08-08-2005, 09:55 PM

Hi

I have a slight problem with one of my ibooks. It's a second hand one I need to intall mac os x on clean, my original disks are being iffy (cleaning them hasn't helped sadly) but I do have a copy of Tiger - problem with this is it's a DVD and this is an old ibook with only a CD drive.

I tried searching but couldn't find anything about remotely installing the OS and removing the harddrive into another the other ibook isn't an option. About the only other thing I can think of is using my USB hdd enclosure, which also has a problem that it's not made for laptop harddrives and secondly I have no clue if I could install to it on an ibook that already has Tiger on, that I can't afford to bugger up with any accidents that could occur trying.

So, is there any way I can install Tiger onto my old ibook using my linux desktop and it's DVD drive, over my home network?

08-08-2005, 10:08 PM

I can't speak for a Linux installation, but you can install from one Mac to another using Target mode.

I just did this on a second-hand iBook that had only a CD drive. You'll need to connect both machines with a Firewire cable, which is available at Best Buy, Fry's, or most electronics or computer stores.

There are two ways of doing this; I prefer this method:

Put the Tiger DVD in the machine you want to load the OS from. Reboot that machine and when you get the bootup sound, press and hold the T key until you see a Firewire logo on the screen.

Reboot the machine you want to install Tiger on; after the bootup sound, hit the Option key, and you'll be presented with options of boot devices. You should see the Tiger DVD in the list. Select that, and start the installation process.

Sorry I can't help on the Linux side.

08-11-2005, 07:13 AM

Originally Posted by caribiner23

I can't speak for a Linux installation, but you can install from one Mac to another using Target mode.

Thanks for the information, I should be able to do that once I get the lead from a friend.

08-11-2005, 04:36 PM

I just have to say thank you for this post. I have been looking for this for awhile.

08-11-2005, 05:10 PM

Well I couldn't get a lead off a friend in the end and buying them is £13 in my town (despite that they cost less than a £1 online, but I was in a hurry to sort it out before my holiday) and I found another way to do it.

Swapped out my internal dvd drive and hooked it up to the external hdd enclosure that I had, drive didn't fit obviously but all I needed was to connect ide and power cables without the case on it all. Then you can hold down option button when booting the ibook and it should give you the choice to boot from the external drive (which was a USB 2 device). Wouldn't work with my 10.3 discs, but it installed my retail version of Tiger DVD fine that way. I'm so happy, just ruined slightly by my realisation that my cd drive is failing on the laptop but oh well, a decent running OS is very good to see.