Installing Tiger/Leopard on G5 iMac without DVD

[Kristianmaar]

Hi there,

I have an old iMac G5 that I want to bring back to life. Unfortunately I've lost the install DVDs and the internal hdd is wiped clean so I'm kinda stuck.

I know I could just buy a used DVD from ebay but I refuse to spend money on something I already bought. There must be a way to burn an install DVD from a downloaded dmg file but how?

I have a MacBook Pro and a Firewire HDD. There must be a way!!?

 

[TjeuV]

Hi there,

I have an old iMac G5 that I want to bring back to life. Unfortunately I've lost the install DVDs and the internal hdd is wiped clean so I'm kinda stuck.

I know I could just buy a used DVD from ebay but I refuse to spend money on something I already bought. There must be a way to burn an install DVD from a downloaded dmg file but how?

I have a MacBook Pro and a Firewire HDD. There must be a way!!?

Burn the dmg on a dvd?

 

[Kristianmaar]

Burn the dmg on a dvd?

I tried that but it won't boot from the dvd when I hold c on startup.

 

[Kristianmaar]

progress

Ok, I made some progress after googling a little more. I burned a bootable Tiger dvd with toaster and made the iMac recognize the dvd but when I start installing this screen appears :

Any ideas?

 

[Bear]

Hi there,

I have an old iMac G5 that I want to bring back to life. Unfortunately I've lost the install DVDs and the internal hdd is wiped clean so I'm kinda stuck.

I know I could just buy a used DVD from ebay but I refuse to spend money on something I already bought. There must be a way to burn an install DVD from a downloaded dmg file but how?

I have a MacBook Pro and a Firewire HDD. There must be a way!!?

There are ways, but would you trust software you download to not be infected with malware from the start?

 

[Kristianmaar]

There are ways, but would you trust software you download to not be infected with malware from the start?

I know there's a risk of that but I'm not going to use it as my primary machine anyway. If there's a way please let me know.

 

[doctorjj]

You might have a bad OS install DVD or there could be a problem with the iMac's optical drive as well.

Since you have a MacBook Pro, you might want to try connecting it and the iMac together using what's called "Firewire Target Disk Mode" and use the MacBook's optical drive to boot the installer and install the OS on the iMac's hard drive.

You can find out more about Firewire Target Disk Mode at the following URL;

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1661

 

[Kristianmaar]

You might have a bad OS install DVD or there could be a problem with the iMac's optical drive as well.

Since you have a MacBook Pro, you might want to try connecting it and the iMac together using what's called "Firewire Target Disk Mode" and use the MacBook's optical drive to boot the installer and install the OS on the iMac's hard drive.

You can find out more about Firewire Target Disk Mode at the following URL;

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1661

Thanks for your reply

The optical drive was actually replaced less than a year ago so it's fine. I've tried target mode in different ways - using disk utility to load the install dvd's content directly onto the iMac HDD.

Could the problem be that I'm using the wrong OS?