Is My New G3 a PC in Disguise?

by John Martellaro

June 20, 1999

"A superior pilot is one who uses his superior judgment to avoid those situations which would require the use of his superior skills."

-- Naval Aviation Lore

I'm going to get into some really ugly, nasty stuff -- stuff that has a bearing on the current state of the Macintosh. If you decide to come along for the ride, then hang on tight. You will learn something.

Sorry. You Can't Get There From Here!

It all started when I bought that new Blue & White G3. It has a 9 GB Ultra2 SCSI drive. That's big enough to set up several partitions, and I wanted several because I had a copy of MacOS X Server that I wanted to install. Sounds like fun, right?

The first thing I did was copy the entire MacOS 8.6 from the internal drive to the 8500 via personal file sharing. The destination was an external 4 GB drive on the 8500. I wanted to be able to restore that OS exactly. You see, the new B&W Macs don't have a traditional 4MB ROM, and the ROM image has been moved to a file in the system folder. So you cannot boot a B&W G3 with a normal MacOS CD, say, version 8.5.

Next, I booted from the MacOS Server CD and prepared to wipe out the entire 9 GB drive. There would be three partitions, all HFS+. The first would be MacOS X Server, the second would be MacOS X (client), and the third would be my regular HFS+ volume for MacOS 8.6. (When the MacOS X Server is installed, it wipes out the HFS+ file system and replaces it with a Unix UFS file system. But you have to start with HFS.)

So far, so good.

As I described a few weeks ago, the installation of MacOS X server is a breeze. It takes more like 25 minutes -- I timed it this time. But it seems to go very fast. Then I reestablished the link back to the 8500 and pulled in that B&W G3 version of MacOS 8.6 and put it on the HFS+ partition.

MacOS X Server was my prime OS for several days, and I was quite happy. But there were some gotchas with MacOS X Server, and I decided that I wanted to spend some time with MacOS 8.6.

I couldn't get there! Even though I used Apple's utility called System Disk and specified the Tatooine volume to boot from, I kept coming up in MacOS X Server. I tried everything. I read the docs on System Disk five times, (they seem like a bit of an after thought, by the way), and I could not get the machine to boot from that HFS+ partition.

If you know me, you know that everything has to be perfect. After all, if a computer makes a math mistake one time in a billion operations, you throw it away. It's junk.

In the meantime, I had made two fatal mistakes. First, I doubled up on my control variables by moving the external 4 GB drive from Aquarius (the 8500) over to Vega (the G3). Bad idea. My second mistake was ignoring all the paperwork that came with the G3. It comes with about six various colored booklets, a set up guide, warranties, a trouble shooting booklet, etc. None of these looked like they were of much use. What I didn't realize was that buried in that pile of booklets was a green CD that I would desperately need later. But I didn't know it was there.

Frustrated with my system, I guessed that the MacOS 8.6 partition has to to be the first partition created, not the last. I made this guess based on a earlier configuration that DID allow me to go back and forth. So. Time to reformat the drive again.

Boot from the MacOS X Server CD. Reformat the drive. The first will be the MacOS 8.6 partition. Reinstall MacOS X Server. (I'm getting real good at this now. Third time!) It went fine. But there was a problem. The problem was that the MacOS 8.6 OS I needed was now trapped on an external drive I couldn't get to. Recall, my Adaptec 2906 card doesn't have a Macintosh ROM, so it doesn't get recognized unless you have the Adaptec extension installed. Neat, huh?

Easy, I just popped in the Adaptec CD and copied the extension into the Blue Box OS and rebooted the Blue Box. Guess what? I could not mount the drive. Now what? I needed an OS that would boot the G3, but I didn't have one.

Brilliant idea. I copied the 8.5 OS from the MacOS X Server CD over to my HFS+ partition. After all, that seemed to be the OS that booted the machine originally. So I copied that OS folder over, selected Tatooine from the System Disk tool, and rebooted Vega.

Surprise. I got a nasty message, something like this:

This OS is designed to boot from the CD it is on, but cannot be copied to another volume.

Grrrrrr. Guess what my only option was? You guessed it. RESTART!

So here I was with the parameter RAM set to boot from a volume that was unbootable.

Are you enjoying this?

Salvation

I knew I could always boot from the MacOS X Server CD by holding down the "C" key, so I rebooted again. Fortunately, one of the few Apple Menu Accessories & Control Panels that Apple leaves on these minimum systems is the Chooser. I guessed that the system folder on my 8500 contained an OS that was unbootable on the G3, and further guessed that I might get the Sonata-a4 that I happened to have on a second internal drive on the 8500 to boot -- if I fixed it up. Perhaps that was a bad guess, but it worked.

I copied the Sonata System Folder to Tatooine and added two files from the System Folder on the MacOS X Server CD: System Resources and MacOS ROM. I crossed my fingers and rebooted. Without the "C" key down and the PRAM set to boot form Tatooine, I should have been OK. I was. It booted!

Now, the task was to insert the Adaptec CD, grab that extension, and I'd be ready to reboot with access to the external drive. (The motivation here? Recall you cannot eject a CD that you booted from.) Except, I couldn't drag the extension off the CD! Don't ask me why. Every time I tried to drag it, the OS said "Can't find that file." Perhaps my bastarized OS was hosed. Grrrrr.

After some reflection, I inserted the CD into the 8500, used file sharing, and copied the extension that way. It worked.

I rebooted.

Of course, the external drive didn't show upon the desk top because the extension I copied allows access but not automounting. I had to use the FWB Mounter to actually make the drive appear on the desktop. Sheesh!

Since you can't overwrite an existing OS, I copied that hostage G3 OS -- the original one, the one that shipped with the system, the one I had so thoughtfully archived -- onto the unused MacOS X (client) partition, selected that volume in the Startup Disk CP and rebooted. (What would I have done without that spare partition??) Now I was back to the original OS!!!

Done. The remaining clean up is left as an exercise for the student.

Later, I tested my ability to go back and forth from MacOS X Server and MacOS 8.6, and everything worked fine.

Lessons Learned

There were lots:

1. When you unpack a new computer, look for that emergency boot CD. In my case, I wish Apple had taped it to the side of the G3 with some nice non-residue double sided tape. Like they use to protect the Apple logos on the outside. Or perhaps they could tape it to the outside of a plastic bag that contains all the paper work. Then it would be hard to miss.

2. It may not be true that that legacy MacOS HFS+ partition has to be the first one created. It worked for me, but the Apple documentation for MacOS X Server says nothing about that. I probably overlooked something.

3. Don't sell your old computer until you buy your new one. Network them together during the transition period. In my case, that 8500 with its two internal drives and the external drive proved to be a valuable resource.

4. Don't get mad. Get even. You have many resources, but perhaps you haven't exercised them in awhile. Sit back, reflect, and think about how you can use your resources -- like your modem or your AppleTalk file sharing or various other Apple CDs laying around.

5. I probably didn't need to use Sonata. Perhaps if I'd copied over 8.6 from Aquarius and dropped in those two system resource files, the G3 would have booted. I haven't tested this. I am all tested out right now.

6. You can never have too many disk management and emergency toolsl. I recommend FWB toolkit as a minimum.

7. Finally, you can get yourself into as much trouble with one of these Apple computers as with any PC on the planet. Certainly, if you buy an iMac, pull it out of the carton, fire it up, and never experiment, you will have a nice user experience. But computers, such as they are in the year 1999, still retain infinite possibilities for grief. And when you dig yourself into a deep hole like I did, it's not so much whether Apple made the computer or Hewlett Packard. The difference lies in how you learn to use your computer.

Perhaps, in a few years, that won't be so. In the meantime, build up those superior skills -- as it says in the quote at the head of this column.

In the matter of judgment, I remain mum.