Installation problems

B

briona

Guest
Hi, I am not too familiar with Macs, but need to reinstall the OS on a mac for a client of mine.
-I have a power Mac G4, and I have the CD for Power Mac G4 OS 10.0.4 software install CD.
-The hard drive on the Mac is empty, no OS or anything. I don't think it is even partitioned.

The problem is, I can't get the Mac to boot from the CD.
-with no CD, the Mac indicates there is now OS to boot to.
-With the CD ( do hold down the 'c' key) I do get a smiling Mac and a CD in the upper left corner, but it never goes any further.
-I also tried clearing teh PRAM & NVRAM

any suggestions?
 
OP
H

Harryc

Guest
Can you try another bootable CD as a test? Also can you try to boot your 10.0.4 CD in another MAC to make sure the disk is good?
 
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Tell us more about the G4s configuration. In specific, does it have a SCSI card in it?
 
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B

briona

Guest
The only other Mac CD I have is an OS 9.2.1. Neither will boot this Mac. The OS X CD will boot a G3 that I have here.

As for the G4, here is what I know:
-Power Mac G4 model M5183
-Maxtor IDE hard drive
-There is a SCSI interface card with nothing attached
sticker on back indicates the following spect:
PMG4 466mhz/ 1 M chache/ 128Mb SDRam/ 30Gb HD/ CD-RW/ Rage 128/ 56K modem/ GIGE
 
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Take the SCSI card out. OSX 10.0 and 10.1 had seriouse issues with SCSI cards. I had to remove my SCSI card to boot from either CD. This is true even if it is an Apple installed SCSI card.

Is the 9.2.1 disc a comercial disc or is it one that came with another Mac?
 
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B

briona

Guest
Thanks for the SCSI tip! That was the boot problem.

Next problem is with the hard drive partion.
-This hd has had Mac OS X on it before.
-During the installation, I try to partion the HD but it can not dismout the drive because it is in use (even though there is nothing on it)
-I have tried to us a PC with Fdisk to create and remove partions on this HD with no change to the above problem.
-I put this HD in the G3 as a second HD and it seems to hang on the dismount also

Any ideas on how to get this thing partioned so I can actually install the OS?
 
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Your Mac's Specs
PowerMac G5 Dual 2GHz (June 2004), 2.5GB, Airport, black 5G iPod 30GB, white MacBook 2.0 2GB
Partitioning on the PC can't work, as fdisk doesn't recognise the Mac's file format (HFS+).

You can't partition the disk on which you booted. You need to start from a system that's either on an external disk, or you can boot with your system CD, and use the Disk Utility from there (it should be accessible through the menu).
May I ask why you want to partition it? If that G4 still has the stock HD, it's not very big anyway...

And also, I would suggest you get a newer version of OS X. Unlike windows, newer versions of OS X run faster, even on older hardware.
I tried for example 10.1 on a 400MHz G4 with 512MB memory, and it was quite sluggish, it was much better running under OS9. But after upgrading it to 10.3, it was the other way around! After turning off some of the graphical effects it's pretty snappy (with the same ammount of memory).
 
OP
B

briona

Guest
Thank you for your help!

This Mac was a bussiness Mac that is now being given to an employee. I was deleting and recreating the partion because I didn't know the password to get in, and I also wanted to make sure that all sensitive data was erased.

Fdisk deleted the partion, but now I can't get the Mac to do anything with the disk. When I boot the the CD and try to modify the partions from the installer, it hangs up saying that it can't dismount the drive, but it shouldn't be mounted in the first place.
 

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