Power Mac G5 booting issues

[jyhash]

Okay, here's my situation:

I got a second hand Power Mac G5 2.0GHz (dual processor). It had a 160GB stock drive. I wanted to swap out the 160 for a 250 I had just lying around. I rebooted with the 10.4 system disc, and proceeded to image the 160GB Apple Partition Map to the 250GB drive. Little did I know (not until after I erased my 160GB HDD) that the 250GB drive was partitioned in Master Boot Record. My bad, I know. Now I just want to do a fresh install. Never mind the data, it's not important.

But, since I have no OS on any of the drives, I'm trying to boot from a 10.5 Disc AS WELL AS my original 10.4 System disc that came with the computer. Neither will boot. At first I thought it was the fact that I was using a keyboard that was connected via bluetooth and the dongle wasn't sending the correct signals through the USB port to the computer. Fine, I get that. BUT, I just tried to use a wired keyboard today (granted it's a Windows Keyboard), and holding down C does nothing at startup. I get the flashing "?", then the finder logo on a file folder that sits on the screen for 15 minutes, before flashing a "?" quickly, then going back to the finder logo.

I've even got a secondary optical drive hooked up via firewire and it's not seeing anything there either.

Now, the RAM in the unit is not the stock RAM. I do get video output through the monitor I have hooked up. Is this an issue of a logic board failure? Or am I missing something basic. I've tried everything from PRAM resets, to SMU resets, to trying to boot with the HDD's unplugged. I even tried to install OS 10.5 onto the 250GB drive via my MacBook Pro, but it won't let me partition in anything other than GUID! NOTHING WORKS. Does anyone possibly have any helpful hints or comments?

Much appreciated if anyone can help.

Thanks.

 

[BobZune]

I don't know why your holding down C and powering up is not letting the machine see the optical drive.

If you are sure you have a 10.5 *retail* disk (not the restore disk(s) that came with the MacBook Pro (MBP)), you can do the following.

1. Use Firewire target mode (the G5 machine = target, by powering it up holding down the T key for a minute or so). I assume it mounts and you can see the Firewire target disk (the 250GB, assuming that's what you installed on the G5 machine).

2. Use the Disk Utility on the MBP, repartition and format the 250GB drive on the G5. Use APM partition scheme (using the options tab) and create a couple of small partitions (about 10GB each). and one big partition (about 230GB). The partition table scheme should be under Options (bottom middle of the right window) while repartitioning (that is where you select the APM scheme - play with the partitioning a couple of times and verify you do have APM). Format those partitions to HFS+. [Make the big partition 230GB first, at the top of the list.]

3. Put the retail 10.5 disk in the MBP's optical drive and using DiskUtility, RESTORE the image of the OS disk to one of the ~10GB partitions on the G5's drive.

3A. Do the same with the 10.4 OS disk that came with the G5 (assuming that came with the G5 machine) on the second of the small (~10GB) partition.

4. Shut down the machines, disconnect the Firewire cable.

5. Power up the G5 machine with C key held down. Hopefully the two partitions (with 10.5 and 10.4) on the 250GB HD will show up as bootable choices and you can boot the preferred OS and install it on the 230 GB partition. (At least one will show up, from what you said, i.e., if the 10.5 was a disk that came with your MBP and not a retails disk, you don't be able to install from that image).

6. If everything worked, you can delete the two bottom partitions (the two 10GB partitions) and expand the 230 GB partition, if you want it take up the whole disk.

Good luck!

 

[JediMeister]

I think you have bad disc(s). Apple can replace the original discs and quite possibly the 10.5 one if you ask nicely. Do not expect it to be cheap or free however, last I recall it was $16 US/disc. If you do not want to spend the money just to find out it's your drive or something else (not likely the logic board otherwise you would have different symptoms), you can take it to an Apple retail location and have them try to boot it from an install DVD. If you notice the Mac Genius trying to boot to 10.6 kindly remind them that you have a PowerPC processor .

 

[BlueRevolution]

If they're trying to boot a PowerPC Mac from a 10.6 disk, they really don't deserve the "genius" title.

 

[jyhash]

Power Mac Problems continue...

Thanks for the awesome reply.

I seem to have run into another problem, whoever the "genius" was that owned this before me, apparently put an Firmware Password on the computer. So now I'm stuck at square one. I know the technique for removing it, but unfortunately the computer will not perform a PRAM reset for me with the keyboard I'm using. I'm hopefully going to get a Mac USB keyboard tomorrow, and hopefully that will allow it to reset the PRAM. But if that doesn't make a difference (mac keyboard vs. windows keyboard) there may be a larger issue here.

So hopefully, the logic board isn't trash and I'll be able to reset the PRAM and get this project over with...

 

[jyhash]

I think you have bad disc(s). Apple can replace the original discs and quite possibly the 10.5 one if you ask nicely. Do not expect it to be cheap or free however, last I recall it was $16 US/disc. If you do not want to spend the money just to find out it's your drive or something else (not likely the logic board otherwise you would have different symptoms), you can take it to an Apple retail location and have them try to boot it from an install DVD. If you notice the Mac Genius trying to boot to 10.6 kindly remind them that you have a PowerPC processor .

I've tried 3 different types of discs: the original 10.4 discs (which did work when telling it to boot within the OS), a 10.5 Retail disc, and a Burned 10.5 Disc. None of them seem to work, most likely due to this ridiculous Firmware Password lockout.