[G4] OSX 10.2 on G4 fiasco

[Philip J Robar]

On Aug 14, 2006, at 11:38 AM, chip puller wrote:

> I own a G4 466 mhz with a 40 gig hd,250 meg iomega and 768 meg of  
> ram. Somehow my permissions for the HD went on the fritz and I  
> could not add anything to the HD but could copy stuff off. I added  
> a new user called admin and gave that user all permissions but  
> nothing helped fix the problem.

Did you trying fixing permissions via Disk Utility?


> I decided to reinstall OS 10.2 and had problems so I tried another  
> HD with zero results. I got OS 10.3 on a DVD and that allowed me to  
> reformat the 1st drive and do a clean install of 10.3.3 on the G-4.  
> Then I tried installing the OS9 classic mode and everything went in  
> the crapper. It thought I had OS9.2 on the HD and would not allow  
> me to install. I copied the 9.2 folder over to the HD and then it  
> allowed the OS9.2 to do its thing. After much ado I got the 1st  
> drive completed. The 2nd drive would not let OS 10.3 to install  
> until I finally rezeroed the drive using the utilities. Then OSX  
> 10.3 installed and the classic mode OS9.2 runs like it is supposed  
> to. Do the rest of this group have the same problems or in my 466  
> Mhz computer a Jonah.
>

Without a more detailed description it's hard to give you any  
feedback. You never say what actually went wrong with any of the non- 
OS9 installs. And did you literally mean "rezero" or just repartition?


> Having 99% of the system files hidden makes a lot of wasted space  
> on my 40 gig HD. Of 3.8 gig of the files on the DVD only 198 meg of  
> them are visible to the user.

Why do you think this is wasted space? What do you mean by hidden?  
Are you aware that you can customize the install to some extent?  
There's very little in OS X that's literally not visible from the  
finder or command line. (As opposed to Windows which does literally  
hide most of the system files from users - and that is a good thing.)  
It's all services that are used or potentially used by you directly,  
or indirectly via programs you install. Disk drives are almost free  
these days, if you need more space get another drive.

How did you arrive at the 198 MB figure and why do you care what's  
visible or not visible on an installation disc?


> The kernal written in Forth makes it hard to make changes or tweak  
> things. But that must be why Mac's are the best computers on the  
> market ( turns opened hand towards Apple for my tip)

The kernel is not written in Forth. The boot ROM (BIOS in PC terms)  
is. And Open Firmware is a much more powerful and flexible  
environment then a PC BIOS - you just have to know what you're doing.  
Open Firmware is thoroughly documented if you have the need and/or  
interest.


Phil