Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

How Do You Set Up a Mac OS Install DVD?

A

Ahand59

macrumors newbie
Original poster
To start with I'm new to Mac's. I like older computers and recently purchased 2 Power Mac G5's. My issue is a pretty basic issue. I can get the ISO and DMG files from places like Achive.org, but when I use a WINDOWS PC to burn the ISO or DMG to a DVD, then put the DVD in the G5, it can't read the disk. Is there some kind of processing, like installing AFS, or some such on the DVD before writing the DMG to it?

To explain, I'm a bit old school. I prefer installing OS's from a Disk. I realize this is a completely newbie question, but how to you create an actual working MAC OS Installation disk? The ISO should be everything on the DVD, including whatever FileOS is being used. DMGs seem to be something different and none of them seem to work as a bootable... What am I missing, misunderstanding, getting confused over, etc...?

Thanks for your help...
Ahand59
 
Ahand59 said:
To start with I'm new to Mac's. I like older computers and recently purchased 2 Power Mac G5's. My issue is a pretty basic issue. I can get the ISO and DMG files from places like Achive.org, but when I use a WINDOWS PC to burn the ISO or DMG to a DVD, then put the DVD in the G5, it can't read the disk. Is there some kind of processing, like installing AFS, or some such on the DVD before writing the DMG to it?

To explain, I'm a bit old school. I prefer installing OS's from a Disk. I realize this is a completely newbie question, but how to you create an actual working MAC OS Installation disk? The ISO should be everything on the DVD, including whatever FileOS is being used. DMGs seem to be something different and none of them seem to work as a bootable... What am I missing, misunderstanding, getting confused over, etc...?

Thanks for your help...
Ahand59
Click to expand...
A few things, and obviously you're grasping that because the Mac isn't based on Windows there has to be something different. And there is.

Apple, with older Macs, uses APM formatting for boot drives as standard. PC/Windows uses FAT or GUID. You can format a PowerPC Mac drive as GUID, but you can't boot from it. A DMG (short for Disk Image) has it's own formatting. Without specialized apps such as MacDrive for the PC, you can't format/clone a disc in the manner that a PowerPC Mac is expecting. You need to be able to open the DMG on PC in order to clone the data to an optical disk. And you can't do that natively on a PC.

Further, each PowerPC Mac has a minimum OS install and a maximum OS install. Make sure your ISO/DMG meets the minimum at least.

I would suggest looking at macintoshgarden.org for ISOs/DMGs. The OS installs there are free to download.
 
eyoungren said:
A few things, and obviously you're grasping that because the Mac isn't based on Windows there has to be something different. And there is.

Apple, with older Macs, uses APM formatting for boot drives as standard. PC/Windows uses FAT or GUID. You can format a PowerPC Mac drive as GUID, but you can't boot from it. A DMG (short for Disk Image) has it's own formatting. Without specialized apps such as MacDrive for the PC, you can't format/clone a disc in the manner that a PowerPC Mac is expecting. You need to be able to open the DMG on PC in order to clone the data to an optical disk. And you can't do that natively on a PC.

Further, each PowerPC Mac has a minimum OS install and a maximum OS install. Make sure your ISO/DMG meets the minimum at least.

I would suggest looking at macintoshgarden.org for ISOs/DMGs. The OS installs there are free to download.
Click to expand...
I knew there had to be an apple specific format and am not surprised. I'm not surprised that formatting a disk for APM cannot be done natively, on a Windows PC. That said, I have tried using a thumb drive as a copy tool, to copy DMG files to a working hard drive and then using "disk tools" to restore the DMG file to a DVD, but the system refuses. Is this because it's a wrong version of Mac OS, or something different? I'm using generic -R DVDs that I've used thousands of times on PCs. Do the DVDs have to be specific DVDs for Mac's?
 
Burning the DMG to a DVD from a Mac via Disk Utility "should" work (but I can't recall the specific steps involved). No, you don't need Mac-specific DVD-R discs.

Edit: I think you want to make sure that you choose to "Burn" the image (which might be in the File menu), and not "Restore" it.
 
Ahand59 said:
I knew there had to be an apple specific format and am not surprised. I'm not surprised that formatting a disk for APM cannot be done natively, on a Windows PC. That said, I have tried using a thumb drive as a copy tool, to copy DMG files to a working hard drive and then using "disk tools" to restore the DMG file to a DVD, but the system refuses. Is this because it's a wrong version of Mac OS, or something different? I'm using generic -R DVDs that I've used thousands of times on PCs. Do the DVDs have to be specific DVDs for Mac's?
Click to expand...
When you say 'disk tools' what exactly do you mean? Tools on your PC?
 
Nermal said:
Burning the DMG to a DVD from a Mac via Disk Utility "should" work (but I can't recall the specific steps involved). No, you don't need Mac-specific DVD-R discs.

Edit: I think you want to make sure that you choose to "Burn" the image (which might be in the File menu), and not "Restore" it.
Click to expand...
This was the problem indeed. I was trying to restore to the dvd rather than burn. If the DMG file is small enough to fit on a 4.7gb dvd, it'll work. I've been trying to make an ASD for 2 days to do the calibration. I now have t hat disk created and will be doing it soon... Thank you again. I have a lot of studying and tinkering to do before this is comfortable, but IMO, it's less difficult to learn than Linux was, from the Windows perspective...
 
  • Like
Reactions: eyoungren
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back