Problems installing Tiger on a G3

I recently acquired an old iMac G3 "Blue Dalmatian" It’s a power PC Mac that was originally running OS 9.2. Found it in a gathering dust at work and when I booted it up it asked me for an admit login password, obviously I didn’t know it so I searched long and hard and came across the original software and paperwork as well as other applications including Photoshop. Managed to get in to the system by booting from CD then installed OS X 10.0.3 over the top of 9.2.

Wanted to use this mac as a web browsing tool and something to tinker about with. I have decided that the OS on there is way too dated to use as it doesn’t seem to support Safari and the current web browser on it IE 5.0 is obsolete and basically can’t be upgraded any more.

So I’ve decided to install a more modern operating system and as I have Tiger disks lying around have been trying to install OS X 10.4
Now to the problem!

The iMac is a 500 MHz PowerPC 750cx (G3) processor, it has a 40gb hard drive and 680mb ram. It should run a striped tiger fine, but I have the install disks on DVD, the G3 has a slot loading CD-RW drive.

Got hold of a USB and Fire Wire DVD drive and tried the install that way. It read the disks fine, asked me to restart the computer to perform the install which I did. Unfortunately it just loaded back into OS X 10, so I made the assumption that the drive I’m using is not bootable.

Not giving up there I got out my Mac Book G5 that is an Intel based machine and I linked the two up using Target Disk Mode.

FireWire target disk mode allows a Macintosh computer with a FireWire port (the target computer) to be used as an external hard disk connected to another computer (the host). Once a target computer is started up as a FireWire hard disk and is available to the host computer, you can copy files to or from that volume.

Tried the install this way and it could see the hard disk just fine but would not allow me to write to it. So I performed a GUID Partition Table on the disk which made it writable. So to install Mac OS X 10.4 on the disk, you must partition the drive to match the native partition scheme for your computer's processor type that became clear. Trouble is that made the iMac G3s hard drive and the newly installed Tiger only viewable through my Intel Mac Book G5 and NOT available as a bootable drive on the G3 Power PC. Am I doing something wrong?

I’m running out of ideas to resolve this and as I know it is entirely possible to run tiger on a Power PC as G4s are exactly that. It got me thinking that maybe my install disks (THAT CAME WITH MY INTEL G5) are only for my Mac Book. Would having a retail copy of Tiger make any difference as it should install on both a Power PC and Intel based Systems?

Also Would I have the same compatibility problem regardless of the Copy of Tiger I’m using in regards to target disk mode and using partitions on an Intel based Mac?

Any insight would be very welcome,

Cheers.

Ok. There is a way, a touch long winded but it can be done. GUID is Intel only so scrap that.
Firstly, you need to make a disc image of Tiger on your Macbook.
Put the Tiger disc (generic I assume) into the Macbook and open Disc Utility.
From there select "new disc image" and created a read only .dmg on the desktop.
Next connect the G3 via Firewire, and start up in target disc mode.
Now, from Disc Utility repartition the G3 drive into 2 sectors (both MacOS extended), and this is where you will lose some usable HD space depending on how big a partition you need for Tiger (2.8 Gig I think). Once this is done select "restore" in Disc Utility, drag the .dmg image into the top panel, and selected the small partition to restore to. This should take around 20 minutes.
Eject the G3, switch it off, and then back on, and bingo! It should start up on the installer and about 40 minutes later a fully working Tiger install on the G3 at the cost of a few gig of usable space, which is a little bit of a pain, but better than a slow or useless G3.
You will end up having 2 HD icons on the desktop, but you can eject the one that has the installer on.

I hope that helps! It's longwinded, but works for sure.

Thanks for that, will give it a shot tonight and let you know.

NOTE: Thread moved to appropriate forum. Not just anything goes in Anything Goes

Discs that cam with machine ONLY work on those machines. Your copy of Tiger that came with your G5 will only work on G5 machines.

By the way, G5 is PowerPC - they have IBM PowerPC G5 processors.
Intel machine use Intel Core processors.

G5 is NOT Intel.

Alexis My MacBook is an Intel Machine Apple - MacBook - White - Technical Specifications - All the specs for the white 13-inch MacBook notebook

So what you saying is the install discs that came with it will only install on Intel machines? I installed Tiger on the G3 but I couldn’t boot to it I thought because of the GUID partition which is for Intel Macs.

Are you saying even doing what Kevriano suggests with my discs still won’t work?

It depends on the Tiger disc. If it's a generic disc, with a black face and silver X you'll be fine. If the disc says G5 or any specific machine it may not. That said, if you're making a disc image it may!
If it's the latter PM me, and I'll show you another way that can't be discussed here