Install 10.4.11 on ATA HD using 2018 MacBook Pro?

[AlpacaLips]

Short story: I have a an iMac G3 DV SE (Summer 2000) Graphite that I'm trying to get up and running. Its DVD drive seems to be dead, and its HD is functional but 100% blank. I can mount the HD using my modern MacBook Pro using adapters (ATA to USB2 and USB-A to USB-C). Can I install a PowerPC OS on the HD using my Intel MBP?

Long story: I want to install OS 10.4.11 and OS 9.2 on the hard drive so I can reinstall it in the iMac. But I can't figure out how, since the installers won't run on an Intel Mac. I have a USB external optical drive, but I can't boot the G3 from it. It seems to me that the best option is probably to find an ISO of a 30GB HD that already has 10.4.11 and 9.2 installed on it, and then figure out how to copy that over to the HD using Disk Utility on the MacBook Pro. Am I on the right track? Anyone know where I can find that?

I have these other assets, but despite opening them up and installing the Graphite HD into them they've all proven useless because I have no optical drive to read OS install media from:
iMac G3 350 (Summer 2000) Indigo with 9.2 installed. Works fine except the CD-ROM doesn't seem to work. No FireWire.
G4 Sawtooth, OS 10.2. Again, works fine except optical drive doesn't work.
Somewhere I have a FireWire cable that I could boot the G3 into target disk mode using the Sawtooth, but I don't see how that would help since the Sawtooth's optical drive is dead.
USB DVD-RW drive
Set of original 10.2 install CDs (although Disk 1 is stuck in the Indigo G3 and I can't figure out how to get it out, even after removing the drive from the iMac.
Holocaust cloak
Wheelbarrow

I'm not sure this matters, but my long-term plan is to get the iMac G3 DV SE working 100%, but in the Indigo case. The Graphite has been abused a bit (scratched, yellowed, busted speaker), while the Indigo is excellent condition and prettier IMO.

Maybe I need to just find replacement optical drives since that's the thing that keeps throwing up roadblocks.

 

[mectojic]

You can't put old MacOS onto new Macs, as a rule of thumb – and certainly not a PowerPC build on an Intel mac – even if trying to install onto an external HD.

Seeing what you have, your easiest bet would be to make a Tiger USB installer. This can be pretty easily done with some research. Then you can install Tiger onto any PowerPC Mac made after mid-1999, i.e. all your Macs. For the non-Firewire one, you can install Tiger onto the Sawtooth using the iMac HD, then swap the HD in, since it doesn't officially support Tiger.

Let me know if you need any help. Also, it is possible to repair iMac speakers very cheap, so don't give up if it needs fixing.

Optical drives are not a must, so long as USB booting is supported (which it is for your Macs). Indeed, firewire isn't a must either. USB can handle it all.

As for installing OS 9, you already have an OS 9 install you say – it is the easiest OS to clone. Just literally copy all the files across. Use your Sawtooth so you can put in 2 drives, one blank/partitioned and the other with the OS 9. This usually works and is bootable on other machines.

 

[ifrit05]

It's pretty trivial to restore older Mac OS X install discs to a USB drive with Disk Utility.

Blue: Install disc (The WHOLE device, NOT a partition!!!)
Red: USB Drive (again, WHOLE device, NOT a partition!!!)

Make sure the "Partition Map Scheme" is "Apple Partition Map" when done, otherwise it will not boot (MBR/GUID is for x86/Intel Macs).

This is Disk utility from 10.9 but it should be pretty much the same on newer versions. I'm just kinda lazy and can't be bothered to pull out my 2015 Macbook Pro.

 

[AlpacaLips]

Thanks for replying mnectojic.

You can't put old MacOS onto new Macs, as a rule of thumb – and certainly not a PowerPC build on an Intel mac – even if trying to install onto an external HD.

I'm not trying to put old MacOS onto the MBP, but it sounds like you get what I'm trying to do. This is one of my frustrations: I understand why it's necessary to boot from the OS install media when the target disk is the computer's normal boot disk, but it makes no sense to me that one has to boot from the OS install media when the target disk is not the boot disk. Since the boot disk isn't being modified by the installation it should be possible to mount the source and destination media and copy it over without rebooting, and therefore it shouldn't matter whether the OS being installed is compatible with the computer being used.

Seeing what you have, your easiest bet would be to make a Tiger USB installer. This can be pretty easily done with some research. Then you can install Tiger onto any PowerPC Mac made after mid-1999, i.e. all your Macs. For the non-Firewire one, you can install Tiger onto the Sawtooth using the iMac HD, then swap the HD in, since it doesn't officially support Tiger.

This was the first thing I tried. I downloaded an ISO for OS 10.4 installer, mounted it on my MBP, and copied its contents onto an 8GB USB drive, which was not recognized by the iMac G3 as a boot volume when restarting with CTRL held down. After this I did more research and read that iMac G3s can't boot from USB at all. So this raises two questions: (1) Can the iMac boot from USB or not, and (2) if so, did I prepare my USB drive incorrectly (maybe wrong format or something)?

As for installing OS 9, you already have an OS 9 install you say – it is the easiest OS to clone. Just literally copy all the files across. Use your Sawtooth so you can put in 2 drives, one blank/partitioned and the other with the OS 9. This usually works and is bootable on other machines.

That's a good idea; it didn't occur to me to remove the Sawtooth's HD entirely to make room for both iMac HDs, and then just copy over the HD contents. That doesn't get me all the way to where I want with OS 10, but it does do something else I like a lot, which is preserve the way I have my HD set up in the Indigo iMac when booting into OS9. (If it weren't for the fact that the Graphite's HD is so much bigger, I'd just swap the drives over. Indigo is 7GB; Graphite is 30 GB.)

Is it necessary to partition the destination drive to retain the ability to boot into both OS9 and OSX? I didn't think that was necessary but I keep reading about people partitioning drives with OS 9 installed on one and OSX installed on the other.

 

[AlpacaLips]

It's pretty trivial to restore older Mac OS X install discs to a USB drive with Disk Utility.
...
Make sure the "Partition Map Scheme" is "Apple Partition Map" when done, otherwise it will not boot (MBR/GUID is for x86/Intel Macs).

Thanks, ifrit05. This bit about proper USB drive formatting might be what I was missing when I tried installing by copying an installer DVD over to an 8GB USB drive. I'll give it another go.

 

[sasho648]

You can definitely boot any powermac from usb.

 

[dextructor]

This bit about proper USB drive formatting might be what I was missing when I tried installing by copying an installer DVD over to an 8GB USB drive. I'll give it another go.

That type of problem ("My Mac don't have a good/functioning optical drive and I wanna install OSX") appeared more times that I can remember (And I'm not an so old member here).

I won't say every, but almost every PPC Mac can boot from USB #1 #2, so you have the option to do it.

Since newer versions of Disk Utility in OSX from 10.10 are consider somewhat dumber/inferior to those prior, and I personally find it limiting compared to the older ones (and I don't have any newer OSX installed at the moment on my machines to properly screenshot the steps), you need to format your USB device (as other members said) in APM(the latest PPC can boot from GPT, but that's not your case) and you can use as substitute to restore from Disk Utility the CCC and from there you can properly restore that ISO or DMG to USB.

Don't "copy" the ISO to the USB, it won't work

You can use the "Installation Guide" section on the Sorbet Leopard as an example to the CCC adapting to your scenario

You can definitely boot any powermac from usb.

That's a not very useful reply, considering that many members tested and helped regarding this subject, you could point to many examples of us booting from USB that you can find using the forum search tool. But thanks for the initiative, you seems very technically capable from your Gentoo posts.

 

[Amethyst1]

[…] it makes no sense to me that one has to boot from the OS install media when the target disk is not the boot disk.

In most cases, the installer needs to run on the version of OS X it's installing.
Additionally, retail 10.4.x's installer being a PowerPC-only application (unless you use a grey disc that shipped with an Intel Mac in which case it's Intel; or use the retail Tiger Server 10.4.7 release in which case it's a Universal Binary) will not run on an Intel Mac running a current version of macOS due to the removal of Rosetta 1.

Is it necessary to partition the destination drive to retain the ability to boot into both OS9 and OSX? I didn't think that was necessary but I keep reading about people partitioning drives with OS 9 installed on one and OSX installed on the other.

You need to have the so-called "Mac OS 9 drivers" on the drive. These are actually a tiny partition (not drivers in the literal sense) but they're necessary for OS 9 to be able to recognise and boot from the drive. Once you've got these you can have OS 9 and OS X on the same partition, so the drive does not need to be partitioned. One way to add those OS 9 drivers is to set up your drive using Drive Setup on OS 9 or Disk Utility on OS X 10.4 or older (there's an option to include those drivers), but this will wipe anything on the drive. Another way is to add them non-destructively.

 

[MysticCow]

Once you get an installer and make a USB, do the following:

1. DON'T INSTALL YET. Run Disk Utility.

2. Make the following partitions: 10 GB, 2 GB, 3 GB, and then the rest of the drive. Install the OS 9 drivers on each one.

3. Restore your USB bootable drive to the 10 GB partition. This is an emergency partition if you need to reinstall or repair. Also, you'll never need a USB installer again as long as you have Firewire cables to make a target disk.

4. Restore an OS 9 installer to the 2 GB partition. Emergency partition, again.

5. When ready, boot from that 2 GB partition and install OS 9 to the 3 GB partition. Skip these steps and their created partitions if you don't want OS 9.

6. Boot from the 10 GB emergency partition and install Tiger to the "rest of the hard drive" partition.

 

[ifrit05]

Once you get an installer and make a USB, do the following:

1. DON'T INSTALL YET. Run Disk Utility.

2. Make the following partitions: 10 GB, 2 GB, 3 GB, and then the rest of the drive. Install the OS 9 drivers on each one.

3. Restore your USB bootable drive to the 10 GB partition. This is an emergency partition if you need to reinstall or repair. Also, you'll never need a USB installer again as long as you have Firewire cables to make a target disk.

4. Restore an OS 9 installer to the 2 GB partition. Emergency partition, again.

5. When ready, boot from that 2 GB partition and install OS 9 to the 3 GB partition. Skip these steps and their created partitions if you don't want OS 9.

6. Boot from the 10 GB emergency partition and install Tiger to the "rest of the hard drive" partition.

I also do this on PPC/Older Intel Macs, a pseudo recovery partition like newer Macs.

 

[Tratkazir_the_1st]

MBR/GUID is for x86/Intel Macs

Strictly speaking - not 100% correct. G5 (at least Quad) can boot from GPT-partitioned drive (cloned macOS \ correctly installed Linuxes works).

 

[Amethyst1]

Strictly speaking - not 100% correct. G5 (at least Quad) can boot from GPT-partitioned drive (cloned macOS \ correctly installed Linuxes works).

Some Macs introduced in mid-2005 or later can, such as the final iBook G4, PowerBook G4 (“DLSD”) and Power Mac G5 revision.

 

[LightBulbFun]

if the aim of the game for the OP is simply install 10.4.11 onto a PATA HDD using his 2018 MBP

then id say the easiest way to do this would be

take the ATA drive, plop it into some sort of USB enclosure/adapter and then simply pass the device through to QEMU, boot the OS X installer in QEMU and bobs your uncle

here is an example command line


sudo qemu-system-ppc -M mac99,via=pmu -m 512 -g 1024x768 -cpu 750 -prom-env boot-args="-v" -boot d -cdrom /path/to/installer.iso -hda /dev/diskX


replace X with whatever the disk number of your disk is, which you can find out by doing a diskutil list in terminal

you will also have to unmount the disk first before QEMU can take ahold of it

when everything is installed to the HDD, you can remove -boot d and it will boot from the HDD instead if you wish to continue setting up the install in QEMU

just make sure you get /dev/diskX right! you dont want to accidentally install OS X onto a vital backup drive or something!

 

[dextructor]

then id say the easiest way to do this would be

take the ATA drive, plop it into some sort of USB enclosure/adapter and then simply pass the device through to QEMU, boot the OS X installer in QEMU and bobs your uncle

The majority of users that come here have trouble just to correctly restore an ISO or DMG into a flash and boot using OpenFirmware commands.

I believe that your suggestion it's more elegant in the sense that if it works you have a fully functional disk after, and it's just putting it back in the destination machine, but I'll keep that in mind as a viable way, when this question arrives next time.

Thanks @LightBulbFun

 

[TheShortTimer]

Short story: I have a an iMac G3 DV SE (Summer 2000) Graphite that I'm trying to get up and running. Its DVD drive seems to be dead, and its HD is functional but 100% blank. I can mount the HD using my modern MacBook Pro using adapters (ATA to USB2 and USB-A to USB-C). Can I install a PowerPC OS on the HD using my Intel MBP?

Long story: I want to install OS 10.4.11 and OS 9.2 on the hard drive so I can reinstall it in the iMac. But I can't figure out how, since the installers won't run on an Intel Mac. I have a USB external optical drive, but I can't boot the G3 from it. It seems to me that the best option is probably to find an ISO of a 30GB HD that already has 10.4.11 and 9.2 installed on it, and then figure out how to copy that over to the HD using Disk Utility on the MacBook Pro. Am I on the right track? Anyone know where I can find that?

I found myself in a similar situation with an iMac G3 which also has a dead optical drive and lacks FireWire. My solution was to install Tiger via USB and this was my method:

First, I mounted the Tiger DVD on a MacBook Pro, plugged in the USB stick and then in Disk Utility, I clicked onto the USB stick, then I went to Edit in the Disk Utility menu and chose Restore. Disk Utility then asked me to choose which volume I wanted to use as the source and I selected the Tiger DVD, clicked on Restore and Disk Utility took care of the rest and within a few minutes I had a bootable USB installer.

After that, all I had to do was plug the USB stick into the iMac, switch it on, hold down the Option key and choose Mac OS X on the USB stick when the boot selector screen appeared. The installation then proceeded and within 30 minutes I had Tiger up and running. Once Tiger was installed I set up 9.22 on a separate partition through the following steps. Out of all the solutions that were available to me, this method was the best and also had the bonus of being the easiest.

 

[AlpacaLips]

UPDATE:
1. Indigo 8GB HD (the one with OS 9 set up the way I wanted it) has now died. Won't spin at all. So copying OS9 from one iMac HD to the other iMac HD is no longer an option.

2. I downloaded 10.4 install ISOs from two different Internet Archive locations (Here and Here). I formatted an 8GB USB stick (SanDisk Cruzer) to Mac OS Extended (Journaled), Apple Partition Map. Attempted to restore from ISO 1. No dice:

The I tried it from the other downloaded ISO. Same result. Then I tried mounting the ISO and restoring from the "disk" instead of from the ISO image.

Finally, I burned the ISO to DVD-R, and attempted @TheShortTimer's suggestion (restoring from DVD media). Strike 3:

if the aim of the game for the OP is simply install 10.4.11 onto a PATA HDD using his 2018 MBP

then id say the easiest way to do this would be [LEARN GREEK AND THEN HOW TO WALK ON WATER] (paraphrased)

Without any sarcasm whatsoever, I do appreciate your contribution @LightBulbFun, but this reminds me of the Steve Martin bit "You Can Be A Millionaire And Never Pay Taxes." Step 1: Get a million dollars.

But unless someone can suggest what I'm doing wrong with the USB restore, I may have to grow a neck beard and fire up Terminal. (Though I always hate installing apps with no GUIs because I can't tell how much of my MBP's limited SSD space is being used up by this thing I'm installing, might use only once, and which I don't know how to uninstall.) Usually, if the solution to a given problem has no GUI or involves github in any way, I'm out.

 

[Amethyst1]

But unless someone can suggest what I'm doing wrong with the USB restore [...]

You used a modern version of Disk Utility and it doesn’t like the 10.4 image. No kidding. Try restoring the image to the USB drive using Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!.

 

[MysticCow]

Indigo 8GB HD (the one with OS 9 set up the way I wanted it) has now died. Won't spin at all. So copying OS9 from one iMac HD to the other iMac HD is no longer an option.

Hard drives are not super hard to install in an iMac. I've done it before, and if some idiot like me can do it, you can too!

 

[AlpacaLips]

You used a modern version of Disk Utility and it doesn’t like the 10.4 image. No kidding. Try restoring the image to the USB drive using Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!.

I didn’t know those things were still around. I’ll try them tonight. Thanks!

 

[AlpacaLips]

Hard drives are not super hard to install in an iMac. I've done it before, and if some idiot like me can do it, you can too!

Installing hard drives isn’t the problem. This has been my living room for the last week, and my wife is a saint:

 

[ifrit05]

Installing hard drives isn’t the problem. This has been my living room for the last week, and my wife is a saint:

View attachment 2098457

I feel ya! I have to appease my husband with dinner and chocolate before I leave a computer mess in the dinning room xD

 

[AlpacaLips]

You used a modern version of Disk Utility and it doesn’t like the 10.4 image. No kidding. Try restoring the image to the USB drive using Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!.

SuperDuper! result: SuperDuper doesn't recognize the DVD install ISOs as selectable disk images. Attempting to "dupe" the DVD previously burned from the ISO resulted in the error "Failed to enable ownership on Mac OS X Install DVD" and it bailed out.

Switched over to CCC. CCC also failed to recognize the ISOs as valid sources. I was able to copy the aforementioned burned DVD to the USB drive however, and I was able to boot the better iMac from USB (without resorting to Open Firmware) and launch the installer though it was slow as expected.

I didn’t perform the install though because of the advice above of @MysticCow to make 4 partitions—primary and restore partitions for both OS9 and OSX. I intend to do this, but I’m curious—isn’t OS9 “included” in the Tiger install by virtue of the fact that it has the Classic environment? Or, does Classic work only if the user has installed OS9 manually? Or is it simply more prudent to have a separate OS9 installation so that OSX is completely out of the picture when the user wants to run OS9 apps?

 

[TheShortTimer]

Switched over to CCC. CCC also failed to recognize the ISOs as valid sources. I was able to copy the aforementioned burned DVD to the USB drive however, and I was able to boot the better iMac from USB (without resorting to Open Firmware) and launch the installer though it was slow as expected.

Great news that you've made progress.

I didn’t perform the install though because of the advice above of @MysticCow to make 4 partitions—primary and restore partitions for both OS9 and OSX. I intend to do this, but I’m curious—isn’t OS9 “included” in the Tiger install by virtue of the fact that it has the Classic environment? Or, does Classic work only if the user has installed OS9 manually? Or is it simply more prudent to have a separate OS9 installation so that OSX is completely out of the picture when the user wants to run OS9 apps?

Each to their own - personally I found that two partitions were sufficient but everyone has their preferences. OS 9 is not included with Tiger. You are required to copy over a system folder containing OS 9 into the root of Tiger in order for Classic to work. On my PPC machines, I have 9.2.2 on a separate partition because it just feels neater that way with its own dedicated space but again, everyone has their preferences.

 

[Amethyst1]

On my PPC machines, I have 9.2.2 on a separate partition because it just feels neater that way with its own dedicated space but again, everyone has their preferences.

It’s also safer I reckon. If something you do in one OS corrupts its partition, you still have access to the OS and data on the other partition. With a single partition, you risk losing everything.

 

[TheShortTimer]

It’s also safer I reckon. If something you do in one OS corrupts its partition, you still have access to the OS and data on the other partition. With a single partition, you risk losing everything.

Absolutely - and you can also run recovery software from the other partition in the hope that it might correct/repair the corrupted partition without having to involve a 2nd machine with Target Disk Mode.