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Use of Mac Mini G4

El Awesome

El Awesome

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 21, 2012
471
0
Zurich
Hey together,

I just found my old 1.42Ghz G4 Mac Mini. It was still okay, the chime came directly after I pressed the power button. Works great so far. I saw that 10.3.7 is installed, now I want to install Leopard on it. Is there any hack to get Snow Leopard running? (I don't think so, since SL requires Intel).
Where can I get Leopard? I don't wanna use a crack.

What I want to do is to connect it with an Ethernet cable to my Mac Pro and just have it as a secondary machine. Is it possible to let it access my HDDs?

Thanks for the help!

It is funny to see OS X Panther again while using ML on a high end Mac Pro... incredibly how fast that stuff developed!


Edit: A neighbour just gave me a 2TB HDD with a copy of the Leopard install disk on it. I plugged it into the Mac Mini but it doesen't show up. I fired up the Disk Utitlity, where it appears in the sidebars as unmounted and I can't get it activated. Somebody able to help?
On the MP it mounts perfectly fine.
 
Last edited:
Nameci

Nameci

macrumors 68000
Oct 29, 2010
1,944
12
The Philippines...
El Awesome said:
Hey together,

I just found my old 1.42Ghz G4 Mac Mini. It was still okay, the chime came directly after I pressed the power button. Works great so far. I saw that 10.3.7 is installed, now I want to install Leopard on it. Is there any hack to get Snow Leopard running? (I don't think so, since SL requires Intel).
Where can I get Leopard? I don't wanna use a crack.

What I want to do is to connect it with an Ethernet cable to my Mac Pro and just have it as a secondary machine. Is it possible to let it access my HDDs?

Thanks for the help!

It is funny to see OS X Panther again while using ML on a high end Mac Pro... incredibly how fast that stuff developed!


Edit: A neighbour just gave me a 2TB HDD with a copy of the Leopard install disk on it. I plugged it into the Mac Mini but it doesen't show up. I fired up the Disk Utitlity, where it appears in the sidebars as unmounted and I can't get it activated. Somebody able to help?
On the MP it mounts perfectly fine.
Click to expand...

If it was previously from an intel mac machine it will not boot for the reason that it was formatted as GUID and not as APM. The disc should partitioned and formatted with APM in order to be booted from on a PowerPC mac.
 
Intell

Intell

macrumors P6
Jan 24, 2010
18,955
509
Inside
If you can get the drive to mount, you can clone it to the Mini's internal drive. Try this. Make a disk image of the external with Carbon Copy Cloner on your Mac Pro. Then reformat it to be AMP/HFS+ and put the disk image's contents back on with Carbon Copy Cloner. Then, boot the Mini from the external hard drive, wipe the internal drive, copy the external to the internal with Carbon Copy Cloner.
 
El Awesome

El Awesome

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 21, 2012
471
0
Zurich
Update:

I formatted the external HDD on the MM, then restored it with the MP, checked if the partition layout is still the same, then connected to the Mini, it showed up. I clicked "Install Leopard", and then I got the error message that it can't install from that volume, I should use the install-DVD.
Somebody able to help? I don't have dual-layer DVDs, I'd have to buy a whole package.

Target-Disk doesen't really work because the MP won't boot on the Leopard-Installer.

I'm pretty helpless at the moment...
 
Intell

Intell

macrumors P6
Jan 24, 2010
18,955
509
Inside
Is the external drive in APM format? Use the boot menu (option at boot) to start up from it, not the Leopard installer thing.
 
El Awesome

El Awesome

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 21, 2012
471
0
Zurich
Intell said:
Is the external drive in APM format? Use the boot menu (option at boot) to start up from it, not the Leopard installer thing.
Click to expand...

It is APM, I double-checked.
I went into system preferences and set it as my boot device - I got an error sound when I clicked on restart.
I'm going to try with a USB-keyboard, the Mini didn't detect my wireless keyboard while booting.
 
O

orestes1984

macrumors 65816
Jun 10, 2005
1,000
4
Australia
If you want 10.5 you will have to try eBay (over inflated prices) a second hand store, or a forum.

No there is no way of running Snow Leopard, but you can run something like Xslimmer to create the same effect as Snow Leopard but get rid of the intel code instead.

Yes it's possible to connect it to your other computers you just need to turn on file sharing and plug it into your network router, or with an Ethernet cable giving each machine an IP address.

Is the disk you were given intel or Mac formatted? Even with an intel formatted partition map it should be able to see the disk on your desktop, though perhaps not with 10.3, I think this may be the issue.
 
El Awesome

El Awesome

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 21, 2012
471
0
Zurich
orestes1984 said:
If you want 10.5 you will have to try eBay (over inflated prices) a second hand store, or a forum.

No there is no way of running Snow Leopard, but you can run something like Xslimmer to create the same effect as Snow Leopard but get rid of the intel code instead.

Yes it's possible to connect it to your other computers you just need to turn on file sharing and plug it into your network router, or with an Ethernet cable giving each machine an IP address.

Is the disk you were given intel or Mac formatted? Even with an intel formatted partition map it should be able to see the disk on your desktop, though perhaps not with 10.3, I think this may be the issue.
Click to expand...

Thanks. The drive was Intel-formatted, then I loaded the install-image onto my Mac Pro, let the Mini formate my drive to APM, then let the MP put the installer-image back on the drive, and then double-checked if the partition is still APM (it is).

The Mini did not let me boot from it, not set as boot volume, not while holding the option-key while booting.

I connected the Pro and the Mini with an Ethernet-cable. The mini did get network, but no IP. I still wasn't able to surf in the Internet.
I have a AirPort Extreme setup with a TimeMachine as server. The MP is connected via Ethernet to the TM, and the Mini doesen't connect neither with Ethrnet to MP or WiFi.
 
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