jc

The Panther CDs arrived in the post at just after 3pm, a full seven hours after TNT listed the package as being "Out for delivery". Despite only having owned my new PowerBook since Thursday, I had already downloaded/created a fair few files which needed backing up, so I immediately began the backup process.

I was in awe when I discovered my built-in CD writer had the capability to burn at 16x, twice the speed of my incredibly bulky SCSI LaCie external drive; burning the CDs using Toast was a breeze. A few files were too large to fit on a CD, so I resorted to transferring them over a 10mbit connection to the old computer. Despite my babysitting the brats downstairs for two hours while this file copy was going on, the file copy took ten minutes to complete even after I got back.

As I expected, the first Panther Install CD was labelled "Upgrade Disc", and would only install 10.3 over an existing 10.2 installation. This proved to be my downfall when I used the Panther Install CD to erase and repartition my hard drive; as the drive now no longer had a Mac OS X installation on it, the installer CD refused to let me install Panther. So, I restarted using my Software Restore CD, did a really basic installation of 10.2, then restarted again with the 10.3 CD and everything went well. One welcome screen later, and I was using Panther.

And so begins the long migration process.