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Installing OS X Tiger on G4 Cube

gohome190

gohome190

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 18, 2007
127
0
Hey guys,
Recently I bought a G4 Cube with no OS on it. It boots into the familiar Finder folder with a question mark. I have a Tiger install DVD. Holding down C does not work, it still shows the folder. However, holding down option does work. It shows a menu with four buttons: A refresh-looking button, the G4 Cube's Harddrive icon, a CD icon that says "Mac OSX install", and an arrow button. But I can't seem to get past this screen. I can use the mouse to select the DVD, but after I hit enter it simply seems to refresh the list. I've tried clicking on the arrow button, even the refresh button. It all seems to do the same thing. I'm very confused. Has anyone ever encountered this? Any help?

Thanks!!
 
Are you using the black retail disc? If you're trying to used a burned copy, I've noticed sometimes older DVD-ROM drives do not like burned copies of Mac OS X installers.
 
Yeah, I'm using a burned DVD-R. I just used it to install Tiger on my G4 iMac, and worked great, so I thought that it would be fine. Hmm... I don't want to spend a lot of money on something that I don't even know would work.
 
How would I do that? Connect a FireWire cord from my iMac to the cube?
 
Thanks. Is there a thread detailing the steps to do this? I can't find it. And it looks to me that both my iMac g4 and the cube have FireWire 6 not FireWire 4. Is that possible? Thanks!
 
gohome190 said:
Thanks. Is there a thread detailing the steps to do this? I can't find it. And it looks to me that both my iMac g4 and the cube have FireWire 6 not FireWire 4. Is that possible? Thanks!
Click to expand...

Both the Cube and the iMac G4 have two FireWire 400 6-pin ports. A note about the Cube, they sometimes don't like to go into Target Disk Mode unless their firmware has been updated to 4.1.9f.
 
Target disk mode is what I'm able to get to, right? Thats the mode where you see the HDD and the CD icon and you select which to boot from? I'm at that screen, but I can't progress further, even when the DVD is selected to boot from.
 
gohome190 said:
Target disk mode is what I'm able to get to, right? Thats the mode where you see the HDD and the CD icon and you select which to boot from? I'm at that screen, but I can't progress further, even when the DVD is selected to boot from.
Click to expand...

First thing you should do is connect the cube and iMac. Then hold down the T key as you boot up the cube, and you should see a FireWire logo on the screen. After that you can boot the DVD on the iMac and go through the installer normally until you reach the disk destination option, make sure you select the cube it's hard drive should have a FireWire logo on it. As soon as the installation finishes turn off the iMac and restart the cube.
 
Okay, so I have bad news. I bought a firewire cord. I connected the iMac to the cube, and it worked great. The cube's HDD was being recognized! So i went through the installation process, and it was fine. I installed Tiger on the cube. After the installation, however, the cube STILL doesn't boot into Tiger! I can see the HDD from the boot menu on the cube, but when I try opening it, it does nothing. I definitely installed it on the cube, because I actually booted the iMac from the cube's HDD using Firewire. I'm bummed out because now I think the cube might have a bigger problem than I thought. Any insight/help?
 
Does the Cube attempt to boot into Tiger? What does it stop at when you start it up in verbose mode? Can you start the Cube up from the iMac's hard drive?
 
The icon of the cube's HDD shows up, with a blue X in the corner (I believe that means that OSX is installed on it?). I select that drive, hit enter, and the screen flashes for a split second, then the same screen shows up again. I will attempt booting the iMac from the cubes drive...
 
You keep getting the boot selection screen? Try unplugging the keyboard and turning on the Cube. If
You still get the boot selection with no keyboard attached, you may have a faulty logicboard.
 
Ok I just tried to boot the iMacs HDD from the cube. Didn't work. Same thing, I select the iMacs drive, hit enter, and it doesn't work. If I boot without holding down the option key, it boots into the question mark folder.
 
Reset the Cube's PRAM/NVRAM. If it is still not booting, you may have a hardware problem.
 
Thank you very much for your help. I'm looking online, and it says that I have to open the cubes case to reset the pram. Is that true?
 
No. Turn off the Cube and find the buttons Command-Option-P-R on the keyboard. Turn the Cube on and immediately press the buttons. Hold down for two chimes. If don't have speakers on the Cube, hold down for 45 seconds. That will reset the PRAM/NVRAM.
 
Well looks like I have a faulty logic board. Even after resetting the PRAM, the same problem persists. Damn. Thanks for your help!
 
^^^Do not give up that fast. Theoretically it looks that logic board is damaged, but you didn't try all options yet. Check jumper settings. Cubes tend to be picky with that.
Other "magic" you can try: disconnect power and remove PRAM battery, reset PMU and leave it all like that for an hour (let's say) to be sure that all caps have discharged. Then do NVRAM reset again, but using OF. If it won't help, it won't hurt.
 
I can agree with Sheep. Earlier today my MDD would only boot into Open Firmware regardless of the setup, and showed a fatal NVRAM error. Leaving the PRAM battery out for a while solved this, when resetting the PRAM didn't.
 
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