Dual OSes on Mac... help!

July 30, 2005 11:32 PM

Complicated/complex (to me) OS X Tiger printer problem inside.

I have a friend who has a very expensive color printer that won't work with Tiger (he found out after upgrading from Panther). He's spoken to Epson and Apple and they both say it's not supported and won't work. He checked around on the Apple forums and found many people with the same issues. GIMP and other things haven't solved the problem.

He now has to downgrade to Panther as he uses the printer to make proofs for his design clients.

I'm wondering if it's possible for him to buy an inexpensive drive and install Panther on it--then, still create on Tiger where everything he needs is and then just email himself the file and reboot into the other drive when he has to print. (Or maybe he can boot to the external and see the internal as a secondary drive?)

Is this possible? If so, how is it done?

I just had dinner with him and explained it thusly (we're both OS X newbies). Please clarify as best you can where I went wrong:

He has a dual powermac g5.

-- he should buy a small drive (say, 20 gigs or something) -- any kind of regular internal drive should do but he should check his g5 manual.

-- install the drive in the g5 and install panther on it choosing "erase and install".

-- then, when he boots he'll be asked which OS he wants to boot into (tiger or panther).

-- choose tiger, do you work that you need done.

-- reboot into panther and print.

Is this all correct?

His questions, which I couldn't verify:

-- will the system ask which drive he wants to boot to or does he have to do something ahead of booting (holding down a key or what) to tell it how to boot?

-- does he just have to install panther and his printer software and nothing else? ie, if he creates something in quark on tiger, will he be able to run quark from the tiger drive when he's in panther and print? or does he need to reinstall quark and any other apps on the panther drive?

-- will any normal internal drive do? it doesn't have to be mac specific, right?

What other issues should he consider? He wants to buy the drive asap as he really needs to print.

Assuming his research is correct and the printer will not work from Tiger is the best solution or can you offer something better?

posted by dobbs to computers & internet (16 comments total)

(Or maybe he can boot to the external and see the internal as a secondary drive?)

Yes.

-- will the system ask which drive he wants to boot to or does he have to do something ahead of booting (holding down a key or what) to tell it how to boot?

Go to the System Prefrences tab in the dock (also located in the Applications folder if you've removed it from the dock) and select Startup Disk. This lets you choose the other disk for the next boot. When he want to switch back, choose the primary disk in the same Startup Disk window.

-- does he just have to install panther and his printer software and nothing else? ie, if he creates something in quark on tiger, will he be able to run quark from the tiger drive when he's in panther and print? or does he need to reinstall quark and any other apps on the panther drive?

The only hangup is if later versions of Quark (or other applications) fail to run on the older OS, which would be rare and odd. Still, keep a lookout of updated Epson drivers.
posted by fatllama at 11:47 PM on July 30, 2005

will the system ask which drive he wants to boot to or does he have to do something ahead of booting (holding down a key or what) to tell it how to boot?

Hold down the Option key on boot. This will cause the Mac to scan internal and external hard drives, optical drives, and Net Boot (network) volumes for a "blessed" System Folder (OS 9) or System (OS X) folder. Pick the volume and press Return. This volume becomes the boot device and the Mac will start from it.

Additionally, you can specify a startup volume in the Startup Disk system preference. Rebooting will start the Mac from the selected volume.

does he just have to install panther and his printer software and nothing else? ie, if he creates something in quark on tiger, will he be able to run quark from the tiger drive when he's in panther and print? or does he need to reinstall quark and any other apps on the panther drive?

If there is a hardware or software copy protection mechanism for Quark, he may likely need to install Quark and any supporting copy protection components. Very few applications actually need to install anything special into the System folder, beyond copy protection-related items.

If necessary items are missing from the Application Support library folder, they will likely be reinstalled on restarting the application. If not, reinstallation of the application, or copying over of Support folder items from one boot drive to the other should suffice.

will any normal internal drive do? it doesn't have to be mac specific, right?

Power Mac G5 towers do not use IDE. Any capacity of SATA-I hard drive (also called plain "SATA") will do fine.

An additional note: You can buy any external Firewire hard drive and boot the computer from this, after installing Panther. I'm mentioning it as an external drive may have more utility than an internal drive, albeit at a slightly higher cost.
posted by Rothko at 11:51 PM on July 30, 2005

Oh, yeah, holding down the option key while booting up should allow one to select which disk to boot from, bypassing the Startup Disk method above. List of other Mac OS X boot keys.
posted by fatllama at 11:51 PM on July 30, 2005

these guys have you covered.
posted by pmbuko at 11:54 PM on July 30, 2005

You may want to see if the Epson printer in question is supported by PrintFab. It fills a lot of gaps left by the default CUPS/gimp-print drivers.
posted by holgate at 12:55 AM on July 31, 2005

The G5 takes a Serial ATA (SATA) hard disk, not a normal IDE/ATA one. They aren't Mac specific, and can be bought relatively cheaply.

They're fairly easy to install (PDF). The cables for the second drive come pre-installed, and there's nothing to take apart beyond opening the side door.

(An external FireWire drive will also work, but not a USB one)
posted by cillit bang at 3:12 AM on July 31, 2005

Thanks for all the answers, folks! I'll pass the thread along and see if he has any quetions.
posted by dobbs at 7:36 AM on July 31, 2005

Just to be certain, these are the correct drives, right? Those or *any* external firewire drive?
posted by dobbs at 8:21 AM on July 31, 2005

Just to be certain...
Yes. Those drives should work. For additional confirmation, see the similarity in this explicitly g5 mac-compatible list.
posted by fatllama at 8:45 AM on July 31, 2005

...and any external firewire drive.
posted by fatllama at 8:46 AM on July 31, 2005

Is the problem just drivers or will the computer not even recognize the USB device? If it's a driver issue, in addition to checking the gimp-print stuff (which you have), I'd also check out the Foomatic drivers. We use them at work to some success.

1. Check the Epson list and see if his printer is supported.
2. Generate a PPD file for the printer.
3. Install the OS X specific packages.

It's at least worth a shot. (and I also agree with what other people have said about dual booting)
posted by sbutler at 12:02 PM on July 31, 2005

If he has an iPod with enough space (4-5 Gb) on it, he can use that as a bootable external drive. If it's already in Mac format, he won't have to erase the songs already on it.

Cautions: You have to connect the iPod via Firewire to boot from it. I believe the iPod must be in HFS+ format to make it a bootable drive. This should only be temporary until drivers are produced for the printer since the drive inside the iPod wasn't designed for the heavy duty cycles involved in being a boot drive.
posted by forrest at 9:33 PM on July 31, 2005

Thanks again, all. I've sent him the thread and he found it most useful. sbutler, his printer is on that list so he'll try that first, no doubt, and head for the drive if it fails. Forrest, he doesn't have an iPod, unfortunately.
posted by dobbs at 10:15 PM on July 31, 2005

Ugh. Okay, so he bought another drive (internal) and installed Panther and he can boot to it and print from it... but it's not letting him access his files on the Tiger drive.

The only way he seems to be able to get them is to place them in the Panther drive's "drop box".

He has turned on file sharing. He has set permissions to "read/write".

What are we not understanding here?

And, in addition, has setting his documents folder to read/write for anyone opened his system up to others on the 'net?

Thanks!
posted by dobbs at 11:06 AM on August 2, 2005

Okay, what your needs to do next is:

1. Make sure that the "short" user account name on the Panther drive is the same user account name under on the Tiger drive

By this, I mean the user account name after /Users. For example, on my computer, I have /Users/reynolda. My user account name in this example is reynolda.

So I would make sure that the Panther and Tiger drives are both logging into the same reynolda account before proceeding to the next step.

2. When booted into Panther, open up a Finder window and navigate to the top-most level, so that you can see all the internal and external hard drives, CDs, etc. connected to the computer.

Click once on the Tiger hard drive to select it. Pull down the following menus: File -> Get Info...

Within the Get Info window for the Tiger hard drive, place a checkmark next to the text "Ignore ownership on this drive".

Reboot the computer, starting the computer from the Panther hard drive. This applies the ownership-"ignorance" change.

Once this is done, you should then be able to access the entire Tiger hard drive. If the user account names match, you should be able to read and write files to the Tiger hard drive without worrying about changing ownership once you boot back into the Tiger drive.

You don't need to re-check the "ignore ownership" flag unless you have multiple users using your computer, in which case you would want to re-check this flag to ensure no one else can make unwanted file deletions, modifications, or additions on the Tiger drive.
posted by Rothko at 11:44 AM on August 2, 2005

I second Rothko. To emphasize a point he/she didn't, checking an "Ignore permissions on this volume" only leaves you vulnerable to other *registered* users on the machine. It will not, by itself, open up these files for random net access.
posted by fatllama at 2:00 PM on August 2, 2005