Delete all Time Machine backups before a certain date?

[dtemp]

So I'm in the process of fixing up an old Power Mac Dual G4 MDD for my Dad. I'm installing all the software he'll use, setting all the pref panes, etc... I've turned on Time Machine, and when I give him the computer for Xmas I'd like for there to not be remnants of this setting up process. Right before I shut off the computer for the last time before giving it to him, how would I delete all of the old backups and just leave the "current" backup?

 

[bluesTank]

I would also love to know how to do this.

I personally hate how Time Capsule is set up, as it allows absolutely no user control whatsoever. You just push a button on or off, but you cannot monitor anything (as far as I know).

It will randomly do a 1+ gb backup even though I didn't change much on my machine, and there is no way to see what it is backing up.

My hard drive is filling up really quickly, and I wish there was a way to remove old stuff, or at least manage it well

 

[bluesTank]

Ok well I made some progress on this issue:

I found that WHILE time machine is backing up, if you open the disk image that pops up, you can actually browse the contents of all the previous backups and their contents. However, I am not brave enough to simply delete one of these files, as I have not figured out how to access them in this way when it is NOT currently backing up (it just shows up as a package file in the harddrive)

 

[BobZune]

... Right before I shut off the computer for the last time before giving it to him, how would I delete all of the old backups and just leave the "current" backup?

The best way is to reformat the TM drive (APM partition table, since it is a PPC machine) and do a full back up before you give it to him. Remember TM does a full back up first time, then does incremental back up (with links to the older back up as it sees fit), even though the directory structure inside a specific date/time may "look like" a full back up because of the links. For all TM operations, do it through TM -- it is not recommended to go delete things manually. TM does let you delete selected files/folders in the entire backup if you click on the "gears" symbol (after selecting file/folder) -- but don't delete any system files that way.