PowerMac G4 Help

[FigBird]

Hi Guys

I'm new to Mac's so please be patient with me! LOL

I was given a free (old) PowerMac G4 by a company I was working for which has everything included apart from the hard-drive and installation disk.

Basically, I have put in a new Harddrive but when I load up the Mac, I get a blank Apple folder with a flashing question mark.

I assume that I need to reinstall Mac Osx (or previous versions) but I do not have the installation disk.
To get myself up and running, do I just need to buy a disk from Apple or is it more complicated than that?

Many thanks

 

[tampasteve]

Hi Guys

I'm new to Mac's so please be patient with me! LOL

I was given a free (old) PowerMac G4 by a company I was working for which has everything included apart from the hard-drive and installation disk.

Basically, I have put in a new Harddrive but when I load up the Mac, I get a blank Apple folder with a flashing question mark.

I assume that I need to reinstall Mac Osx (or previous versions) but I do not have the installation disk.
To get myself up and running, do I just need to buy a disk from Apple or is it more complicated than that?

Many thanks

You will either need to get a "retail" version (black disk) of whatever OS X you desire or a non-retail machine specific version (grey disk) of the version OS X you desire. Alternatively there are people on Ebay that sell hard drives loaded with different versions of OS X that were pulled from working machines. These are usually cheaper than buying a retail version of OS X for a PowerPC machine, which is surprisingly expensive still.

Your best bet on that machine will be OS X 10.4.11 or 10.5.8 (Tiger or Leopard). I have used both on the PowerMac G4 and they work well.

There are less above the board ways to get the software too, but we do not talk about those....

 

[FigBird]

Thanks!!!