Help! Installation Nightmare!

Question

I just recieved an iMac g4 from my brother. It has an 800mhz processor and has 512 mb of ram. I recieved the computer with osx 10.2 but i want to upgrade to 10.4 tiger. I have the tiger install disk and i put it in the computer and click reset as the installation prompts me to. When the computer resets, suddenly a grey screen with numbers and letters everywhere appear and on the back of that screen is a translucent sign with a large power button on it that says reset your computer by shutting it down and then turn it back on. I did this, but no luck and the same screen appeared....I don't understand why this is happening. Please help!

Answer 1

The screen you mention seeing, indicates a Kernel Panic.
And in an older machine that had previously only ran older
versions of OS X prior to 10.3, and/or OS 9.2.2, this may
be due to a problem with the installed RAM chip quality.
That would be a likely first thing to consider; but there are
other possible causes of a kernel panic. At least you have
not installed the OS X 10.4 yet, at this point, have you?
• Resolving Kernel Panics:
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/kernelpanics.html
• Technical Note TN2063: Understanding and Debugging Kernel Panics
http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/technotes/tn2002/tn2063.html
These two web sites have a fair amount of information on them to help
to learn how to deal with Kernel Panic issues, and causes.
• iMac G4 Take-apart for Drive and Ram upgrades:
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/systems/imacg4/imacg4takeapart.html
Is the OS X 10.4 installation disc, a retail black label version with
white/silver X in the middle of it; or is is a gray-label disc which
was part of a software set originally sold with another computer?
Which iMac G4 model do you have? Since there were several with a
few different processor models, they each have differences, too. It
would appear both the listed 800MHz models use PC133 RAM...
Since the computer shipped with a 256MB chip in the factory-installed
RAM slot, and nothing in the user-accessible lower SO-DIMM RAM slot,
there is not enough RAM in the original location, to run OS X 10.4. But
you could remove the bottom plate of the computer, and take out the
RAM chip in that location, and then put the plate back on, and restart
the computer (without the install disc in the computer) to see how it
acts. In Jaguar 10.2.8, the computer would probably work fine. In 10.4
the situation may be quite different and a better quality 512MB or 1GB
chip could be put into the lower slot (assuming a 256MB was added)
and it may work properly, even for Tiger 10.4.
Did the computer include the original software set of discs? One of
them includes an Apple Hardware Test on it. You may seek to test
the computer to see if anything comes up from a test interval.
Hopefully the matter only involves upgrading the RAM chips.
Good luck & happy computing!