the Apple appeared and gave me a “prohibited” sign. Boot files on the hard drive had somehow gotten messed up. Investigation at the Apple website pointed toward a reinstallation of Jaguar. Before I did that, though, I ran Tech Tools Pro 4.0 and used disk and file utilities to search for errors. I found a few and tried to reboot after correcting them but had no luck. So, I booted the PowerMac using its internal boot drive and ran Disk Utility on the Lacie partition containing Jaguar. It corrected a large number of permissions but still would not boot afterwards. Reloading Jaguar became my only alternative. I inserted my retail Jaguar CD into the PowerMac’s primary DVD drive, rebooted, and held down the “C” key expecting it to boot from the CD. Instead, the screen flickered and the PowerMac booted from its own internal drive. Clearly, it was not recognizing the CD as something it wanted to boot from.
To rule out a problem with the DVD burner, I inserted the CD into The PowerMac’s secondary optical drive and tried to boot from the CD again. No luck. Then, to see if the machine was having a generic problem with booting from an optical drive, I inserted the machine’s original Restore DVD into the primary optical drive (a Pioneer DVR-107 DVD burner), and it worked. When I checked the version of the operating system on the disk, I found it was 10.2.3. The version I originally tried to boot from was 10.2.
I then pulled out my 1 GHz G4 PowerBook and tried to boot it using the retail Jaguar CD. It would not. When I checked the software version of the software that had been delivered with the PowerBook, I found it was 10.3.
With those two results, I suspected that the Macs were built to boot only on the operating system version they had been shipped with or newer. To verify that, I borrowed my wife’s 700 G3 iBook, slipped the retail Jaguar CD into its combo drive, and tried to reboot on it. That worked! Using the iBook, then, I hooked into the LaCie drive and reloaded Jaguar using the Archive and Install option, and rebooted. Finally, the drive worked like it was supposed to! Retrieving a copy of the OS 10.2.8 Combo Updater from a DVD, I updated the hard disk to take it to 10.2.8 and then ran Software Update to get the rest of the fixes. I rebooted again and it worked, so I unhooked it from the iBook and hooked it up to the PowerMac. The PowerMac booted from the drive like it was supposed to.
I was, at least, back to square one.
I surfed back to the SIIG website and looked again for updated drivers for the USB card, unfortunately confirming that the driver that had hosed my system up was the only one posted for Jaguar (and Panther). The USB still wasn’t working and had to be or all was for naught, so I downloaded the driver and applied it again. It hosed up my system again.
This time, though, I took a different approach. I booted into Panther on the PowerMac’s internal hard drive, repaired permissions (and there were many of them that needed fixing) on the Jaguar hard disk, and then reinstalled the 10.2.8 combo updater. I rebooted. It worked! Not only that, but the ZIP drive popped up on the desktop. When I checked for my Epson inkjet printer, I realized its drivers were not installed, so I took care of that. During that, though, I discovered that my Microsoft Mouse drivers had gotten hosed, so I reinstalled Microsoft’s Intellipoint 5.2 to get them back. It also hosed my system! The next reboot would not work.
Back to Panther I went, repairing permissions on the Jaguar disk, reapplying the 10.2.8 combo updater, and rebooting. Finally, I had it all working; and I had a fast an reliable means of recovering the drive if some installation fowled it up.
Finally, I printed my DVD labels.
I truly believe all things work out for the best. While not really what I wanted to happen, I had learned something that was going to prevent me from making a costly mistake. I had been thinking about buying a Mac mini to use to boot into Jaguar. I am fairly convinced now that will not work. Instead, I’m going to keep my wife’s 700 G3 iBook for running Jaguar so I can move my other machines onward and upward and still have the ability run "Click N' Design 3 D" when I want to. I’ll let go of that when I find Mac software that does its job as easily and efficiently as it does. So far, I’ve been looking for over a year and haven’t found it yet!
I’m using a 120GB LaCie external hard disk to backup two of my Macs and to support booting from Jaguar and running “Click N' Design 3 D”, my favorite CD/DVD labeling application. Mac development and support of that program stopped with the release of Jaguar (OS 10.2), and I have been unable to get the program to run under Panther or get the OS9 version to run under Classic. I had built a movie and burned two copies of it to DVD and wanted to use Click 3 D to build and print their labels. I booted into Jaguar last night with my dual 1.25Ghz G4 PowerMac without a hitch but then noticed that the machine was not finding my Epson R200 printer on my little USB 2.0 network. A ZIP disk drive is also attached to the network; and when I inserted a disk into it, it did not pop up on the PowerMac’s desktop as expected.
The connection to the USB network is via a SIIG USB 2.0 PCI card. To see if the problem was with the SIIG card or the USB network itself, I unplugged the USB cable from the card and inserted it into one of the PowerMac’s native USB 1.1 port. The ZIP disk popped onto the desktop. The SIIG card or something associated with it was the problem.
To determine if the problem was due to hardware or software, I replaced the card in the PowerMac with an identical one. The problem remained. To see if the problem was associated with the PCI slot, I moved the card to another. The problem remained. That pointed toward a software problem.
Traveling to the SIIG website, I downloaded the newest driver for the card and ran its installation routine. When I tried to reboot, however, the reboot hung right after the Apple appeared and gave me a “prohibited” sign. Boot files on the hard drive had somehow gotten messed up. Investigation at the Apple website pointed toward a reinstallation of Jaguar. Before I did that, though, I ran Tech Tools Pro 4.0 and used disk and file utilities to search for errors. I found a few and tried to reboot after correcting them but had no luck. So, I booted the PowerMac using its internal boot drive and ran Disk Utility on the Lacie partition containing Jaguar. It corrected a large number of permissions but still would not boot afterwards. Reloading Jaguar became my only alternative. I inserted my retail Jaguar CD into the PowerMac’s primary DVD drive, rebooted, and held down the “C” key expecting it to boot from the CD. Instead, the screen flickered and the PowerMac booted from its own internal drive. Clearly, it was not recognizing the CD as something it wanted to boot from.
To rule out a problem with the DVD burner, I inserted the CD into The PowerMac’s secondary optical drive and tried to boot from the CD again. No luck. Then, to see if the machine was having a generic problem with booting from an optical drive, I inserted the machine’s original Restore DVD into the primary optical drive (a Pioneer DVR-107 DVD burner), and it worked. When I checked the version of the operating system on the disk, I found it was 10.2.3. The version I originally tried to boot from was 10.2.
I then pulled out my 1 GHz G4 PowerBook and tried to boot it using the retail Jaguar CD. It would not. When I checked the software version of the software that had been delivered with the PowerBook, I found it was 10.3.
With those two results, I suspected that the Macs were built to boot only on the operating system version they had been shipped with or newer. To verify that, I borrowed my wife’s 700 G3 iBook, slipped the retail Jaguar CD into its combo drive, and tried to reboot on it. That worked! Using the iBook, then, I hooked into the LaCie drive and reloaded Jaguar using the Archive and Install option, and rebooted. Finally, the drive worked like it was supposed to! Retrieving a copy of the OS 10.2.8 Combo Updater from a DVD, I updated the hard disk to take it to 10.2.8 and then ran Software Update to get the rest of the fixes. I rebooted again and it worked, so I unhooked it from the iBook and hooked it up to the PowerMac. The PowerMac booted from the drive like it was supposed to.
I was, at least, back to square one.
I surfed back to the SIIG website and looked again for updated drivers for the USB card, unfortunately confirming that the driver that had hosed my system up was the only one posted for Jaguar (and Panther). The USB still wasn’t working and had to be or all was for naught, so I downloaded the driver and applied it again. It hosed up my system again.
This time, though, I took a different approach. I booted into Panther on the PowerMac’s internal hard drive, repaired permissions (and there were many of them that needed fixing) on the Jaguar hard disk, and then reinstalled the 10.2.8 combo updater. I rebooted. It worked! Not only that, but the ZIP drive popped up on the desktop. When I checked for my Epson inkjet printer, I realized its drivers were not installed, so I took care of that. During that, though, I discovered that my Microsoft Mouse drivers had gotten hosed, so I reinstalled Microsoft’s Intellipoint 5.2 to get them back. It also hosed my system! The next reboot would not work.
Back to Panther I went, repairing permissions on the Jaguar disk, reapplying the 10.2.8 combo updater, and rebooting. Finally, I had it all working; and I had a fast an reliable means of recovering the drive if some installation fowled it up.
Finally, I printed my DVD labels.
I truly believe all things work out for the best. While not really what I wanted to happen, I had learned something that was going to prevent me from making a costly mistake. I had been thinking about buying a Mac mini to use to boot into Jaguar. I am fairly convinced now that will not work. Instead, I’m going to keep my wife’s 700 G3 iBook for running Jaguar so I can move my other machines onward and upward and still have the ability run "Click N' Design 3 D" when I want to. I’ll let go of that when I find Mac software that does its job as easily and efficiently as it does. So far, I’ve been looking for over a year and haven’t found it yet!
posted by Andy Foster at
3:12 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home