More Comments On Migrating to OSX

I am a little surprised nobody has filed a class action suit against Apple for this type of sales tactic. There is no reason that the 800 Firewire models should not boot into OS9, except that Apple didn't want you to do it. The dummies, they could have been selling more new machines to publishers for this whole year. Instead many publishing companies have held off purchases, because they weren't ready to migrate to OSX. (We are still not ready)

Those machines have been out over a year, and we are just now getting Disk Warrior 3, the most needed tool in a Sys Admin's toolkit (INMNSHO). If you buy no other MAC Utility for OSX, make sure that you get this one.

You say, "It's not Apple's fault there are no third party utilities that will boot these machines".

You know what though - I kinda think that it is. After all, it took major doing by Alsoft in order to get Apple to allow a bootable system included on their utility disk, and it doesn't even offer you a Finder (Apple will not allow a third party vendor to include the Finder). It boots directly into Disk Warrior. When you quit Disk Warrior, the machine is forced to reboot.

I don't think that Alsoft would sue Apple, because they need Apple cooperation in order to do what they need to, in order to make their product marketable. Same with Micromat, authors of Techtool Pro, and Norton Utilities, which to this point in time, neither will boot the 800 Firewire MDD machines.

Yes, I know that I advocate moving to OSX - quite a lot. I love it and use it all the time. I have to maintain OS9 machines, but that is the only time I have to use it. It's especially solid if you consider yourself a power Mac User. However, there are issues we never much had to deal with under previous MAC OS9, that can rear up an ugly face under OSX, and give us all quite a headache.

Yesterday trying to delete the OSX System from a backup drive, I counted over 40,000+ files before it started to actually delete (deleting from an OS9 boot up partition).

Now as a System Administrator I was thinking to myself .."self", I thought - "gonna take a lot of money to upgrade all of these company machines to OSX with all of the upgrade costs, might be cheaper just to buy new machines." Again thinking to myself, "ya know, many of these older MACs just won't run OSX very well, better off staying with OS9". For those of you that have been vacillating over the decision, there I said it. Cannot decide to go to OSX, wait until you are ready for a new machine.

I am sorry for those of you who bought G3's, and the early iMACs. They just don't have the horsepower that OSX demands. Don't get me wrong, you CAN load it and it will run. But trust me, it isn't going to be a pleasurable computing experience. If you are thinking about getting a new machine, don't even start it up in OS9. Force yourself to learn OSX and just get the software upgraded that you need. Forget about running in Classic mode, it just slows the whole gizmo down.

" You might want to re-think about upgrading to OSX, if OS9 is running well on your current machine, and you are not planning on buying a new machine anytime soon. If the CPU isn't at least 700mhz, you might be disappointed with the performance. At least - go get a CPU Upgrade for your aging machine first and add another hard drive while you are at it.."

So once again if you have an iMAC, Ibook, eMAC or Powerbook - do yourself a computer favor - go out and get a third party external firewire hard drive. To make it easy, you can get one already built to "Plug-n-Play" from OtherWorld Computing.

 

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Carbon Copy Cloner Saves the Day - Again!

I reported a few days ago, that I was getting KERNAL panic on my desktop machine. This is the OSX techie talk - way of saying STARTUP FREEZE, immediately upon logging into my desktop. I eventually had to go to APPLECARE tech support, because I was even having trouble booting to my firewire backup drive or a CD.

Turns out the Mirror Door/Firewire 800 model G4's that cannot boot into OS9, cannot actually boot from a factory Jaguar CD either! It would only boot with the DVD that came with the computer. I thought I would be crafty and swap the hard drive out with a brand new MDD model I just got in. (DUAL 1.25mhz). Made things even worse then, the display went wacky!

AppleCare Tech support told me that the my Firewire800/MDD machine would ONLY work with the hard drive that came with it. "What happens if that hard goes out?", I asked. "we replace it!", was the tech's answer. "What if I want to put a bigger drive in, replacing the original drive?", I asked. "Can't do it", was his answer.

Apparently you can add 3 additional drives (without adding another adapter card), but you cannot replace the original drive with anything, but what you would get as a replacement from APPLE.

I got the odd feeling like we were going backwards in time with hardware incompatibility. Remember the days of MacOS 6 & 7? Apple used many proprietary parts in their computers. If you replaced a CDROM drive, all of the sudden it will no longer boot an OS CD (without a third part driver). Some of those machines you could not even replace the hard drive without using FWB toolkit to add a special driver, unless it was an Apple branded drive. Drive Setup utility would not allow it to be "set up".

The technician told me that it has to do with the firmware Apple is using in these models. "To prevent you from booting into OS9", I joked. He responded quite seriously, "That's about it!"

Ironically the current models that Apple is selling will actually boot into OS9, I guess bowing under some pressure from it's customers. But then, Apple has suffered the loss of new sales I would think. At least this is how it is until the G5's come out.

I am anxious to see a new G5, but I doubt my company will buy one if it won't boot into OS9.

"So how did you fix it, Bunky?"

These are the times when I am happy for guys like Mike Bombich, author of Carbon Copy Cloner. This is the product that allows you to literally "clone" every bit/byte of a hard drive or partition, hidden files and all, to another drive or to a disk image. In case you don't know, a DISK IMAGE is like a virtual hard drive that looks like another drive to the computer when it is mounted. you can read and write to it, just like any hard drive. The interface is simple and straight forward, and dare I say it, easy enough for MAC novices to handle.

Using another product called Boot CD, I created a bootable rescue disk for my G4 at home, but I have not tried to build one for my MDD work machine. Fortunately, I did make a 14 gigabyte "clone" of my hard drive, and copied it to another drive, using CCC.

After a second call to AppleCare, I went through another resetting of NVRAM (open firmware) - and then a wipe clean of the hard drive, erase and then a restore of OSX. Something crashed in the boot sector of that original drive, and the only way to fix it was to reformat the drive.

I installed OSX on my second internal drive as well, then copied the disk image of my old system to that drive. Using Carbon Copy Cloner again, I cloned the original image back to the internal hard drive.

I am back to working on my original setup in a couple of hours, instead of a full day reconfiguring. All of my thousands of email are still there, and I have not had a "Kernel Panic" yet today.

Let's cross our fingers, legs... whatever it takes to insure good luck, eh! Thanks again Mike, your idea/product is simply an elegant solution to a process that was a nightmare for System Admins such as myself.

Avi Learner is the System Administrator for Ocean Drive Magazine in South Beach, FL  
Partner in Adweb Services - and is a regular contributor to the Gold Coast Mac User group newsletter, and email listserv.

Copyright© 2003 Avi Learner - avi@adweb.biz
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