Upgrade from Mac 9 on a G4

daavem · Dec 24, 2009

Hey,

I recently brought myself an old G4 tower PC but I am unable to make the system boot from a Mac OS X 1.5.6 disc. Once the machine has booted in Mac 9.2 it will play music discs and reconize various discs but it wont allow me to boot from disc.

I've tried holding the C key and the Apple key and C and holding down Alt... But nothing seems to work.

Any help will be greatly accepted.

Thanks, David.

harryb2448 · Dec 24, 2009

G'day and welcome to the forums.

First off sounds like you have a system install disc from another machine. These discs are very much model specific and will work only with the machine they came with. If the machine has never run any form of OS X you need to update the firmware from the Apple web site before attempting to load OS X.

After you do this, David, suggest looking for a later OS that X.1, say Tiger OS X.4. You need to purchase the full retail install DVD, assuming the machine has a combo reader. If it is a CD only, then perhaps OS X.3 Panther as CDs of Tiger are pretty rare.

Keep us posted?

daavem · Dec 24, 2009

harryb2448 said:
G'day and welcome to the forums.

First off sounds like you have a system install disc from another machine. These discs are very much model specific and will work only with the machine they came with. If the machine has never run any form of OS X you need to update the firmware from the Apple web site before attempting to load OS X.

After you do this, David, suggest looking for a later OS that X.1, say Tiger OS X.4. You need to purchase the full retail install DVD, assuming the machine has a combo reader. If it is a CD only, then perhaps OS X.3 Panther as CDs of Tiger are pretty rare.

Keep us posted?

Thanks for the reply

Okay thats annoying about the system install disc from another machine. How would I go about updating the Firmware? (I'm rather new to mac's).

We'll get onto the Disc later on once I've got it to read discs and the firmware and so on.

harryb2448 · Dec 24, 2009

Assuming the machine is what is known as an AGP model with an AGP 2X or 4X graphics card as earlier PCI Yikes! machines are pretty rare. Go to the Apple logo in the menu and hit about this Mac and see what is recrded there.

Whilst booted from OS 9.1, or later OS 9, go to the website and download update 4.2.8, and also the instructions (Read Me), and follow the directions on the download, using the programmer's button as it explains. The only time you will ever use that button lol! Here is the link:-

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=120068

daavem · Dec 25, 2009

Well, It seems there was no need for a firmware update. I put the Mac 10.3 CD into the drive booted while holding the Option key and it loaded the installer and installed fine.

Now I just need to locate a Wifi card or connect it to the internet using a cross-over cable. Are there any other options of install 10.4? or even 10.5? Which dont involve buring a DVD (Seems the drive really dosen't like DVD's).

louishen · Dec 25, 2009

If you want to install 10.4, and your optical drive doesn't do DVDs, then upgrading the optical drive is a very inexpensive upgrade for the G4s.

The Pioneer drives work well with that system

Pioneer DVR-118L-BK Internal [Black Bezel]... (DVR-118L-BK) at OWC

harryb2448 · Dec 25, 2009

Great stuff David and obviously the machine had run OS X prior. Go into the Apple icon in the menu bar, and hit 'About this Mac' and tell us what you have. For Leopard the machine will need a minimum of an 867MHz processor.

Pioneer makes great drives.

Frenky · Dec 27, 2009

I had the same problem and no way out! Just one: see on URL Power Mac G4 Optical Drive (High Quality) Installation Video at OtherWorldComputing.com how to add any old DVD-ROM drive and connect it instead of the original drive. It installed the Tiger DVD immediately. After installation of Tiger I reconnected the original drive and it's going great!

harryb2448 · Dec 27, 2009

There is no 'original drive' as such as Apple has used Pioneer, LG, Matsu, Hitachii etc etc depends on what they have contracted at the time of construction. Any IDE ATAPI optical; will fill the bill.