Member Avatar for greg30808

I upgraded from 10.3.2 to 10.3.3. After the upgrade I restarted.
The monitor had not given me any problems prior to the upgrade. The monitor was fine before I restarted. Since I restarted I get nothing from my B&W G3 on the monitor.
The computer beeps. The LED on the monitor turns green. I get the usual message "DMS OFF MODE". Then the LED turns yellow. When I boot from the instalation CD I can tell the CD is still running so I suppose that the computer is booting, but nothing on the monitor. If I turn the monitor off, when I turn it back on I get a momentary green LED and a message "DPMS SUSPEND MODE".

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by kc0arf

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Following 's report of a post-upgrade display failure and 's reminder that older PowerPC Macs can be touchy after updates, here is a short, practical checklist to diagnose and recover a headless Mac after an OS upgrade. The steps are ordered from least to most invasive and assume no loss of your data.

Start with simple firmware and safe-boot checks: reset PRAM/NVRAM (hold Command-Option-P-R at startup until you hear the chime twice), then try Safe Boot (hold Shift). Safe Boot disables non-Apple kernel extensions; if video returns there, the problem is almost certainly a driver/extension. If no video, try an alternate monitor or cable and, if available, FireWire Target Disk Mode (hold T) to access files from another Mac.

If Safe Boot suggests an extension issue, use single-user or the installer CD to move suspect graphics drivers out of the extensions folder and force the system to rebuild caches. From single-user mode (Command-S) you can run:

/sbin/fsck -fy
/sbin/mount -uw /
mkdir /tmp/disabled_kexts
mv /System/Library/Extensions/<suspect-driver>.kext /tmp/disabled_kexts
touch /System/Library/Extensions
reboot

Replace <suspect-driver>.kext with any third-party or vendor-named kexts you find. If you are unsure which files to move, copy them to a safe location first rather than deleting.

If the above does not help, identify the graphics card model (System Profiler or by opening the case) and confirm driver/OS support before changing OS versions. On older machines, the practical solutions are driver rollback, removing the incompatible kexts, or using a different, supported graphics card. Always make a full backup before manipulating system files or swapping hardware.

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Member Avatar for greg30808

It turns out that the graphics card in my B&W G3 is not compatable with OS10.3. :sad:
If I boot into OS9 and then into OS10.3 then the monitor works, but I can not start directly into OS10.3 when my previous boot was into OS10.3. An Apple product specilist helped me figured this out.

My only option other that going throug OS9 each time I boot is to buy another graphics card. One is on the way.

Member Avatar for kc0arf

Hi,

That can happen from time to time during upgrades... especially with the older hardware that you and I have (Powerbook G3 Lombardi). Sorry to hear of the grief, but yes, that is the likely cause.

When you are done with OS X on this machine, you might want to consider YellowDogLinux. YDL is snappy on the older hardware, and it is along the lines of RedHat that the Intel people work with.

Christian

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