Which OS for CS2.3 on a G4 APG

[catgold930]

I have a 450MHz APG/Sawtooth single processor with 1.75 GB of memory (three 512MB cards are new.)
Two-month-old hard drive - Maxtor STM320080A
OS X on the 1st partition (98.18 GB)
OS 9 on the 2nd partition (29.92 GB.)

I have few peripherals at the moment; Sony monitor, Belkin USB hub, APC Backup RS 800.

I'm running Panther 10.3.9.

Shortly after the new drive was put in, Adobe CS 2.3 Premium was installed.
The two programs I use most often, InDesign and Photoshop, ran great for about a month.

Then I needed Acrobat and clicked on the Acrobat 8 app in the dock ... nothing. When I realized Acrobat 8 won't run on Panther, it was too late.
In the Read Me file on the Acrobat 8 disk, it said I would need 10.4.3 or higher.

The instructions for CS 2.3 Premium installation said to skip Acrobat 7 Pro and install (copy) Acrobat 8 after the Suite install.

I saw no options for a custom install on the set of 4 disks, so I proceeded to install everything and uninstalled 7 later, then installed 8 as instructed.

In the CS2 Read Me First file (on 1st installation disk) the recommended OSes for CS2.3 (for G4) are Mac OS X v.10.2.8 through v.10.3.8 (10.3.4 through 10.3.8 recommended.)
10.3.9 is never mentioned.

This is very confusing to me. I've done hours of Web searches, posted on two other sites, including Adobe's, and can get no definitive answers about running 10.3.9 on CS2.3.

I have already run an uninstall for Acrobat 8 and ferreted out and trashed all remnants of Acrobat 7 using Adobe's instructions from their site.

All my other CS2.3 applications, which were working fine, erred out after uninstalling Acrobat 8 and the rest of 7. After doing some research, I found that when installing from the Suite, some programs have shared files that can be deleted unintentionally after uninstalling individual apps.

I ended up deleting the entire CS2.3 Suite.

I am thinking of reformat my hard drive and buying/installing OS 10.4.X.

In short, my questions are:

• Do I reinstall CS2.3 on 10.3.9, even though it's not on the recommended OS list?

• Should I go to 10.4.X?
If so, which version would be most likely to run the CS2.3 Suite without major problems on a G4? (I imagine updates would be needed here, too. )

Yes, I realize there are never any guarantees.

Any suggestions or comments about something I've missed would be greatly appreciated. I use the CS2 components at my job, and sometimes need to bring work home.

A fix that will work without a major new hardware investment is important, too, but I will consider hardware upgrades is it makes sense. (I am considering a new processor and CD/DVD RW Drive.)

Thank you,

Cat

[Natobasso]

I think you're going to need more than 450MHz to comfortably run Tiger, though it doesn't mention processor speed on the Apple specs page for Tiger:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1514?viewlocale=en_US

Just don't go to CS3 for a while. It's got major install problems and conflicts with Tiger and Leopard. Some have no issues, but others can only use one CS3 app and not the rest.

[nixgeek]

Originally Posted by Natobasso

I think you're going to need more than 450MHz to comfortably run Tiger, though it doesn't mention processor speed on the Apple specs page for Tiger:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1514?viewlocale=en_US

Just don't go to CS3 for a while. It's got major install problems and conflicts with Tiger and Leopard. Some have no issues, but others can only use one CS3 app and not the rest.

Tiger should run fine on a 450 MHz "Sawtooth" Power Mac G4, so long as you give it enough RAM. You can also find some decent AGP video cards for it, but you have to make sure that they are Mac compatible and not just PC cards flashed to supposedly work with the Mac (the latter won't always work due to smaller memory sizes that only hold the PC firmware).

As for CS3 on that system, it might be too much for it regardless of the RAM (and that's assuming that it's even supported).

[Mikuro]

My guess is that Adobe's documentation does not mention 10.3.9 or 10.4.x only because they didn't exist when the docs were written. I've used Photoshop CS2 on 10.3.9 and various version versions of 10.4 with no issues. [Edit: Sorry, I'm mistaken. It was actually CS1 I used, not CS2.] I would recommend reinstalling CS2 on your current system, taking care not to get into the Acrobat mess again.

If you really need Acrobat 8, you can upgrade to Tiger. I never found processor speed to be a limiting factor when upgrading OS X. It's really more a matter of RAM, and you have plenty of RAM.

However, with 10.5 (Leopard), it's another matter: the minimum system requirements for 10.5 include an 867MHz or faster G4. Leopard would refuse to install on your system. But 10.4 should run just fine.

CS3 would probably be a bad idea. The official system requirements are too steep. Flash CS3 requires a 1GHz+ processor, and Photoshop CS3 requires a 64MB+ video card. I don't know if these are strictly required, but even if they would run on your system, I doubt they'd run well.

[fryke]

I'd clearly go 10.4.11, CS2 and as much RAM as you can get. The OS will let you run the latest additional tools (people will stop soon or have stopped developing for 10.3.9 already), CS2 is still decent enough for most jobs and more RAM can do wonders for Photoshop and Illustrator performance.

[nixgeek]

Originally Posted by fryke

...people will stop soon or have stopped developing for 10.3.9 already...

It's a shame that this is the case. 10.3.9 is still quite a useful OS.

[catgold930]

Thank you all for the helpful input on the OSX 10.3.9/Acrobat 8 dilemma.

I haven't yet reinstalled the CS2 because I realized I want to upgrade first (although I realized that's not usually necessary) and here's why:

My hard drive was formatted by a friend who said it probably wouldn't be a problem taking a 200MB drive and formatting it for the Sawtooth's limit, which is 128MB. I've since found out that drive formatted that way tend to fail sooner than not. So a new HD it is.

And after much deliberation and hours of research on upgrades for my machine, I decided that since older G4s are available pretty cheap these days, I'm looking for a G4 2002 to upgrade.

All G4s, starting with the 2002 (2nd round) of Quicksilver (800MHz, 933MHz and 1GHz) have no hard drive size limit and support dual display.

I'm looking into processors & hard drives, and still should be able to have what I need without going to a G5 or Intel. I won't go into the reasons I prefer not to go for a newer machine, but cost is just one of them.

With the processor upgrade and max. memory, I believe CS2 will run great, and yes, I'll probably go with OSX 10.4.11, but haven't decided yet. CS2 ran great with Panther, but yes, there's more freeware and other stuff out there for Tiger. I'll probably never go with Leopard, since it doesn't have a classic mode, and I occasionally run a classic app. And no, I won't go CS3. I use it at work and really like some of the changes, but CS2 has everything I need.

If I do stay with Panther, I'll certainly remember not to uninstall Acrobat 7!

Cat