The external drive arrived FedEx this morning. I am now at work, set up the drive and everything, and fired it up. The scratched Panther disk booted just fine. The install process started up. I had to wait like ten minutes for some reason for it to give me the continue button on the first screen, but then I was able to go through the options for the install and start it.
I picked just a regular “Upgrade”. I know an Archive and Install works better and is “cleaner” but from past experience it is a pain, because there are a handful of things I need which are in the world outside my own user folder, that I have to hunt down and move over one my one. So I’ll do an upgrade install first. If I run into any issues, I’ll go back and do an Archive and install.
I also went into the customize and made sure I was getting ALL the language packs and other such things. I hate it when I go to some foreign website and I don’t see the characters properly, even if I can’t read them anyway. :-)
So, it is chugging along installing right now. This will take awhile I imagine. I’ll go get myself some microwave popcorn or something. It is lunchtime after all.
Noiw I’ll finally get to get going on Panther! Several days later than I should have, but hey, at least it is working!
Reads similar to your problem.
….
I experienced one rough spot with Panther – the installation. On my 2001 Power Mac G4, it could not boot from the installation CD.
Apple was as baffled as I, and according to the message boards at Apple’s Web site, a handful of other users experienced the same problem. I eventually got the software installed by using the CD drive of a laptop I connected to the Power Mac via FireWire. Apple engineers are investigating the problem.
Once running, I had no other problems and could understand why Mac fans hold late-night launch parties even for an incremental upgrade. Panther doesn’t disappoint.
Still, it would be nice if it weren’t priced as if it were the Mac OS XI.
Matthew Fordahl AP Tech Editor
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/aptech_story.asp?category=1700&slug=Tech%20Test%20Mac%20OS%20X
Well, except the reason mine wouldn’t boot from the internal drive is because the internal drive had a hardware failure… sounds like his drive was working fine and it just would not boot for some reason.
Which reminds me, I’ve been meaning to write a follow up post. I should do that now…