Comments on: HOWTO: Leopard install with Giga Designs G4 upgrade

By: Bryant

Bryant — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 14:46:31 +0000

I am not what you call a “fairly advanced user” but I really need to upgrade to Leopard on my Giga-Designed Mac. It’s fast enough and has enough memory however, I’m not sure about the proper syntax for the Terminal command you posted. After I type ‘kextload, do I enter or space or just continue entering the volume information (/Volumes/Macintosh\HD/ etc. If I do space how many spaces are there?

By: Doug

Doug — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 16:04:53 +0000

Hi Brad, I need your help. I have a Mac Quicksilver, which has been upgraded to a dual processor Giga Design 1.4 mhZ. I have 1.5 gB RAM. I followed your instructions above for loading the Giga-meter.kext from the terminal commands, and that worked great- I was able to get the Leopard install disk to run. In other words, it tricks your system and tells it you hace the correct processor to proceed. However, I keep getting an installation failure from the DVD. Ihave tried it 3 times and get the same message “the base system package could not be verified.”

I’ve done a bit of research and found some people say this is due to faulty RAM, others say its because the processor is not compatible. Would it help if I put back the native 466 mhz processor for the leopard installation, then switch it out again after the system is installed? Should I get a new DVD (I bought mine on Amazon)?

By: David

David — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 02:10:19 +0000

Glad I found this information! I’m planning the jump to Leopard pretty soon myself. I’m currently running a gigadesign’s dual 1.6 ghz card that was sent to me as a free replacement for my dual 1.4 that burned out a while back. I’m a little concerned though as to where I’ll turn if this one burns out too eventually since gigadesigns appears to be out of business now. Any suggestions guys?

By: brad

brad — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 05:00:45 +0000

Jim: I’ll dig up the CD for you asap. Could be a couple of days though as I’m out of town.

By: Jim

Jim — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 04:16:55 +0000

Brad, I’m wondering if you can help. I gave a buddy of mine an older G4 mac, with a Gigadesign dual 1.8 installed. He did some kind of firmware update and reverted the computer back to dual 400 hz. or something like that. He also LOST the giga designs 7447 installer.

Any chance you have it, or can steer me to where I can find it on the net?

thanks.

jim

By: aldo

aldo — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 17:20:21 +0000

the system requires a minimum 867 g4 to work, but, will a dual 500mhz g4 work with leopard?

By: Josh

Josh — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:01:00 +0000

Steve and Paul -
Your posts were awhile ago, but just to let you know I solved the problem after having the same exact issue with my Sawtooth shutting down after reboot, immediately after a successful install of Leopard. The problem seems to occur when you upgrade the OS. Once I erased and installed, everything worked perfectly. I suppose archive and install would work as well, in case it’s been awhile since you last archived your data.

By: Paul

Paul — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 22:18:05 +0000

Steve, I’m having the exact same problem. Leopard installs just fine but when I try to reboot it just shuts down after a few seconds. Mine is a sawtooth with a 1ghz upgrade. I’m stumped, did you ever solve your problem?

By: brad

brad — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 03:07:29 +0000

SBB: This is a problem with Giga Designs.

By: SBB

SBB — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 03:04:59 +0000

Wow, it sure is great that OS X is so user-friendly…

By: steve

steve — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 17:53:24 +0000

Thank you for the installation help. I was able to install Leopard on my G4-400 upgraded to a Giga Designs G4 1.8 but nothing I try will boot the Leopard OS either on the original ATA bus or my installed Acard sata controller. The computer shuts down everytime I try to boot off the installed hard drive. I have tried going back to the original video card from my current ATI Mac Pro but that didn’t solve the problem either. As well Giga Designs doesn’t answer their tech support email. I wish I had purchased the CPU card from another company. I even tried to manually install the Giga Designs extension for the processor speed but still no luck. Anyone else have this kind of total failure to boot off of a Giga Designs processor card? My G4 PowerMac has 2 gig of ram/ 128 meg ATI video card. All HD partitions are set below 130 gig where Leopard has been installed.

By: Faster

Faster — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 18:31:49 +0000

I need help. I have done the 1-4 steps. now in the system profile the cpu speed is right. but I cant restart the installation. I find OSInstall.mpkg in /System/Installation/Packages/OSInstall.mpkg but when run it a “Permission denied” message was show.

By: brad

brad — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 16:45:48 +0000

Err, it didn’t render the word ‘tab-key’ evidently because I enclosed it in > and < symbols. that should be:

/Volumes/BOO’tab-key’/

By: marc

marc — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 16:45:41 +0000

cool, just went into /Volumes/BOOT/System/Library/Extensions and did
‘kextload Giga-Meter.kxt’
and it worked.
now I’m about to install Leopard, thankyou!

By: brad

brad — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 16:43:27 +0000

I notice you’re using ‘/Volumes/BOOT HD/’ - it’s not clear to me whether you’re using ‘BOOT’ or ‘BOOT HD’ as the drive name or not, but if you are, you need to escape the space between BOOT and HD like so:

/Volumes/BOOT\ HD/System/Library/Extensions/Giga-Meter.kext

Note the backslash.

Alternately, use the tab key to complete the names of the directories, i.e. /Volumes/BOO/ etc.

Second alternative, cd to the directory first, then just run ‘kextload Giga-Meter.kext’

Let me know!

By: marc

marc — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 16:34:40 +0000

hi,

I was glad that I found your tip, but I’m getting this error
kextload: /Volumes/BOOT HD/System/Library/Extensions/Giga-Meter.kext: no such bundle file exists
can’t add kernel extension /Volume/BOOT HD/System/Library/Extensions/Giga-Meter.kext (file access/permissions)

I changed the name from /Volumes/Macintosh to /Volumes/Boot because my boot disk is named BOOT.

maybe you know what I did wrong?
I pray you can…..

marc

surely the extension Giga-Meter.kext is in directory /Volumes/BOOT/System/Library/Extensions
if I do a ‘ls’ there, it is listed.