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FORCEFULLY Installing Leopard on 350-800MHz G4

Sawtooth811

Sawtooth811

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 18, 2007
317
1
Is it possible to get the new Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on the old G4 by:

1. Take HD out of G4
2. Place HD inside external drive casing
3. Plug EXT. HD into 867MHz or faster G4
4. Install Leopard on HD?
5. Place HD back in G4?
6. Leopard Works???:confused:
 
You could. Or, you could FireWire them together, start the unsupported one in Target Disk Mode, and install it from the 867 MHz or faster G4.
 
kflook said:
You could. Or, you could FireWire them together, start the unsupported one in Target Disk Mode, and install it from the 867 MHz or faster G4.
Click to expand...

I tried to do this very thing the other day, and got a strange message saying that Leopard couldn't be installed on the machine due to the disk formatting. I was a bit surprised since the HD is formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Has anyone else had this experience? I'm afraid the only way to get Leopard on this machine (800 Mhz G4 iMac) is to do a erase & install. I hope I'm wrong!
 
If you don't have access to another PowerPC machine for the install, you can also do it by temporarily changing the clock speed as reported by OpenFirmware (Google it).

kflook said:
Just trying to be helpful...you didn't mention that this wasn't an option for you.
Click to expand...

He's not being sarcastic, he's just an idiot.
 
Sawtooth811 said:
Is it possible to get the new Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on the old G4 by:

1. Take HD out of G4
2. Place HD inside external drive casing
3. Plug EXT. HD into 867MHz or faster G4
4. Install Leopard on HD?
5. Place HD back in G4?
6. Leopard Works???:confused:
Click to expand...

Does anyone know if the above steps would work with a G3 350MHz ? Thanks.
 
justmehere said:
Does anyone know if the above steps would work with a G3 350MHz ? Thanks.
Click to expand...

I tried on my older bro's old iMac DV 500MHz, and it changed into a black screen with a bunch of white words. Must not work, but you try.

UPDATE!: I'm running Leopard almost as fast as I did with Tiger. Apple is dumb for generally blocking 10.5 from G4's slower than 867MHz.
 
Wow, thats gotta be slow. I know someone who put it on a 1ghz G4 and he said it was noticeably slower than Tiger....but a 350? I guess whatever floats your boat.
 
There are a few easy ways. One is to temporarily setting the CPU clock higher (artificially... doesn't actually change it) in the openfirmware. Or you can burn a modified OS install disk and install from that.
 
EMU1337 said:
Wow, thats gotta be slow. I know someone who put it on a 1ghz G4 and he said it was noticeably slower than Tiger....but a 350? I guess whatever floats your boat.
Click to expand...

Actually, it runs better (not faster), than Tiger ever did on my 450MHz G4. It's not that much slower, because of my Mac's 1GB RAM and 32MB VRAM configuration, although that isn't considered much nowadays, but still, it's a decent for a 1999 G4.:apple:

oops, I thought you were talkin' to me. sorry.
 
This will Fix it ...

To install Leopard on an "unsupported" G4 clocked under 867 MHz:

1. Reboot your Mac and hold down the Cmd-Opt-O-F keys until you get a white screen with black text. This is the Open Firmware prompt.

2. Insert the Mac OS X Leopard Install DVD.

3. Type the following lines exactly as shown below into the Open Firmware prompt. Be mindful of capitalization, spaces, zeros, etc. If the command is properly typed and understood, Open Firmware will display "ok" at the end of each line after you hit "return". What these lines do is set the CPU speed reported by Open Firmware to OS X as an 867 MHz G4 processor system. They then continue the boot from the DVD drive.

For single CPUs, use the following three lines:

dev /cpus/PowerPC,G4@0
d# 867000000 encode-int " clock-frequency" property
boot cd:,\\:tbxi
For dual CPUs, use the following five lines:

dev /cpus/PowerPC,G4@0
d# 867000000 encode-int " clock-frequency" property
dev /cpus/PowerPC,G4@1
d# 867000000 encode-int " clock-frequency" property
boot cd:,\\:tbxi
4. Continue the install normally.

5. This CPU setting is only in effect until the Mac reboots. Once OS X Leopard is installed and your Mac has rebooted, the proper CPU speed should once again be displayed when you select About This Mac under the Apple menu
 
still not working

Hi
Tried the open firmware prompt (two versions,there´s another one on the web with min-clock-frequency and max-clock-frequency) but the g4 powerpc 667mhz 512 sdram still won´t install. ("cannot install on this computer".
any ideas? not sure I know enough to go through the disk image process,unless there´s a step by step somewhere.
The leopard disk came with my intel macbook and is a 2 disk.could this be one the reason?
Desperate ....need it to run a program for work...
thanks
 
You should have made a new thread rather then revive an old one. The reason it doesn't work is because it is a gray restore dvd. Not a black retail one that can be used with any Mac.
 
Mac Man 82 said:
To install Leopard on an "unsupported" G4 clocked under 867 MHz:

1. Reboot your Mac and hold down the Cmd-Opt-O-F keys until you get a white screen with black text. This is the Open Firmware prompt.

2. Insert the Mac OS X Leopard Install DVD.

3. Type the following lines exactly as shown below into the Open Firmware prompt. Be mindful of capitalization, spaces, zeros, etc. If the command is properly typed and understood, Open Firmware will display "ok" at the end of each line after you hit "return". What these lines do is set the CPU speed reported by Open Firmware to OS X as an 867 MHz G4 processor system. They then continue the boot from the DVD drive.

For single CPUs, use the following three lines:

dev /cpus/PowerPC,G4@0
d# 867000000 encode-int " clock-frequency" property
boot cd:,\\:tbxi
For dual CPUs, use the following five lines:

dev /cpus/PowerPC,G4@0
d# 867000000 encode-int " clock-frequency" property
dev /cpus/PowerPC,G4@1
d# 867000000 encode-int " clock-frequency" property
boot cd:,\\:tbxi
4. Continue the install normally.

5. This CPU setting is only in effect until the Mac reboots. Once OS X Leopard is installed and your Mac has rebooted, the proper CPU speed should once again be displayed when you select About This Mac under the Apple menu
Click to expand...


So pleased !!! Worked for my iLamp 800mgz !!! Many Thanx!!!
 
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