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Install OS X on PowerPc via USB

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lolofr87

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 16, 2014
4
0
Hello everybody,

I recently acquired a Powermac G4 Quicksilver (800 Mhz, 756 mb RAM). I want to install OS X Tiger or Leopard on it but it has a CD drive (no Superdrive) so I have to do it via bootable USB. Could anybody tell me how to create a bootable USB and help me with the Open Firmware commands? I would really appreciate your help.

Kind regards.
 
Intell

Intell

macrumors P6
Jan 24, 2010
18,955
509
Inside
Create a bootable USB drive by formatting it to be APM with Disk Utility. Then use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the install disc to the USB drive. Because your machine has USB 1.1 ports, OpenFirmware commands are not needed to boot from a USB device. Simply plug it in and restart while holding down the Option key and select the USB drive to boot from. Note: It will be very slow.
 
L

lolofr87

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 16, 2014
4
0
I already formatted the USB drive to be APM. I downloaded Carbon Copy Cloner, but it won't let me use any of the images I have (the extension is .iso). What is the problem?

PD: I had to mount the image first, sorry.
 
D

Dandu

macrumors regular
Jan 23, 2009
118
14
If you press the option key and don't see the disk, it's possible to boot with open firmware.

Just with an alias on the dsk into Open Firmware (devalias ud /pci@f2000000/usb@1b,1/disk@1) and a line to boot (boot ud:x,\System\Library\CoreServices\BootX)

I explain that on the blog (in french)
 
S

seinman

macrumors 6502a
Jun 15, 2011
598
748
Philadelphia
I'm having a similar problem. Power Mac G4 Gigabit Ethernet, trying to install 10.2 from a USB thumb drive. I formatted with APM, cloned the disk image to the partition. Put in the drive, hold option on boot, and it shows up. I boot from the drive, and I get the gray apple logo. After a little while the wheel under it starts spinning, and shortly after that, the apple logo changes to the circle with the slash through it (see attachment). The wheel below continues to spin while the circle/slash blinks. Any ideas?
 

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weckart

macrumors 603
Nov 7, 2004
5,835
3,514
Looks like it is struggling to find a hard drive to install to. Try holding down Cmd+V immediately after your PM starts to boot from the USB drive. That should give you some idea why the system is stalling.
 
S

seinman

macrumors 6502a
Jun 15, 2011
598
748
Philadelphia
weckart said:
Looks like it is struggling to find a hard drive to install to. Try holding down Cmd+V immediately after your PM starts to boot from the USB drive. That should give you some idea why the system is stalling.
Click to expand...

I will try that when I get home. I now do suspect that there may be a problem with the hard drive. I started it in target disk mode, and plugged it in to my G3 iMac. The iMac saw the drive and would let me view files on it, but when I went to Disk Utility, it would crash. Hopefully I have an IDE hard drive around somewhere so I can swap it out.
 
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