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Can't install Mac OS X on iMac G5 20" 1.8

B

bms2sm

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 15, 2011
3
0
Hi everyone, i wonder if I could get some help... I have an iMac G5 20" 1.8 which could not find the startup/ hard drive... I have bought a new hard drive but when booting up. It can only read the Install Disk and hard drive is nowhere to be found. I have reset the SMU and PRMU and had no luck at all. It started just a few days back and have used the hardware disk to verify everything, and the hard drive and logic board have all passed the tests. I don't know whether the disks are incorrect as I bought it from a friend who had all the packaging and disks. The manuals included state the Mac OS X is Panther but when it was still working, I noticed the version was 10.5 something... I would appreciate all your help as I have partitioned the disk on a macbook with all the correct options. Had to even remove the memory sticks with no joy.

The diagnostic LED 1, 2 and 3 do light up, I don't know when the 4th one is due to light up.

Would appreciate your help and many thanks in advance.
 
bms2sm said:
Hi everyone, i wonder if I could get some help... I have an iMac G5 20" 1.8 which could not find the startup/ hard drive... I have bought a new hard drive but when booting up. It can only read the Install Disk and hard drive is nowhere to be found. I have reset the SMU and PRMU and had no luck at all. It started just a few days back and have used the hardware disk to verify everything, and the hard drive and logic board have all passed the tests. I don't know whether the disks are incorrect as I bought it from a friend who had all the packaging and disks. The manuals included state the Mac OS X is Panther but when it was still working, I noticed the version was 10.5 something... I would appreciate all your help as I have partitioned the disk on a macbook with all the correct options. Had to even remove the memory sticks with no joy.

The diagnostic LED 1, 2 and 3 do light up, I don't know when the 4th one is due to light up.

Would appreciate your help and many thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

LEDs 1,2 and 3 lighting up is good. You do not want the 4th to light up as that means that your system is overheating and needs to cool down.
 
iLucas said:
LEDs 1,2 and 3 lighting up is good. You do not want the 4th to light up as that means that your system is overheating and needs to cool down.
Click to expand...

that's good then, but still can't install Mac OS X
 
bms2sm said:
Hi, it's a WD HD, have tried to set it to 1.5 but still no luck
Click to expand...

:(

Some hard drives simply do not like to be recognized. I bought two Samsung 1TB HD103SJ's from different vendors. One worked, one didn't no matter what I did with the jumper settings. I got another one months later with the same chipset as the non working one, and it was visible in my PowerMac. They're just picky sometimes. Hopefully you don't need to buy a new hard drive in your case.
 
Is HDD visible under Disk utility? Did you check SATA cable if it isn't loose?
Do you have another computer or at least external enclosure in which you could test this HDD?
 
Repartition the drive with Disk Utility making sure to use APM (the old Apple partition scheme) instead of MBR (the legacy Windows partition scheme) or GPT (the latest and greatest partition scheme). A PPC Mac will only recognize an APM for boot volumes. I learned this the hard way the first time I put an aftermarket drive in a Mac about 7 years ago.
 
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