Imac g4 question. Wiped hard-drive, how to load OS leopard?

[Steversays]

I just bought an imac g4 and at the surplus store they said the drive was completely wiped with no os. I bought another copy of leopard, stuck the disk in, and nothing happpend. I even tried to boot it from the CD. Am I missing something?

Thanks,
Stephen

 

[richard.mac]

can the iMac read DVDs? does it meet the system requirements? is it the retail Leopard DVD with the space aurora on it?

try inserting the DVD and booting while holding option and select the Leopard DVD in the boot loader.

 

[Steversays]

I know that it meets the requirements, I don't really know the exact specs though. I have leopard on my 867 12 inch powerbook...and it runs nice. So I am sure that it will work on the imac. I know the it is one of the early imacs because the font on the front is the older font for "imac". I have a retail version of leopard, and I have one that came with this 20 inch aluminum imac that I am using now. Are you saying the only the retail one will boot up?

 

[richard.mac]

I know that it meets the requirements, I don't really know the exact specs though. I have leopard on my 867 12 inch powerbook...and it runs nice. So I am sure that it will work on the imac. I know the it is one of the early imacs because the font on the front is the older font for "imac". I have a retail version of leopard, and I have one that came with this 20 inch aluminum imac that I am using now. Are you saying the only the retail one will boot up?

yeh the retail one will only work on the iMac G4 as the grey restore disc only has the drivers for your alum intel iMac.

 

[Steversays]

Well I have a retail version, and it still is NOT loading. This is so frustrating. All it comes up with is a white screen and the sleep light is on. I can hear it spinning the disk in the drive and nothing happens.

 

[joekix]

are you holding "c" while it's booting up?

 

[velocityg4]

The iMac could have only come with a CDRW drive or the DVD drive went out, it will still spin up but not actually be able to access DVD's. I know on my iMac G4 the DVD drive constantly failed and had to be replaced many times under applecare. That is until I just put an aftermarket one in there.

If you have a firewire cable you can connect the iMac to your powerbook g4 via target disk mode (hold 'T' key while booting the iMac). Then you can either clone your powerbooks hard drive with SuperDuper or boot the powerbook with the leopard DVD and install Leopard to the iMacs Hard Drive over firewire.

This method will not work with your Intel iMac since it would install intel rather than PPC files.

 

[Steversays]

Target disk mode is not working. The only response that I get from the computer's keyboard is the "eject" button opens the tray, otherwise, all other combinations of keyboard input do NOT work. I have tried the old imac g3 keyboard, the aluminum, and the pro keyboard.

I tried the firewire cable, and nothing happens when I put my powerbook in migration assistant, nothing happens. Again, the harddrive was completely wiped, so there is nothing. Is target disk mode what is embedded into all macs? Or does there have to be a previous OS installed?

Thanks for the advice.