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iMac G4 external superdrive not showing up

ethanhodges

ethanhodges

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 31, 2020
97
29
My iMac G4's internal Superdrive isn't detecting any DVD's so I tried to use a usb Superdrive and it is not reading DVD's either. I know the DVD's are in good condition because they mount on my other computer. I'm trying to upgrade from Tiger to Leopard. Please help.
 
Is the SuperDrive trying to spin up?
When you are getting close with your ears to the drive, do you hear the mechanism?
If you have an USB hub with power supply, try to put it in between so the SuperDrive is getting enough juice.
 
The internal SuperDrive isn't spinning. Would a USB 3.0 powered hub work for the external SuperDrive?
 
Would any other type of external drive work? I ordered an internal SuperDrive from eBay but it won't arrive until next week.
 
Is it possible to create a bootable USB stick and install Leopard that way?
 
ethanhodges said:
I just tried to restore Leopard to a USB but got osstatus error 22.
Click to expand...
How? Using Disk Utility on Tiger? Did you try restoring the DVD/image itself or the “Mac OS X Install DVD” volume (that appears after mounting the image)?
 
I used the Disk Utility on Monterey. I'm copying the iso to the Tiger computer now and will try to do it from there.
 
I tried following the instructions with Open Firmware but I am not seeing "ud"

"In Open Firmware, type devalias, and you should get a list as output. In this list, look for ud, usually below where you see hd (ud is "USB Disk," I presume). If found, it will usually have beside it /pci@f2000000/usb@1/disk1, or something similar. Again, if you see this, I have not had this fail yet."
 
ethanhodges said:
I tried another stick and still not seeing "ud" in Open Firmware.
Click to expand...
Is the stick you're using formatted using the Apple Partition Map (APM) scheme, with one HFS+ ("Mac OS Extended Journaled" in Disk Utility) partition that you copied the "Mac OS X Install DVD" volume to?
 
Another idea (forgetting the USB stick route for a moment) is to shrink your iMac's Tiger partition by ≈10GB using iPartition (which can do this non-destructivly), create a small secondary partition in the free space and copy the Leopard DVD to that secondary partition using Carbon Copy Cloner, Disk Utility or SuperDuper! from within Tiger. Then, reboot holding [Option], select the secondary partition to boot from and upgrade from Tiger to Leopard that way. Afterwards, you can remove that secondary partition and enlarge the now-Leopard partition to cover the entire drive again.
 
It won't let me make a partition in iPartition. I see an error that says You can not make changes to the disk from which your system booted.
 
ethanhodges said:
It won't let me make a partition in iPartition. I see an error that says You can not make changes to the disk from which your system booted.
Click to expand...
I see. You'll need to boot iPartition from another drive (such as a USB stick. Catch-22.)

Do you happen to have an external FireWire drive? An old FireWire-compatible iPod (in Disk Mode) would also work.
 
I pulled the hard drive out and running iPartition on my Mac Studio running Montery. So far it looks like it's going to create the 10gb partition. Next I need to be able to clone the 3.5 ide to a 2.5 ssd. SuperDuper crashes and carbon copy cloner won't clone anything older than Catalina
 
I'm getting another iMac G4 via eBay. I'll be a lot more careful with the next one.
 
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