Tales of Technical Woe and Depression (Updated)

I've always had good luck with Apple. The computers work well for me, I like the operating systems, and I've never had a problem with any kind of upgrade. I've never lost my data or had any hardware compatibility problems. I've never had an installation go bad and leave me stranded without my computer.

And then there was yesterday.

For various reasons, it became apparent that I needed to upgrade my blue and white G3 to system 10.3. Being the responsible little geek that I am, I checked Apple's site to make sure that my older machine would support the upgrade. Processor and computer model? Check. Hard drive space? Check. RAM? Check.

Well, that was easy.

I took myself to CompUSA to buy 10.3 and headed home to do the install. I carefully cleaned off one of the three internal hard drives, leaving it with nothing but a system 9.2.2 install. I put in the install disk (1 of 3) and read the ReadMe file. There was nothing to be worried about--the only possible incompatibility that I could see was with a PCI SCSI card that hadn't come pre-installed by Apple. If the install failed, I would simply remove the card.

I clicked on the installer and restarted the computer.

And I waited. My screen stayed blank while hard drives and CDs whirred noisily inside the computer, but nothing actually seemed to be happening. After a time, the drives all spun down and I was left with the sound of the fan keeping the interior of my computer nice and cool. Huh.

I did a hard restart, thinking that perhaps something just hadn't worked quite right the first time. Nope, the damned thing just wasn't starting. All right then. Out went the CD, restarted the computer, waited for it to boot.

At that point, I'm happy because the computer did boot back up--unhappily complaining to me about my crappy start and restart tactics, but booting fast and happy from the mostly clean hard drive. I shut down properly, popped open the box and carefully yanked the SCSI card out. This didn't bother me as I had stopped using it a long time ago.

I restarted, put in the CD, selected said CD as my start-up disk, and tried again. Blank screen, whirring disks, more blank screen, happy fan noise.

Damnit.

The CD came out and the computer was restarted. Could it be one of the other two hard drives causing the problem? The box came back open and the third hard drive came out. This is a somewhat easy task complicated by the power plug that stubbornly refused to release the hard drive into my care. After fifteen minutes of pulling, cussing, and pleading (and just before I resorted to a hammer) the thing came loose and I felt that I had made some progress. While I was inside, I also checked the connections on the CD-ROM, thinking that just maybe my problem was a cabling issue.

I closed up the machine, restart, whir, black screen, whir, fan.

No, for God's sake, no...

Okay, repeat all of the above for the removal of the second hard drive including checking the CD-ROM cables again, the pleading and praying for the power plug to please let go of the hard drive, and the restart, whir, black screen, whir, fan.

Out went the install disk (again) and restart the computer. For something like the sixth or seventh time. I went online to start skimming through the Apple site to find out if anyone else was having similar problems. After searching through the site, I found a message board for installing OS 10.3, and, lo, there were others having very similar problems. The solution seemed to be one of two things: RAM or bad installation disks that needed to be replaced.

But I have enough RAM, I told myself. No, no, no, the message board replied--your RAM might not be good enough. If it didn't come from Apple and isn't quite what the install disk expects, it might just be bad RAM. Even if it worked perfectly well under previous OS installs.

Hmm.

So I shut down the computer and opened it up. Again. I am now intimately involved with the insides of my computer, and I'm not really sure how I feel about it.

So, of the four sticks in the computer, only one is an Apple stick. I have three 128s and a 64. Only one of them turns out to be official Apple stock. I take the three others out and restart the box. Whir, blank screen, whir, start-up screen.

Oh jubilation and joy! The computer with the install disk in is actually restarting!

The question being why in God's name is it starting from the hard drive and not the CD? Oh, because it requires 128 megs of RAM for OS 10.3 to install and the Apple approved and obviously way-better-than-thou RAM stick is the 64 meg stick. What followed was a flurry of activity in which I tested every possible combination of RAM sticks together--being sure not to mix my PC 100 with my PC 133, using different slots in case one of the slots is bad, trying each of the sticks individually, and then dismembering the old Gateway to get at it's OEM quality 256 meg PC 133 stick and it's 128 meg PC 100 stick.

Let's just say that apparently Gateway's OEM RAM isn't as good as Apples, because none of the other sticks worked in such a way that the computer would freakin' well reboot with the OS 10.3 install disk in the drive.

Net result: one hundred and thirty bucks spent on an OS upgrade that refuses to install, two dismembered Windows boxes (one of which didn't have the correct type of RAM to even be potentially useful as a donor), six hours of my life lost irretrievably, and no OS 10.3 for Zomby.

What about the G4 at work? Oh, that's right, the G4 uses DDR RAM, not PC 133 as I thought that I had remembered. What about using the G4 10.2 install disk on the Blue and White at home? Oh, that's right, there might be hardware incompatibilities since that was an OEM disk that came with the G4--and the G4 install disk is on DVD and the Blue and White doesn't have a DVD player.

So, I'm stuck with the idea that I will probably need to buy some Apple approved RAM if I ever want the thing to work with OS X--but I have no guaranty that my problem still isn't bad installation disks, and I really don't want to spend any more money.

Damn.

Update: I think McGehee is enjoying my pain just a little too much... That's it: I'm breaking out the shin-kickerator.

Posted by zombyboy at April 5, 2004 10:27 AM | TrackBack