Question about old mac mini...

Hey guys,

I bought a mac mini right when they came out, 40 gig, lower end version.
It died a couple years after, I left it lying around for like another year and since I just bought a new HDTV I thought I could hook it up to there so I took it to a service center and they said my hard drive was broken. But instead of paying the ridiculous servicing fees I decided I would do it myself.

I just installed the new hard drive successfully. I put the CD that came with my new iMac expecting to install the OS. I just went to turn my old Mac Mini on and the apple logo popped up. Shortly after this screen that says "You must restart your mac, etc etc" appeared. So I did, and then the same thing happened. Again and again. Aswell as a bunch of weird scary black bars with white letters across them saying stuff about "not being able to locate driver" and at the end of the error message "We are hanging here..." and had like a date or something.


Is the problem maybe because I need an older Power PC version of Mac OSX to install on it? That would be another problem because I don't have one anymore.

Thanks

Sandy

Your G4 Mac Mini is a Power PC CPU. Your iMac is an Intel. You can not install an Intel version of OSX on a PPC machine. That is why you are getting the errors.

Don't you have the Install CD that came with your Mini?

Unfortunately I don't.
Is it still available for purchase? Or is there any other way?

Welcome to Mac-Forums, sandyobrien.

Contact Apple for replacement disks they should still have them. You could always try eBay but it is tricky to be sure of what you will be getting and if it'll work. The restore disks are model/hardware specific so if you don't get the exact correct disk, it won't work.

This is another example to never buy a Mac that doesn't come with its original disks or to keep the restore disks and store them safely because you never know when you'll need them. Those disks are very precious and useful.

Wait a month and buy Leopard!