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Resolved Leopard on a 6,5 1200mhz iBook g4 no DVD drive

G

grhmhome

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 6, 2015
12
2
Solved. Apple store genious fixed it.

Hello. I have a iBook G4 1.2Ghz running MorphOS (Power Book 6,5) with 1.234GB of ram (or what MorphOS shows). I want to use OSX again, but I don't have a DVD drive, only a CD drive. I have an official copy of 10.5.1 DVD. With MorphOS, there is a way you can install their OS using a USB thumb stick and open firmware, but I'm not getting any luck with Leopard.

My few options are:

Buy a dvd-rw drive from Ebay and install it in my G4 iBook.
Install VIA usb flash drive or external hard drive.
Attempt to use my Brothers Macbook (white intel) and see if I can install to my iBook, since it has a DVD drive. -Note. His MacBook may be broken, so I have no clue if it will work or not.

If I'm unable to use my brothers MacBook, then the only option I have is to attempt all of this on Windows (for doing a install with a flash drive/external hard drive) or buy a DVD drive, as I mentioned earlier.

Thanks

-grhmhome
 
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The thumb drive method may work the best, but IIRC, you will need another PPC Mac to read the Leopard disc "properly". I'm not sure you can use an Intel Mac for that.
 
robertdsc said:
The thumb drive method may work the best, but IIRC, you will need another PPC Mac to read the Leopard disc "properly". I'm not sure you can use an Intel Mac for that.
Click to expand...
Well, I was able to use image burning software to turn my Leopard disk into an ISO image, however it shows up as Boot Camp. I'm also unable to copy the disk to my 1TB external hard drive, for some reason.



I have a few questions: On YouTube there is a guide where I can turn a USB into a install disk. Couldn't I do this on his Intel Mac, then use it on a PPC mac?


Here is the video in question:

Also, I heard if you connect both Mac's with a firewire cable and press T, while the DVD is in the intel Mac, I can install on the PPC Mac, is this true?

Thanks for the speedy replies.
 
grhmhome said:
Couldn't I do this on his Intel Mac, then use it on a PPC mac?


Here is the video in question:

Also, I heard if you connect both Mac's with a firewire cable and press T, while the DVD is in the intel Mac, I can install on the PPC Mac, is this true?

Thanks for the speedy replies.
Click to expand...

Yes to both. I have done the former with Leopard to install on a PB 6,7 via USB. Apparently, the second method via Target Disk mode works as well, even from an Intel Mac.
 
The down side is that I cant find my brothers Intel Mac at the moment, so I have to wait for him and see if he still owns it. I also found that using trans-mac might work, if I'm unable to do anything on a mac.

Edit: I'm going to attempt using TransMac, for the time being. Thanks for the replies. Very helpful. Thanks.

Once I install Leopard onto my Power Mac, I'll post all the steps for future reference, for when someone else needs help with the same issue.
 
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You can use an Intel Mac to restore your ISO image onto a harddrive/USB key, using Disk Utility, and then reboot the iBook using that drive.
 
Right now, I have no access to a Intel Mac, however, I was able to use Trans-Mac (software for Windows) and create a bootable USB drive. I then followed this guide: https://sites.google.com/site/shawn...le-powerpcs-from-a-usb-drive-in-open-firmware and the guide on MorphOS forums.

I typed in boot usb1/disk@1:\\tbxi and was able to boot the Apple Logo instead of the MorphOS logo. After a while, a error logo appears, preventing me from continuing. I'll update once I continue.

Editing again: Will add a picture to explain the error in a bit.
http://i.imgur.com/kQ7ixfk.jpg


I get this error when I attempt to boot from USB. Would Yaboot be a better option?
 
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I had the same issue when I tried to install Leopard from my USB disk recently. I had a small green light on my harddrive which would flash when the drive was being read, and ~30 seconds after the Apple logo would appear, it would stop reading from the drive, and a minute later the stop icon you show would come up.

After a few tries I tried unplugging the hard drive and plug it back in, when the green reading light would stop flashing. For some reason this worked and it would properly install after that.
So I recommend that you pull out the drive some time after the Apple icon has appeared, and immediately plug it back in.
 
The stop sign means that the installer could not a suitable target to install to or could not even see the IDE bus. Yaboot is for Linux.

Dunno if Morphos uses some strange partitioning type that OSX does not recognise.
 
weckart said:
The stop sign means that the installer could not a suitable target to install to or could not even see the IDE bus. Yaboot is for Linux.

Dunno if Morphos uses some strange partitioning type that OSX does not recognise.
Click to expand...
I wiped MorphOS from my drive recently, but I still get the stop sign error, but I'll tryT'hain's idea.

Edit: The device I'm using isn't a USB flash drive, but I'm using a USB to SD device. I'll try a USB external hard drive. The error will pop up in a matter of seconds.

Edit again: I found a guide here: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20101011105729488

I'll attempt doing this.
 
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I know this is a double post, but I finally did it. Maybe, but its loading instead of showing the stop sign.

I'll explain what I did that finally worked.


First of all you need to put a USB flash drive into your PC running Windows. Install TransMac. Run Transmac and click your usb drive and format to the mac partition. After that, put in your leopard disk. Click to create image. It will make a .dmg image of your install disk. After that, go to your drive in transmac and rightclick and create a restore drive.

Once you finish that, you put your flash drive into your mac. press command option O F for open firmware.

In openfirmware you type devalias and look at your drives. Type dev usb1 (or whatever your drive number is. For example type usb0 or usb-1a) ls. It should be dev drive ls, or in my case it was dev usb1 ls.

It should show /disk@1 or something like that. After that you type
boot usb1 (or your number)/@1:3,\System\Library\CoreServices\BootX

This information might be incorrect or outright wrong, but it worked for me and now I'm seeing a apple logo and its loading. At the bottom of the comments in the macworld article I saw someone say it took them about an hour for the first boot to work, so I'll leave my mac alone and see if it will move past the infinite loading, or not. If not, then I know I did it wrong, or it wont work.

Edit: I got a message stating I had to reboot my machine, then it went to showing the mac folder error, where it shows the finder icon, and the question mark flashing.

Since I added more ram, I decided to reset ram (cmd option p r), and I'll give it another try.


Edit: So far, nothing is working.
 
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You can save time by just typing:

boot ud:,\\:tbxi

at the OF prompt. 9 times out of 10 it will find the bootloader on your flash drive. A PB 6,5 has USB 2.0 so that boot up and installation should be quicker than from DVD. The slowness mentioned only applies to older machines with USB 1.0/1.1.

If your flash is not booting up correctly, then there is an issue with the boot image assuming that your PB is working fine. It would be easier if you had a suitable Mac to test it on.
 
grhmhome said:
If I'm unable to use my brothers MacBook, then the only option I have is to attempt all of this on Windows (for doing a install with a flash drive/external hard drive) or buy a DVD drive, as I mentioned earlier.
Click to expand...

The easiest solution is to put the Leopard DVD into the MacBook and start the MacBook in Target Disk Mode. Hold option at boot on the iBook and you can use the MacBook as a FireWire optical drive.
 
Assuming the Macbook will run 10.5.1, you can also put the iBook into TDM install that way.

Or, to really cut out the intermediary steps-if the Macbook is running 10.5.8, boot the iBook into TDM and use Carbon Copy Cloner or the like to to clone its drive onto the iBook.
 
My iBook supports leopard. My plan today is to go to one of the local recycling centers and see if they will let me borrow one of their macs to install onto my iBook, or see if they have any external dvd drives or firewire ports and connect a external drive.
 
Solved. I went to a Apple store and they were able to install Leopard. A++ service.
 
556fmjoe said:
I'm surprised they had someone who knew what an iBook was.
Click to expand...
The guy I spoke to was awesome. He was able to do a network install. Also, when he did the install it came with iLife on the image, and I didn't even have iLife, so the free service and iLife was a nice bonus. He showed off my mac to another coworker. It took a while to install, but overal the experience was amazing. 10/10 would Apple again.

I was able to use Screen Spanning Doctor in clamshell mode on a 1600x900 display. Will post a screenshot soon.

http://i.imgur.com/F95fo3wh.jpg
 
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