boot G3 iMac from external dvd drive?

Hello,

I'm trying to boot a G3 iMac from an external DVD drive. I hold down the option key but the external drive won't show in my options for booting.

Anybody know how to make it see the external?

Thanks

P.S. The reason I'm trying to do this is because I want to upgrade from Leopard to Tiger and the G3 doesn't have a DVD drive, only CD-RW.

simsaladimbamba said:

Is it connected via USB or Firewire?
PPC Macs can only boot from Firewire drives, unless the OS or installer has been cloned from the running Mac to the USB medium.

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Ah, it's USB. So, that's my problem.

So, now I have an interesting problem. I only have the DVD's for install of Tiger and I don't have a firewire drive.

Any way to get the DVD's where I could upgrade from them?

Thanks so much!

Intell said:

Some optical drives don't support booting PPC Macs over USB. Does the Mac see the drive in the Startup Disk pref pane? It will not see it in the menu that appears when Option is held down at boot.

If you have another PPC Mac, you can connect the two via a FireWire cable and use Target Disk mode to install Tiger.

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No, it doesn't unfortunately. And at the moment, I don't have another PPC around to connect by firewire. All I have is a MacBook Air.

Intell said:

If it doesn't appear in the Startup Disk pref pane, then that optical drive/disc combination is not supported.

Apple did sell Tiger on three cd's. Try checking on eBay for the Tiger retain cd's.

Click to expand...

Thats a great idea.

Thanks!