Need help installing OS 10.0 from USB on an original iBook

[Doc_Static]

I have an original iBook G3 300mhz running OS 9.2.2 on it and I want to install Mac OS 10.0 or 10.1 on it.
After trying to burn a disc only to discover that the laptop can't read burnt disc ("normal" cds work fine though) I decided to try the USB route.
The firmware being at version 4.1.7, USB booting is thus possible, BUT, when I try to boot the computer from a USB stick, I first get the happy mac, then I see some sort of shredded system folder icon. I tried to boot in verbose mode to see what was happening and the system hangs at "still waiting for root device".

Question is: What did I do wrong?
Other question is: Would a USB dvd drive work if everything else fail?

[adespoton]

I think the original iBook has significant difficulties booting from USB.

What I'd recommend is getting a CD/DVD-R (the - is important) and burn it at the slowest speed possible.

The alternative I use is to re-partition the HD so that it has a 5GB partition that the installer image gets restored to. This doubles as my emergency boot partition.

[Doc_Static]

Repartitionning is not really possible, I have a 3Gb hard drive on the damn thing.
I'll try burning at x2 speed to see if this works

EDIT: just done burning a second disk on an iMac G4 using Toast Titanium 6 at the lowest speed possible. The iMac reads the disc fine but the iBook doesn't.
OS 9 says the disc isn't initialized and wants me to format it to Pro DOS with a 0kb big partition. The boot picker doesn't even see the CD.

[adespoton]

Do you have any external drives that will boot? If it can't read a 2x CD-R, then it's not going to be reliable.

That said, you really really don't want to install 10.0. 10.2 was the first usable OS X; it's smaller and faster than 10.0, and WAY less buggy. I believe 10.3 is the latest you can use on that iBook, and is probably the smallest and most stable OS X variant for devices that can't run 10.4.

But I don't think you can boot from USB. Which is a shame, as all you've got on that machine is a single USB 1.1 slot for external peripherals.

https://everymac.com/systems/apple/iboo ... ibook.html

You're also going to need more than the original 32MB RAM; 128MB is a bare minimum for running OS X. Otherwise, just stick with OS 9; that'll be much more usable anyway.

You could also try running a PPC Linux on it if you're interested; there are a few that work quite well on that era of hardware.

[Doc_Static]

Got 288Mb of RAM on my iBook, good enough.
I do have an external DVD drive I could try with.
It's weird that USB booting doesn't work 'cause the boot picker actually sees the USB drive as bootable.

I actually prefer to install the earliest OS X version possible just for fun, I'm not trying to make a usable laptop here.

[adespoton]

Hmm... maybe the USB boot will work then.

I'm recommending against 10.0 because it wasn't really production-ready code. It was bloated and buggy, would crash, and is missing a bunch of stuff we take for granted in the Mac world (hadn't been ported over from OS 9 yet). 10.1 is also really slow, but won't die on you as easily. 10.2 fixes most of the runtime bugs, but was still feature-lacking and not fully optimized. 10.3 will get you to the point where things are usable, stable, and comparatively small and fast.

So if you want to see what the beginnings of OS X looked like, it should be doable -- but don't expect to actually run much on it.

[Mckittrick]

Do tell us how your little project goes, Doc. I have an iBook with similar specs and I may do the same if you manage to have some fun with yours.

[24bit]

Just to second adespoton´s advice, I recall Panther was a well tailored OS for the G3 Macs.
I did install the three CDs with little or no issues - its some time ago though.
Panther never crashed on my side and was good enough as productive system those days.

The CDs are hosted here, just in case: http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/mac-osx-mac-os-10-ppc
DL 20, 21 and 22 if my counting was correct.

[Doc_Static]

I'm almost there!
Using a USB DVD drive I managed to have the disc detected under Mac OS 9.
Sadly, I can't seem to be able to boot from it.
Any ideas?

[adespoton]

This iBook doesn't come with Firewire, so target disk mode is out.

Maybe get a 2.5" ATA2 SSD, mount it on a different computer first, use an emulator to create the image you want, and write it out to the SSD?

Not sure if that'd work though, as the emulator won't be emulating an iBook. But you could also do the partition trick and create a 5GB partition on the SSD, restore the install DVD/CD there, then swap out the internal HD for the SSD. Then boot and install.

[adespoton]

Interesting story... I've been having some issues with my qemu 10.1 install, and so decided to do a clean re-install. I'm seeing the exact behaviour with my disk image (a Toast image) that you're experiencing with the CD of 10.0. No idea why it's refusing to recognize it as bootable, but I think I may have to do the "restore to hard disk partition" trick to get it working. So that's possibly your best bet too.

[emendelson]

The only writable CD I ever found that reliably worked with G3 Macs (Wallstreet, Pismo) was this HP CD-RW:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-CD-RW-Rewri ... 2841551228

Model number C4438A. Preferably, burn at 1x. And do whatever step makes the disk not-writable after you're done. (I forget what that step is called.) EDIT: As Ronald's post says, it's called "Close session>"

I burned various macOS and OS X versions on these things, and they always worked.

I think the essential thing may be that the disk should be rated at 4x maximum, but I that's just a guess. Certainly, these disks will get the job done.

[Ronald P. Regensburg]

Absolutely essential for this purpose:

1. Use a CD-RW, not a CD+RW.
2. Burn at lowest possible speed.
3. Make sure to "Close session" after burning.

[emendelson]

And I just remembered: at some point, CD-RW disks were manufactured with larger capacities than the capacity of the original specification. These newer disks will not work. That's why it's worth hunting down older models like those HP disks.

[Doc_Static]

Turns out my 700mb discs that can write up to 70x are too recent?
I'll be damned. I'll try to get one of these old HP discs delivered in France and try it out.
It's either that or buy a boxed copy of the original discs. (which I might do if everything else fails)

[24bit]

Burnt my Panther CDs to stock Intenso blanks without hiccups those days.
I would have to look whats their exact specs.
My guess is that the burning app and the speed do matter, as stated above.
IMGBurn on Windows did burn my Panther CDs just perfect.

This is what Info says about the Panther CD1:
Type: Volume
Sunday, 28. September 2003 at 16:23
Version: 10.3
Mac OS Extended, Capacity: 677,5 MB, Free: 14,5 MB, Used: 662.978.560 Byte

Edit: As Intenso is only the retailer, below is the CD info from IMGBurn.
They are Plasmon disks, I can´t complain about them, so far.



Edit-2:
This is how the blanks look like, guess I can let you some, written or not, if need should be.

[emendelson]

Turns out my 700mb discs that can write up to 70x are too recent?
I'll be damned. I'll try to get one of these old HP discs delivered in France and try it out.
It's either that or buy a boxed copy of the original discs. (which I might do if everything else fails)

Yes, what I forgot is that the capacity of the disc must be 650MB - anything with a larger capacity will fail. Those HP discs have the correct capacity.

It took me a lot of trial and error to figure this out!

[24bit]

Sure, Red Book says 650MB - period.
Personally I never encountered issues with 700MB blanks, neither with self burned D-9.1, nor with 10.3 or a bunch of game CDs.
My guess is that when a game or OS image won´t exceed 650MB, the lead out is written where it belongs and all is well.
This may not work with very old pre Bondi blue hardware.
I seem to recall that my vintage Yamaha caddy burner did not read some CD-Rs.