HOWTO: Leopard install with Giga Designs G4 upgrade
One of my Macs is a 2001 vintage G4 733 with a dual 1.8GHz G4 upgrade. This should fit well within Leopard’s minimum system requirements, but the CPU upgrade I’m using presented a complication.
Without a kernel extension from Gigadesigns called ‘Giga-Meter’, MacOS recognizes the upgraded CPU’s as ‘PowerPC 60? 467MHz’ and therefore won’t update due to the new minimum requirement of 867MHz. This extension can’t be loaded from a DVD since you’re booted from the Leopard installation CD at the time you get denied.
I resolved this by doing the following (this is for fairly advanced users):
- Click OK to the dialog informing you your Mac isn’t fast enough, NOT RESTART
- You’ll be presented with an idle desktop, and will be able to choose ‘Terminal’ from the Utilities menu.
- Run ‘
kextload /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/System/Library/Extensions/Giga-Meter.kext‘. This extension loads into the leopard kernel without difficulty. - Quit Terminal, choose ‘System Profiler’ from the Utilities menu. It should now report your CPU at the proper speed.
- Relaunch the MacOS X Installer by choosing Terminal again from the Utilities menu and running the following:
/System/Installation/CDIS/Mac\ OS\ X\ Installer.app/Contents/MacOS/Mac\ OS\ X\ Installer /System/Installation/Packages/OSInstall.mpkg
(All on one line)
Leopard install will proceed normally.
Leopard also requires a CoreImage capable graphics card for a lot of its new stuff, so if people don’t have a Radeon 9600 Mac Edition in their upgraded G4’s, now’s the time to get one. This graphics card upgrade works fine under Leopard as well.
November 5th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
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.
November 5th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
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!
November 5th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
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!
November 5th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
Err, it didn’t render the word ‘tab-key’ evidently because I enclosed it in > and < symbols. that should be:
/Volumes/BOO’tab-key’/
November 6th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
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.
November 11th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
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.
February 2nd, 2008 at 11:04 pm
Wow, it sure is great that OS X is so user-friendly…
February 2nd, 2008 at 11:07 pm
SBB: This is a problem with Giga Designs.
February 16th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
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?
June 9th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
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.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:20 pm
the system requires a minimum 867 g4 to work, but, will a dual 500mhz g4 work with leopard?
September 6th, 2008 at 12:16 am
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
September 6th, 2008 at 1:00 am
Jim: I’ll dig up the CD for you asap. Could be a couple of days though as I’m out of town.
September 18th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
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?
October 2nd, 2008 at 12:04 pm
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)?