Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Leopard on Unsupported G4 Help

D

dollabills

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 28, 2010
10
0
I am trying to put leopard on an 800 mhz imac g4.
Obviously that is unsupported, but many people have been successful otherwise and i have leopardassist already on it.
I have grey leopard discs from a new imac, which i know are machine-specific, but the retail leopard discs are rediculously priced on ebay.
I've tried putting the g4 in target disk mode and putting it in the imac, but when choosing a volume to install it on, the g4 didnt show up.
I guess since its intel based and the g4 is ppc, that creates some problems as well.
Ive tried using carbon copy cloner, but im afraid it wont work since the leopard version isnt capatible with panther.
After i set it up it said "The bootability of the target volume cannot be determined."
So, i havent tried to clone it because im afraid it will mess things up.
Sooo has anyone else been successful with anything like this?
I really want leopard on it and i would love if someone could please help me.
Thanks.
 
What operating system is it currently running? i am guessing panther 10.3.x.

what is wrong with panther? I had panther on my g3 imac and i didnt find anything wrong with the way panther ran on it, i was running 10.3.9 so i could use my cricket broadband modem on it. only reason i put tiger 10.4.11 on my imac is i bought 3 g3 powerbooks for $15.00 on craigslist that were sold for parts or repair after the moron tried to install windows vista on them and then couldnt do anything with them. i didnt have any os x disks but my buddy let me use his copy of tiger and i wanted to know if the disks would work so i put them on a known good working system first. i am now running tiger 10.4 soon to be 10.4.11 on one of my g3 macbooks. id suggest trying tiger if you just want to upgrade the os. :apple:
 
yeah, mine is panther,
but i just hate how you cant do a lot of things on the internet because you cant update your browser
and you cant update itunes, so it doesnt work with my ipod or anything
it just feels out of date and i love leopard
but i dont have a disc for tiger, so if i got any disc, i think id might as well get the retail version of leopard that would work, although it might be slow
 
sounds like the same reason it took me almost 2 months to get my powerbooks
up and running because of the os disk issue. if you have to buy one get leopard then due to cost factor unless you can find a used retail copy of tiger on craigslist or ebay but make sure it is a retail copy and not machine specific.
otherwise it will be a waist of time. :apple:
 
yeah, but people sell it for like $100 when snow leopard new from the apple store is $30, its ridiculous
 
I'd go with Tiger instead. It can run almost all of the same third-party applications as Leopard, can handle the latest version of Safari, and will run considerably more smoothly.
 
yeah i guess that would be the safest thing,
but i dont really want to invest in anything for this 8 year old computer
im just trying to do what i can with what i already have
 
Seconding the Tiger vote, Tiger runs great on G4s. But if you want to run Leopard on it it should work, but the installer that came with an Intel Mac won't work as it's not a Universal installer. You need a retail copy.
 
thanks for the suggestions everyone.
i wonder if that tutorial would work with my restore only/non retail dvds?
its quite complicated and im prone to nothing ever working out haha
but i will try once i get some more patience
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back