Moving to Version 10.3 from Mac OS 9.x.x or EarlierMoving up to Mac OS X from earlier versions offers many benefits (you will learn about many of them throughout this book), but all this gain requires some pain, that being the pain of installing and learning to use a brand-new operating system. This appendix helps you with the first part, whereas the rest of the book helps you with the second. Following a logical sequence of steps results in the best chance for you to install Mac OS X without any problems. The major steps you should take are the following:
After you install Mac OS X, you should maintain the OS with any updates Apple provides to keep it running as well as possible. Assessing Your Mac's Capability to Handle Mac OS XTo minimize problems you might experience installing or using Mac OS X, ensure that your Mac meets the following minimum requirements as stated by Apple:
If your Mac meets all these requirements, skip to the next section, "Updating Your Mac's Firmware." If you don't have one of the Mac models listed, you are probably out of the Mac OS X game. For example, you can't even install Mac OS X on older Macs, such as those that use the 604 processor. If you have upgraded an older Mac's hardware so that it has a G3 or G4 processor, you might or might not be able to install Mac OS X. Installing a major system update on a system whose hardware has been upgraded is always a bit of a gamble. Some upgrades will handle the new OS okay, but others will balk at it. Before you try to install Mac OS X on an upgraded system, check with the manufacturer of that upgrade to see whether it is Mac OS X compatible. CAUTION Apple does not provide support for Mac OS X on machines on which you have installed an upgrade card. You will have a much better Mac OS X experience if you install it on hardware that is on Apple's compatibility list. If you have less than 256MB of RAM, you might be able to install and run Mac OS X, but you aren't too likely to be happy with its performance. You might be able to run Mac OS X with as little as 64MB of RAM, but you won't be able to use the Classic environment with this amount of memory. You should upgrade your Mac with as much RAM as it can handle or as much as you can afford more RAM is better! Mac OS X manages its RAM much better than previous versions of the OS did, but you still need to provide plenty for it to work with. Your Mac is very likely to meet the video card requirement. All Macs come with at least one Apple-installed video card. Unless you have done something unusual, such as replacing the card that came with your Mac with another one, you won't have trouble with the video card requirement. CAUTION If you have multiple monitors attached to your Mac, you might need to remove any third-party video cards before you can install Mac OS X. If you leave the card installed and the Mac OS X installation is successful, the monitors connected to any third-party cards might not work. Until you install a Mac OS X compatible driver for the video card, you aren't likely to be able to use any of its special features. I recommend that you remove third-party graphics cards that weren't installed by Apple before you install Mac OS X. After you have finished the installation, you can reinstall the additional cards. Whether less than 2GB of free disk space will enable you to install Mac OS X is also a bit of a gamble. You might be able to get away with slightly less, but it isn't recommended. It depends on how much less you are trying to get away with. If you can free up at least 2GB on the volume on which you are going to install Mac OS X, you will be happier in the long run. Because of the way Mac OS X is designed to store files (within user folders on the Mac OS X startup volume), you should have plenty of free hard drive space on the volume on which you will install Mac OS X. Mac OS X is designed so that you store all your documents and other files on the same volume as the system is installed on so you should have as much space on that drive as possible. (Don't worry you aren't limited to storing documents on the same drive as the OS you can store documents on any mounted volume, but not all Mac OS X's features will be available for other volumes.) Updating Your Mac's FirmwareYour Mac must have access to some basic software for it to start up. For example, it needs to know where to look for system software it can use to start up. This software used to be permanently stored in hardware called read-only memory (ROM). This permanent ROM could not be updated, so what came with the Mac was as good as it could get. With modern Macs, the base software is stored in firmware, which is sort of a combination between software encoded in hardware and normal software. The advantage of this is that Apple can update the firmware on modern Macs to correct problems or improve performance. NOTE If your Mac's firmware needs to be updated for 10.3, the installation process warns you and you must quit the installation and upgrade your firmware before you can continue. Things will go more smoothly if you check and update your firmware (if needed) before installing the OS. Before installing Mac OS X version 10.3, you should make sure your Mac's firmware is up-to-date. This is a simple task that might prevent problems later. TIP To keep your Mac in top condition, you should check for firmware updates every so often, whether you are upgrading the OS or not. To update the firmware on your Mac, do the following steps:
Some firmware updates include a program that checks whether your Mac's firmware needs to be updated. If so, run the firmware installer. Typically, you launch the updater and then restart your machine while holding down the power button (until you hear a long tone). After the updater has finished, it restarts your Mac and will be using the updated firmware. TIP You can also check for firmware updates by using the Software Update control panel under Mac OS 9. Preparing a Volume for Mac OS XBecause Mac OS X is such a radical change from previous versions of the Mac OS, it can also be a bit more complicated to install. Before you begin installing it, there is a fundamental decision you need to make about how you are going to install the new OS.
To learn more about disk partitions, p. 786. Choosing a Disk Configuration OptionIdeally, you should install Mac OS X on a separate clean volume from where your current Mac OS 9 or earlier system lives. This enables you to more cleanly start your Mac in either Mac OS X or in a previous version of the operating system. This is advantageous because you can return to the older operating system in the event that something you need has not been ported to Mac OS X yet (such as a hardware device for which there is not yet a Mac OS X driver). This is somewhat complicated if you don't already have a system that has multiple volumes on which to install different versions of the OS. The other option, which is not as desirable, is to install Mac OS X on the same volume as the current version of the OS. The advantage to this is that you don't need to worry about having multiple volumes on your Mac. You can simply install Mac OS X over the current OS. When you do this, the Mac OS X Installer installs Mac OS X on the same volume on which you have the current version of the Mac OS installed. This will likely work fine, but things are cleaner and more organized if you install each version of the operating system on its own volume. If you already have more than one volume or one disk available, you should definitely install Mac OS X on a separate partition than the one that contains the current OS. If you have only one partition and aren't able to create multiple partitions, you must install Mac OS X on that partition. If either of these situations is the case for you, skip ahead to the section titled "Install Mac OS X." If you can partition one or more drives in your system, it is worth the effort to do so before installing Mac OS X. Before you get into the details of preparing a disk, you need to understand the following terms:
Using Mac OS 9 to Create Multiple Partitions on a DiskBecause this option enables you to start up your Mac in your current version of the Mac OS, you can always return to that version of the OS in the event that something you need does not work or does not work properly under Mac OS X. (This will most likely be necessary for any hardware devices for which you don't have Mac OS X compatible drivers.) CAUTION This section assumes you are installing Mac OS X on a system running some variation of Mac OS 9. If you are using an older version of the OS, the steps will be similar, although the details might be slightly different. NOTE To use your Mac OS 9 installation for the Classic environment, you must install Mac OS 9.2.2. When you partition a hard drive, you must initialize it, which means you destroy all the data on that disk. Before you partition a disk, make sure one of the following situations is true for you:
Because you will erase the drive you are going to partition, you must rebuild it from scratch. The best way to do this is to have an effective backup system you can use to restore the contents and configuration of the drive. If you have to install the original software from CDs when you rebuild the drive's data, the process takes much longer. NOTE For information on backing up Mac OS 9 machines, see my book The Mac OS 9 Guide. To partition your drive, do the following steps:
The volumes are now ready for your data. If you open them, you will see approximately the amount of free data you specified for the partition. NOTE You won't ever get exactly the size of the partition that you set; usually, it is just a tad smaller than what you asked the Mac to create. That occurs because the structure of the drive itself requires some data to store, thus reducing the amount of free space on that volume. Plus, there are some invisible files on every partition, and they take space to store. Installing Mac OS 9.2After you have created your partitions, install Mac OS 9.2 using the following steps:
After Mac OS 9.2 is configured properly, you are ready to install Mac OS X on another partition. TIP For help working with Mac OS 9, see my book The Mac OS 9 Guide. Installing Mac OS XAfter you have prepared a volume for Mac OS X, install it using the following steps:
TIP For best results, you should reformat the volume on which you are going to install Mac OS X using the HFS + with Journaling option.
To learn how to format a partition, p. 959.
To learn how to install Mac OS X version 10.3 with the Erase and Install option, p. 957. |