Guide: Install Leopard on unsupported Macs

Easier Method

I read somewhere that you can connect the unsupported mac to a supported mac via firewire. Start the unsupported mac in target disk mode (reboot and hold the "T" key down).

Then install leopard onto the hard drive of the unsupported mac that has now mounted on your desktop.

There are two requirements:

1. Both machines have to have the same processor type (Intel -> Intel) or (PowerPC -> PowerPC)

2. Obviously you must have access to a supported mac to use as the install machine.

tallyho said:

Yep. I had to get ecamm Powerboost. Then it worked fine. (G4 iMac 800MHz)

Click to expand...

Heh. I absolutely LOVE ecamm... their products are wonderful.

I wonder if (as long as their not hard-coded into SSEx) they'll release something that lets iChat on a PPC run those wicked-cool effects...

I can attest that trying to install Leopard on a G3 (I went the Target Disk route) only leads to KPs.

Hi, Guys.
My first post here.

I am running Leopard build 9A581 on my non-upgraded AGP G4 PowerMac.

500 mhz (been software oc'd thru OF to 533) cpu.
100 mhz (ditto to 133) bus
768 Megs of memory
original AGP Rage128Pro card.

In order to get to this point, I first loaded my retail 10.5 DVD.
Imagine my surprize and disappointment when it told me it couldn't install on my machine.

So I went looking on the web and found this thread.
My thanks to you all for the effort you put into trying to get various machinse to boot under Leopard.

I can't burn DVD's , my drive will only burn DVD -RAM media.

I used Disk Utility to create a sparse image of my install DVD on my desktop in 10.4.10., then renamed that to an .dmg image.
I mounted the dmg image and fired up CCC. I then Cloned the mounted dmg to a clean, empty, erased partition with bootable partition checked.

I right clicked on the install.app to open up the contents of it. The INFO panel from get info let me reset the permissions of the library folder to just me.

Using the mpkg provided by you guys in place of the original on the DVD I rebooted and was pleasantly surprized to find it boot up and run the installer.

I then proceeded to do a clean install on another partition (on a different drive). Don't migrate the settings and stuff from another partition, just run through the setup like you would for the first time ever on any machine.
The sleep mode that starts while you are waiting for everything to switch over will cause an incompete install and won't let you boot in again.

First thing you want to do after finishing setup is go into System Preferences and turn off sleep mode.

The PhotoBooth.app is the only one I have found so far that won't work, and the has to do with the rage128pro card. I'm still looking.

the updater started up and did an update/install and then rebooted.
And rebooted into Leopard with no trouble.

As soon as I remember how to get the screen shot of About This Mac and the
System Profiler I'll add them in.

Works Great

Thanks for the detailed info. I got leopard installed on my dual 450mhz will no problems.

There is another way to install without having to burn a disk image, if you have a spare harddrive.

With the Leopard disk inserted into drive.
Just open up the disk utility window
Select the drive you want to copy the disk image to.
Select the Restore tab.
Drag the Leopard DVD to the source.
Drag the drive to the destination.
Hit restore and this will make a copy of DVD to the drive.
Then proceed with same steps outlined to modify OSInstall.mpkg
Once you are ready to boot the modified image.
Open Preferances and select startup disk.
Select the disk you have the Leopard image on and reboot.

I didn't do the restore. ? . shoulda tried that I guess.
I tried to do XAR but couldn't get libxml2 to download. kept telling me the checksums were wrong.

Really appreciate the efforts put forth, though.

Probably why I didn't have a problem with the DVD loading up at least to the first screen (second?) where it told me it wouldn't load on my machine.
I think I updated my firmware a year ago last September for some reason or other. Does make it a bit smoother, doesn't it?

If I hadn't already updated the firmware, I would have had the KP problems, also.

looked into using XPostFacto 4 to do the install, but it wouldn't read the DVD. Said the folder names were wrong, or not in the right place. That's out until whoever it is over there building it can get to a point where he can release something.

SawTooth500 said:

If I hadn't already updated the firmware, I would have had the KP problems, also.

looked into using XPostFacto 4 to do the install, but it wouldn't read the DVD. Said the folder names were wrong, or not in the right place. That's out until whoever it is over there building it can get to a point where he can release something.

Click to expand...

i dont think xpostfacto will be needed on AGP Mac's , but some G4 upgraded G3's yes i can see it needing to be used ( minus the pismo)


i figured it was a firmware issue

Sawtooth Install Issue - 100% Install Fix

After going around and around trying to get 10.5 on a Sawtooth I have the issue with the Kernel Panics solved. After trying everything listed here including replacing the .kext files I have found out this is not an issue with 10.5 but with the Sawtooth.

The fix:

Install OS9. Running OS update. Install the Firmware update - should be 4.2.8 something. After the update, boot the hacked 10.5 install DVD (for the CPU speed check) and there you go, no more kernel panics.

Thanks everyone!

Got diskutil to repair the permissions on my startup disk, however in a backhanded sorta way.

open terminal and type:
sudo diskutil repairpermissions /
at the prompt, and just let her run. Took a little while, but I'm using a 42 gig startup partition.

Do any of you have the disk utility from the earlier seeds?
Does it run better than the one that comes on the OEM DVD?
Will it run under the official install in place of the one supplied on the DVD?

Anyone else having USB issues?

Ever since I installed on my AGP GE G4 the USB ports have been acting funny. Specifically, they stop working after the machine goes to sleep. Anyone else experiencing this?

Great guide.

Not ideal to have Leopard on my older machine anyway due to extreme slowness... but it was cool to learn how and to mess around with it

Thanks

Yateball said:

Great guide.

Not ideal to have Leopard on my older machine anyway due to extreme slowness... but it was cool to learn how and to mess around with it

Thanks

Click to expand...

i see no slowness in Leopard vs tiger, actually things are a bits faster in Leopard (in allot of way's).

Uh.. why is there a MacBook in the list of bad machines?

Aw, just found out Leopard doesn't support the iSub.

Not that that's all surprising, but still I wonder how hard it is to throw in a driver.

just ran accross this on "Mac Elite":

>

Author Message
Pareis
PostPosted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 10:32 pm Post subject: Using Open Firmware to install Leopard below 867 MHz Reply with quote



Joined: 14 Jun 2007
Posts: 3


It is easy to fake the CPU frequency in the device tree and make the installer happy. Just copy the following code into a file called fastG4.txt, place it in the root of the primary partition on your master drive (originally Macintosh HD, where the System folder usually resides) and reboot into the Open Firmware monitor (holding down Command-Option-O-F).

Code:
\ Claim first G4 runs at 867 MHz, and boot from CD/DVD:
dev /cpus/PowerPC,G4@0
d# 867000000 encode-int " clock-frequency" property
boot cd:,\\:tbxi

After inserting the installation DVD execute the new file at the command prompt using boot hd:\fastG4.txt.
The use of a file is only intended to ease the command entry, especially when needed more than once, i.e. the code can be input directly at the prompt as well.

This might also be helpful in testing other software excluding slower CPUs.
I don't know if this is sufficient for a dual CPU system. Repeating the sequence of line 2 & 3 with @1 instead of @0 will set the property for both CPUs.

Note that the device tree is only a volatile inventory of the hardware found by the Open Firmware during the system start sequence, so these entries will be reset at the next reboot, and (before somebody gets this wrong) we are not talking about overclocking here at all ! <<


Haven't tried it yet, but that would sure make it easy to do what we all spent 3 or 4 hours doing!

SawTooth500 said:

just ran accross this on "Mac Elite":

>

Author Message
Pareis
PostPosted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 10:32 pm Post subject: Using Open Firmware to install Leopard below 867 MHz Reply with quote



Joined: 14 Jun 2007
Posts: 3


It is easy to fake the CPU frequency in the device tree and make the installer happy. Just copy the following code into a file called fastG4.txt, place it in the root of the primary partition on your master drive (originally Macintosh HD, where the System folder usually resides) and reboot into the Open Firmware monitor (holding down Command-Option-O-F).

Code:
\ Claim first G4 runs at 867 MHz, and boot from CD/DVD:
dev /cpus/PowerPC,G4@0
d# 867000000 encode-int " clock-frequency" property
boot cd:,\\:tbxi

After inserting the installation DVD execute the new file at the command prompt using boot hd:\fastG4.txt.
The use of a file is only intended to ease the command entry, especially when needed more than once, i.e. the code can be input directly at the prompt as well.

This might also be helpful in testing other software excluding slower CPUs.
I don't know if this is sufficient for a dual CPU system. Repeating the sequence of line 2 & 3 with @1 instead of @0 will set the property for both CPUs.

Note that the device tree is only a volatile inventory of the hardware found by the Open Firmware during the system start sequence, so these entries will be reset at the next reboot, and (before somebody gets this wrong) we are not talking about overclocking here at all ! <<


Haven't tried it yet, but that would sure make it easy to do what we all spent 3 or 4 hours doing!

Click to expand...

Sweet, this will give people more options on the way's to install Leopard on their system. i think another post needs to be made with a compilation of the different way's to get Leopard installed on a slower then 867mhz G4, so people can use what they want, if one way is to hard, or if they dont have a DVD DL burner or DVD burner to make a fat free version on the installer.

i do like how its done in OF to trick the installer

I know there is a way to input this stuff from OSX,in terminal, but for the life of me, I can't find it anywhere.