HELP Please

I've been using Macs since 1987 or so but I'm in a bind now that I can't seem to find my way out of.

Long story short - I bought 4 Power PC OS 10.5 Minis off eBay for a multimedia journalism master's thesis project. Three of the machines are flawless, the fourth came without a username or password.

I have 10.6 install disks but no 10.5 disks.

From Carbon Copy Cloner I have both a disk image of one of the good Mini's drives and an exact copy of that same entire hard disk. Both of these are stored on my MacPro. Of course I also have the three other Minis that boot.

In an attempt to get the problem Mini to boot I hooked it up in Terminal Disk mode to my MacPro and trashed the Mini's entire hard drive contents. Possibly a mistake.

Now when I boot the Mini I get either a flashing question mark or, if I hold down the Option/Alt key, two rectangles, one with a curved arrow and one with a straight arrow pointing to the right.

I've tried zapping the PRam, holding down the X key, holding down the C key, etc., etc., ad infinitum.

If anyone can help I'd be very, very grateful.

Thanks so much.

-Stretch

Stretch Photography (stills)
http://VeryStetchy.com (multimedia blog)
StretchPhoto on Vimeo (motion)

Since 10.6 was never released for PPC hardware, naturally don't expect to be able to use them. I take it none of these came with their original discs? And are you absolutely certain these are all PPC Mac minis????

What you could try doing is connect the "bad" mini to a "good" one using Firewire and boot the "bad" one in target disc mode. Then clone the drive over from the "good" one to the "bad" one.

lifeisabeach said:

clone the drive over from the "good" one to the "bad" one.

Click to expand...

thats what i would try first.

Yeah, remove the drive from the machine, hook it as an external to your machine, and copy the clone over to that drive.

Your 10.6 discs are useless for those machines...can you chase the seller to see if they have their 10.5 discs?

And too late advice-don't buy machines without the discs! (Especially Windoze)

No no no no! Don't remove the drive just to clone it! Target Disk Mode bypasses the need to do that!!!