problems reading "installation tome" - Mac OS 9.2.1 3

[artguy]

I'm helping someone upgrade there beige G3 from 8.5 to 9.2.1. She has the full install version of 9.2.1. The problems states:

Problems were encountered reading the source file "Installation Tome." Installation cannot continue.

Before installing the new OS, we put in new RAM and added a USB card. The USB card, I understand, cannot be used with any OS under 9. (Not sure if I should have waited to install that or not.)

What could cause this problem with the OS installation?

Bob

 

[jimbopalmer]

USB is usable in 8.6 as well. I tried to remain child-like, all I acheived was childish.

 

[jimoblak]

The error: problems reading "installation tome" - Mac OS 9.2.1 seems to be that your install CD is not being read correctly. 'tome' refers to a file on the install CD. Can the CD be dusted/cleaned? Some CD-drives are picky with dust and scratches. Could you burn a duplicate CD on another computer and install from the duplicate CD?

You may also want to verify the hard drive, temporarily pull the USB card, and return the old RAM for the OS installation. Put the new stuff in after the OS is safely installed.

 

[qednick]

I recently had a CD that had gone bad and all my Macs were giving problems reading from it. However, after some lengthy searching and messing around I actually managed to make a good copy of it by using a utility for WinPCs called "TransMac". Using this utility I made a disk image of the Mac CD and saved it to the PC's hard disk. I then used another shareware program called "CDRWIN" which can write Mac format CD's from such a disk image file.
So you need to first test the disk on another Mac to see if it's Mac or CD specific. If it's the CD and you can't get hold of a replacement then perhaps you could use the same method as I did to make a 'good' copy of the bad disk.
Incidentally, this method will also work with bootable disks such as your OS install disk.

At the end of the day you need to remember that it takes hell of a lot to destroy the contents of a CD. Minor scratches, etc can cause trouble reading CDs but the data is usually still very secure. It's just a case of finding a work around to extract that valid data.

[sup]programmer (prog'ram'er), n A hot-headed, anorak wearing, pimple-faced computer geek.[/sup]​

 

[Jasen]

Generally, this is what it says; it can't read the CD, whether bad CD or bad drive. But I have seen on occasion bad RAM cause this same error. Try the install with both of the RAM DIMMS separately. If it errors on one, but works on the other, then you know one is bad. If it works fine with either of them alone, but gives the error when both are installed, this would indicate the 2 DIMMS are not 100% compatible with each other. ________
Remember, you're unique... just like everyone else.

 

[artguy]

There did happen to be a scratch on the original Mac OS 9 disc. I used CloneCD on the PC (since I didn't have any of the other programs you guys suggested), made an image file, and made a duplicate of the Mac OS CD and used it to install the 9.

It worked great!

Thank you for everyones help.

bob

 

[qednick]

No probs Bob, I don't know what it is about the standard Mac CD-ROM drives but they just don't like disks with scratches on!

[sup]programmer (prog'ram'er), n A hot-headed, anorak wearing, pimple-faced computer geek.[/sup]​

 

[pmactekker]

For future reference, check out Tome Viewer (currently version 1.3d3), which you can find by searching for Macintosh software at either

http://www.tucows.com/

or

http://www.versiontracker.com/

.

I have used this software for about 3 years, and it performs exactly as expected.

Good luck!