Reformatting with CD?

Hellooo, Ive looked far and wide for the answer to this, and Ive only found a few topics on the entire internet, and they werent very helpful at all.

I have an eMac 10.3.9 and a Macbook 10.4.9 - both of them I THINK i have their Disk Utility (etc.) CDs. I cant find them now, but if I really looked for them, I could probably find them. Problem is, I dont think they'll help.

Someone upgraded to a new mac and gave me an eMac 10.4.9. Its very nice, buts its LOOOAADDEDDD with crap and it NEEDS to be reformatted, as its ridiculously slow right now. I dont need ANYTHING on it, but I do want to keep it 10.4 (thats mainly why I want it).
Problem is, the guy who gave it to me can't find any of the CDs that came with it.

Plain and simple, is there anyway to reformat this computer back to its original state.. including 10.4? I dont know I can use my Macbook CD or if theres a place to download the software, etc etc.


thanks

Downloading it would be illegal, so no on the downloading question. You also have to use either a retail disc or the disc that came with the Mac. In other words, you can't use the grey discs that came with your MB.

Without the discs the only way would be to use target disc mode to create 2 partitions and load a .dmg image of Tiger into a small partition, restart the eMac and let it load from that.
Of course you'll need a .dmg Tiger image, not legal, but out there if you know where to look.

Wow, there's no other way? Im surprised Apple wouldnt give you one (even for a small fee...).

Im not into this doing the whole downloading thing but.... Well hypothetically if I did somehow magically acquire a .dmg tiger image, couldnt I just burn it onto a CD and then... do something? Im not sure, but partitioning sounds like I would be using half a mac?

TheWarHam said:

Im not into this doing the whole downloading thing but.... Well hypothetically if I did somehow magically acquire a .dmg tiger image, couldnt I just burn it onto a CD and then... do something? Im not sure, but partitioning sounds like I would be using half a mac?

Click to expand...

We can't, won't and shouldn't discuss that here.

You might be able to contact Apple to get replacement discs assuming the machine came with 10.4 and if not, if Apple still ships older versions of OS X replacement discs.

Or buy a generic Tiger disc from eBay.

Alright, thanks a lot. I guess Ill be calling up Apple to see if they would be so kind if possible to send it (as it did come with 10.4), and if not it seems ill sacrifice what looks to be 40 bucks on ebay.
I assumed there would be no other way, but I thought Apple might let you download it somehow, but eh if it wont happen it wont.

Be careful what you buy on eBay as you do need the black coloured full retail install DVD which goes for around $100.00. The grey model specific discs will land you right back where you are now as they are built with blockers to prevent use on anything other than the model they were released with.

You do not give the specs of the eMac. Earlier models were released with a CD drive only and cannot load a DVD. Apple did release Tiger OS X.4 on CDs for these eMacs, but they are extremely scarce.

Why not create a new admin user then delete the original user then run the combo updater and see if it regains its speed. That way you do not have to reformat