12-01-2007, 05:13 AM

hi there,

a friend's parents got her an imac for xmas, its a 1.25GHz G4, 80gb, 1gb Ram (or near enough, not exactally sure on the spec), anyway it has a combo drive (cdrw/dvd reader).

The OS currently installed it Jaguar (OS X 10.2), so i thought i would upgrade to the latest OS for her, i took my Leopard (DVD-DL) copy round and the disc loaded but when i started the installer it said the hardware didn't meet the req. , which was ok, i would just install tiger instead.

so i got my Tiger (OS X 10.4 ... on a DVD) copy from home, when i put it in the imac it failed to read the disc? (the same dvd loads up fine on ym macbook, to be sure it wasnt the disc i downloaded another copy of tiger, just incase), now i know it can read DVD's because it could read the Leopard DVD-DL fine, luckily i had the tiger DVD copy that came with my macbook, but obviously i cuddnt use this as the imac drivers aren't included on the disc.

Now ive had a look on google for answers, and people mention that if your mac doesn't have a dvd drive you can get a cd version from apple, but cant seem to find anyone having the same problem as me, once again the problem is a imac with dvd drive cannot read tiger dvd install disc!

Any help much appreciated

Cheers,
Lee

12-01-2007, 09:58 AM

The G4 iMac is in perfect working condition and here's why.

Your copied version of Tiger was made from your restore disks, it seems to me. The restore disks are hardware specific so it will not work on the G4 iMac.

Your friend will have to buy a full retail install disk to be able to install it on her iMac. She can try eBay. She should look for a disk that is NOT for a specified Mac model and the disk, if shown in a picture should be black, not grey. This is the correct disk she should be looking out for.



BTW a Combo-Drive can read DVDs just fine: it simply cannot burn DVDs.

04-25-2008, 06:26 AM

Am looking for help with a problem that Apple can't resolve - as above. Running G4 Imac 1.25 GHZ with 768mb ram, DVD RW u10a, and Tiger 10.4.11. Am attempting to upgrade (legally) to Leopard, but my DVD drive won't read the disks. Apple have sent me a second copy but same problem. At Apples suggestion have tried to boot from disk but no luck. The drive will read other DVDs without a problem. Can anyone help?

04-25-2008, 07:23 AM

Hi Les,

I did manage to install Tiger on my girlfriends iMac, using the CD version.

The DVD Install version of Tiger could not be read by the iMac for some reason - even though it could read retail DVD movies fine.

I suggest you contact Apple, and request a CD version of the Installation Disk's.

Hope this helps.

12-27-2009, 04:28 PM

Hi Les,
on this URL Power Mac G4 Optical Drive (High Quality) Installation Video at OtherWorldComputing.com you can easily learn how to change or add an internal optical drive to your PowerMac and connect it instead of the original one. I just put in an old DVD-ROM I still had from an old PC. It installed Tiger without any problem. There is no way to install the Tiger DVD from the original DVD drive but I don't know why. Now I don't care any more... ;-)