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How to downgrade to Tiger

A

Abbbby333

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 12, 2020
63
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Hi Everyone! I just received a 17" Powerbook G4. I took a gamble on it hoping that it would be an A1139, and it turns out it paid off! I'm so happy and excited! It arrived running 10.5 (leopard?) and I would like to downgrade to to 10.4 tiger so that I can run the classic environment.

Fortunately I have the original install disk for tiger as well as these 2. (original disk not pictured as it is in my machine)
IMG_7851.JPG


I put in the original disk and launched the install and now the screen has been like this for over 10 minutes.
IMG_7850.JPG


I haven't worked with a machine like this in probably over a decade, so I have no idea what I did wrong or how to fix it. It was working perfectly fine with the few tests that I tried prior to this. Any and all help appreciated! TIA
 
Update: I zapped(?) the pram and got it to boot up normally. Now how do I safely go about installing tiger without it happening again?
 
Abbbby333 said:
Update: I zapped(?) the pram and got it to boot up normally. Now how do I safely go about installing tiger without it happening again?
Click to expand...
Gray disks tend to be system specific. If you are absolutely sure that your gray disks support the model of 17" PowerBook G4 you are using then proceed. Otherwise, I'd find a retail version on Macintosh Garden (do a Google search), burn a disk and use that.

In the top photo you show a gray system disk for a MacBook. That is why I am questioning this. That disk is only going to work for the model of MB it shipped with.

In any case, once you're in the Installer, go to the Utility menu and open up Disk Utility. Select the drive and repartition it. That'll wipe it. Then quit Disk Utility, select the drive for the install and proceed.
 
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update: I tried the install again and it is now stuck on the apple screen and the wheel is frozen.
IMG_7852.JPG


I tried a restart while holding down the "c" key and that didn't seems to do anything.
 
Abbbby333 said:
update: I tried the install again and it is now stuck on the apple screen and the wheel is frozen.View attachment 935803

I tried a restart while holding down the "c" key and that didn't seems to do anything.
Click to expand...
See my post above. Are you absolutely SURE the gray disks you have are for your specific model 17" PowerBook?
 
eyoungren said:
See my post above. Are you absolutely SURE the gray disks you have are for your specific model 17" PowerBook?
Click to expand...
The grey disk is not what I am using. This is what I am using.
IMG_7853.JPG


I wasn't able to get it out of the machine when I made my initial post, but since I rebooted it I can now.
 
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Abbbby333 said:
The grey disk is not what I am using. This is what I am using. View attachment 935804

I wasn't able to get it out of the machine when I made my initial post, but since I rebooted it I can now.
Click to expand...
OK, that's a retail disk.

Like I mentioned in my earlier post, use Disk Utility in the Utility menu of the installer (after booting from the disk) and repartition the drive. Then install.
 
eyoungren said:
OK, that's a retail disk.

Like I mentioned in my earlier post, use Disk Utility in the Utility menu of the installer (after booting from the disk) and repartition the drive. Then install.
Click to expand...
I haven't been able to get that far. I either get stuck at a blank blue screen that I see after the apple screen, or I get stuck at the apple screen.
 
Abbbby333 said:
I haven't been able to get that far. I either get stuck at a blank blue screen that I see after the apple screen, or I get stuck at the apple screen.
Click to expand...
Your optical drive may be bad. Do you have another Mac and a firewire cable? You could try installing using TDM.

One other thing to try is booting with just one ram stick in. There have been reports of failed installs because of bad ram.
 
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[automerge]1595291379[/automerge]
eyoungren said:
Your optical drive may be bad. Do you have another Mac and a firewire cable? You could try installing using TDM.

One other thing to try is booting with just one ram stick in. There have been reports of failed installs because of bad ram.
Click to expand...
I do have another mac (what kind would be best?) as well as an external optical drive and a firewire cable. What is TDM?
 
Abbbby333 said:
[automerge]1595291379[/automerge]

I do have another mac (what kind would be best?) as well as an external optical drive and a firewire cable. What is TDM?
Click to expand...
TDM stands for Target Disk Mode. But if you have an external optical drive (that uses FireWire) then I'd try that first. Connect it to the PowerBook, hold down OPTN when you boot the PowerBook and then select the DVD to boot from.

Otherwise, for TDM, what you do is put the disk in the other Mac and boot from the disk. Shutdown the PowerBook. Connect the firewire cable from that Mac to the PowerBook. Holding down the 'T' key, turn the PowerBook back on.

You'll see an orange image of a Firewire icon on the screen. When the other Mac is finished booting from the installer disk then just use the instructions I gave earlier about Disk Utility. Because of TDM, the other Mac will be able to see the drive in your PowerBook in order to repartition and install.

I make a few assumptions.

1) Your other Mac has a firewire port
2) Your other Mac can boot from the Tiger install disk. More modern MBPs and MPs cannot.
 
So the only external optical I have is a usb. I tried it and the computer did not recognize it.

For TDM I take it the other computer has the have a functioning screen? The only one I have easily accessible rn has a busted display. I may need to hold off on this until I either swap out the hard drive or can rig up an external display to the one with a busted screen. Thanks for your help!
 
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Abbbby333 said:
So the only external optical I have is a usb. I tried it and the computer did not recognize it.

For TDM I take it the other computer has the have a functioning screen? The only one I have easily accessible rn has a busted display. I may need to hold off on this until I either swap out the hard drive or can rig up an external display to the one with a busted screen. Thanks for your help!
Click to expand...
Yeah, there is a method to boot from USB, but it's not as easy. It involves Open Firmware commands and unless that's the only option left to you it's probably not worth it to try right now.
 
Do you know exactly what model of 17" G4 you have? It's possible it came out after the gold master of Tiger did, making it not possible to use the retail disc you have.
 
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RogerWilco6502 said:
Do you know exactly what model of 17" G4 you have? It's possible it came out after the gold master of Tiger did, making it not possible to use the retail disc you have.
Click to expand...
This is an A1139 which was made in 2005. Would that be too late for the original disk to work? It does appear to just be 10.4.
 
From the DVD label:
"CPU Drop In DVD"
That's a DVD that was a "drop in" to the box that new PowerBook when Tiger was first released, so the new buyer could immediately upgrade a Panther system to Tiger. I think you can trick that DVD into a clean install, but mostly it was to upgrade an already-existing Panther system. However, 10.4 will be too old to work in your PB G4 DL.
The DL model also came with a special build of 10.4.2, so you will need to find a version higher than that 10.4.2 (Last commercial install version is 10.4.6 - that will get you where you want to be with Tiger.)
 
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DeltaMac said:
From the DVD label:
"CPU Drop In DVD"
That's a DVD that was a "drop in" to the box that new PowerBook when Tiger was first released, so the new buyer could immediately upgrade a Panther system to Tiger. I think you can trick that DVD into a clean install, but mostly it was to upgrade an already-existing Panther system. However, 10.4 will be too old to work in your PB G4 DL.
The DL model also came with a special build of 10.4.2, so you will need to find a version higher than that 10.4.2 (Last commercial install version is 10.4.6 - that will get you where you want to be with Tiger.)
Click to expand...
Ok I think I will need to get something from macintosh garden then as I have exhausted my physical cd options. Does anyone have advice for how to do that or can link me to a how to?

Would download #30 be the right one to use from this page? And what about the 10.4.11 upgrades? Should I use that instead or is that something I use after the initial install?

 
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Abbbby333 said:
Ok I think I will need to get something from macintosh garden then as I have exhausted my physical cd options. Does anyone have advice for how to do that or can link me to a how to?

Would download #30 be the right one to use from this page? And what about the 10.4.11 upgrades? Should I use that instead or is that something I use after the initial install?

Click to expand...
#30 is indeed what you want and I use that update set as opposed to going through Software Update, so I would definitely recommend going that route. You apply those after you install the system. :)
 
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Abbbby333 said:
Awesome! so do I download them and burn them to discs and then just treat those like normal Os install disks?
Click to expand...
Yep! The update pack doesn't need to be on a CD however if you have a USB drive that is large enough. This PowerBook is new enough to have USB 2.0, so once you install 10.4.6 you can just use a flash drive to copy the updates over. :)
 
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Great! Thank you so much! I'm sure i'll have more questions, but you all have been so helpful so far!
 
I was right! I have more questions! I dowloaded file #30 from the link above. I burned it to a dvd+R as a zip file and when that didn't work I unzipped it, opened the .dmg and burned the files inside to the dvd. Neither worked. The first attempt enabled me to open the .dmg on the powerbook and launch the installer, but when it restarted it just prompted me to log in to my account. It was like it forgot that I was trying to do an install in the restart. When I tried the dvd with the files directly burned to it, after attempting to launch the installer, it gives me this message.
IMG_7854.JPG

Am I doing this all wrong? What am I missing?
 
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