Booting from an external DVD

I have an G5 powerpc iMac and would like to extend its useful life. This has a CD drive, but not a DVD, from which it will boot.

I have played around with Linux a bit but am certainly no expert. I have a dvd for OpenSUSE 11 PPC which my external DVD reader recognises but the iMac won’t boot from it.

My question, therefore, is whether there is any way that I can make the iMac boot from an external DVD?

G'day and welcome to the forums.

As a rule of thumb G5's cannot boot from a USB external optical drive. You will need a Firewire optical drive to boot from alas. Intel iMacs will boot from USB external drives/

harryb2448 said:

G'day and welcome to the forums.

As a rule of thumb G5's cannot boot from a USB external optical drive. You will need a Firewire optical drive to boot from alas. Intel iMacs will boot from USB external drives/

Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing the knowledge. Does the apple mention such information about the OS.

Nothing to do with the OS ~ to do with the pre-Intel hardware. USB even USB2 is simply too slow to boot from the external optical drive. Hence the need for a Firewire external optical drive.

Thanks Harry,

I hope dbb1960 got the answer.