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new to mac's

J

jeepinjakear15

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 16, 2012
12
0
I just bought two Imac G5's and a power mac g5 when I turn on the Imacs I hear the BWOOOO sound and then it goes to a grey screen. I have an apple keyboard from a possible first Imac or a g3 its clear with usb ports on top I have tried to boot it up with cd's I have burned with no luck...I insert cd then hold down c and i just get a grey screen with the question mark folder. I turned off computer with installation media still in it held down C and restarted still went to grey screen I only have windows based machines. Is there anyway to tell if the installation media is correct and working? is there another way to boot? Anyone know where I can get a cheap version of Tiger or leopard 10.5? I looked up the serials and have found that these a power pc based:( can anyone help me and not the advice of buy a new mac lol thanks so much
 
I opened up the installation media with transmac and it showed me a bunch of folders does this look right?
c6e4df5c-1bca-a017.jpg
 
You seem to have your media on burned CD, so you don't have the original disks.

Your Mac are PowerPC, so you need PowerPC version of OS X (either Leopard or Tiger)

You can't really buy them anymore. So I suggest trying to look the web for a .iso copy of OS X for PowerPC.
 
ebay

Leopard often comes up on ebay. IIRC you don't need to hold the c key down with an install CD in the drive. Just power up with it in the drive and it will start the install window?
 
So when I turn the Mac on it makes the traditional bwaaaa sound then the screen is grey with a folder in the center with a face and ? Mark. Is there any troubleshooting I can do from there? I have tried to boot from numerous Iso images I have burned I hold down C and I hear the cd spin for a few secs then it stops please help:(
 
Ok cracked it open there is a hard drive in it doesn't look like any caps have spewed their guts it has ram. I was also able to reset the pram still can't boot from cd

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Oh and If I hold down c to boot the screen goes grey and then after a few secs turns black then goes back to grey with question mark folder
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Ok held power button down and got to command line every input I tried like /sbin/f-p or something like that I direct copied it would just say unknown word....ok then I help down option and got to the blue screen with and refresh type arrow and an arrow pointed to the right. I have been trying to burn .iso .dmg files I have expanded some in transmac and it looks like they are complete os's is far as I can tell(don't really know I'm a windows guy) they had lots of folders. I have tried to burn an install version of 10.4 install DVD .iso with several burners DVD cloner 9, transmac, isoburner. Is there a certain way or program to use to burn those images correctly through windows? Took out hard drive and put in another just to make sure the one that was in there wasn't bad. I still can't seem to get it I guess I can say I made progress tonight though.
 
Still at it I guess the media I am trying to burn needs to be burned with disk utility luckily I can do that at school tomorrow :)
 
It's possible your 10.4 ISO was from a version released prior to the release of the particular hardware you are trying to boot. In which case, it probably does not have the drivers needed to boot your iMac. You should look for a version of 10.4 or 10.5 that was released after the release date of your hardware.
 
Got it to work paid a computer place to do an OSX install of 10.5.8 then cloned the drives to make all my macs work
 
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